Wired's Epicenter blog highlights a recent trip Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry made to Silicon Valley. The goal of the trip was to learn from companies like Facebook, Google and design firm Ideo about how to attract young, tech-savvy employees to the federal workforce. Berry hopes to improve the government's broken approaches to recruitment and technology, the article notes, possibly by installing Skype or something like it and an open-source Twitter client like Identi.ca for facilitating communication between federal employees and with potential applicants.
Recruiting the next generation of federal employees will do no good, however, if the government does not also streamline the federal hiring process. But it looks like Berry has all of this in mind, as he seeks to expand the use of new technologies in the federal workforce, reform hiring processes and allow federal employees and the public to submit online comments on OPM's 2010 strategic plan.
Brittany Ballenstedt
Brittany Ballenstedt writes Nextgov's Wired Workplace blog, which delves into the issues facing employees who work in the federal information technology sector. Before joining Nextgov, Brittany covered federal pay and benefits issues as a staff correspondent for Government Executive and served as an associate editor for National Journal's Technology Daily. She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Mansfield University and originally hails from Pennsylvania. She currently lives near Travis Air Force Base, Calif., where her husband is stationed.
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