Evaluating the 3Rs

Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry has asked the Chief Human Capital Officers Council to establish a work group to develop recommendations for improving the administration and oversight of the 3Rs -- recruitment, retention and relocation incentives. The work group will responsible developing approaches for measuring the cost-benefit of the 3Rs program to the government, after which the work group with evaluate what the impact would be on recruitment and retention efforts if agencies were to scale back their funding of the 3Rs.

With respect to the IT workforce, I'm not convinced that scaling back recruitment, retention and relocation incentives would be in the government's best interest, especially when it comes to recruiting and retaining in-demand, mission critical positions, such as IT acquisition specialists. It will be interesting to see how the work group's recommendations, which are slated to come out within 90 days, shape recruiting, hiring and retention of the federal IT workforce.