The Budget's Personnel Priorities

The fiscal 2012 budget proposal unveiled by the White House on Monday identifies several high-priority goals for recruiting, hiring and retaining federal workers, including some that relate specifically to the federal IT workforce.

Those goals include recruiting and hiring top-notch talent, continuing to implement a human resources dashboard to gauge employee satisfaction, and expanding telework programs, all of which play a huge role in ensuring the government can attract and retain a highly skilled federal IT workforce, particularly given the large number of projected retirements in the coming years.

Specifically, the budget emphasizes the need to strengthen IT program management, in part by creating a formal, governmentwide IT program manager career path. This will involve creating a robust training program to help develop a cadre of seasoned IT program managers to help manage large-scale IT projects.

The proposal also includes plans to enhance the cybersecurity workforce, in part by identifying cybersecurity training and professional development that will be required for federal civilian, military and contractor personnel.

The Obama administration also noted a continued commitment to federal hiring reform. The budget touts the progress achieved thus far, including simplifying the federal job application process, reducing lengthy job descriptions and improving the hiring of veterans and the timeliness and quality of the security clearance process. By November 2010, for example, 49 percent of job descriptions were shorter than five pages, improved from 24 percent in 2009, the budget states.

The administration also proposed funding for an evaluation of federal telework practices, in part to help agencies employ best practices when implementing the requirements in the 2010 Telework Enhancement Act.

Obama's budget proposal also commits to continuing to develop a human resources dashboard that details agency progress on HR management, such as reducing hiring times and improving employee engagement and retention, employee satisfaction, diversity and disability data, and veterans' hiring.