The Department of Defense has grown significantly its use of direct hire authority for cyber workforce civilians in past year: About half of people added to DoD positions Cyber ​​Service Excepted were hired through the expedited process instead of the competitive ranking process the government uses for most civilian positions.

The Pentagon’s enthusiastic embrace of the authority comes eight years after Congress first allowed The DoD will create a new salary and staffing system for civilian cyber experts. And while the department’s implementation of the Cyber ​​Excepted Service was somewhat slow in its early years, officials have made expanding it a priority in 2023. when they published a detailed implementation plan for DoD’s first cyber workforce strategy.

Defense officials also credit CES and the broader implementation plan with helping to drastically reduce the huge number of vacancies in the DoD’s cyber workforce. In August last year, when the plan was first introduced, almost a quarter of these jobs were empty. By last week, the vacancy rate had fallen to 16.2%.

“I think our programs are working, but we still have a long way to go,” Mark Gorak, senior director for resources and analysis in DoD’s CIO. office, he told reporters. “We estimate that we still have about 28,000 employees in the department. So we still they have a long way to go to get to our closure here, but WE better and better, and I believe that’s it one of the key values ​​of this program’s success.”

The continued shortage is despite a large number of new hires over the past year: 14,000 civilians have been hired into the department’s cyber workforce, significantly outstripping attrition. About 6,000 members of the workforce left the department during the same time period.

Direct employment, salary flexibilities are both success factors

Specifically for the Cyber ​​Excepted Service, Gorak said the direct hiring authority component of the CES has proven to be the most important tool for attracting new civilians and shortening employment timelines. When DoD CES hires are factored in, the time to hire for the cyber workforce is now 73 days, well below the Office of Management and Budget’s governmentwide goal of 80 days.

But the payment also made a difference. The system allows for an 11th and 12th step increase in each pay grade, exceeding the pay increases within the grade that are allowed in the government’s General Program. And it allows DoD to set Targeted Local Market Supplements (TLMS) to make total employee compensation more competitive with private sector offerings in different areas of the country where cyber talent is in high demand.

“Each quarter, we look at all of our people receiving TLMS and then decide whether a particular job role – based on the vacancy rate and other factors such as how many military posts we have and what areas of the country are short – to determine if we will implement TLMS for that portion of the workforce,” Gorak said. “So I think the CES is a really great tool, but of all the special paying authorities that the department has, it’s probably one of the smallest. So part of our challenge is the culture and getting the word out to our HR community about that authority and how to use it and how to manage it.”

Another benefit: By 2027, DoD expects to be able to separate funding for the civilian cyber workforce into a separate pot of money, so that even if budget cuts require cuts across the workforce, people in cyber positions are still it provides at least some protection. .

Extension of CES

Those are among the reasons why, despite what has been a slow implementation process, defense officials are now seeking permission from Congress to extend the new pay and hiring authorities to broader segments of the department’s digital workforce. As of now, CES can only be used for positions that directly support US Cyber ​​​​Command.

“We’re still bound by that authority, but we’re working through the legislative proposal process to help DoD expand it, and I’m also working with (the Office of Personnel Management) and OMB to provide more cyber flexibilities across the federal government in employment and incentives. We’re working on this from two different angles,” Gorak said.

Defense officials they said before they favor expanding the existing cyber executive service as a way to increase the pay of IT and cyber employees, rather than the special pay rate approach that the Department of Veterans Affairs and other civilian agencies are using or considering.

90% of objectives met in the first year

More broadly, he said the department had achieved about 90 percent of the goals it set out to achieve in the first year of the 2023-2027 implementation plan. Some of the others include:

• Creation of a new Office of Cyber ​​Academic Engagement to strengthen DoD’s existing cyber academic programs.
• Moving DoD’s “8140” qualification process to a new online system. It currently includes 60 certifications from 13 external training providers.
• Creation of a new compensation calculator to help HR staff determine pay for cyber positions.
• Creating a “Job Roles 101” guide to help standardize cyber work roles and policies across the department.
• Identifying training that is still needed to help fill skills gaps in the DoD workforce.

“Starting next quarter, we’re going to actually track all of these and their timelines and report to our senior leaders every quarter,” Gorak said. “Im doing that to put some accountability and tracking of all these measures for all our components so they know its attention and if they need things like resources or extended deadlines, WE letting senior leaders make those decisions.”

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