The effort began with a Trump administration executive order generally aimed at reducing the importance of formal education in setting qualifications for federal jobs. Image: tomertu/Shutterstock.com
OPM has released “general competencies and competency models” for 80 federal occupational series to “support the expanding use of skills-based hiring across the federal government with the increased use of valid assessments that carefully measure candidates’ ability to perform the job.”
The lengthy document on chcoc.gov follows an initiative OPM undertook last year to collect data on competencies needed in federal occupations, replacing the so-called MOSAIC (an acronym for multipurpose occupational systems analysis inventory—closed-ended) studies that have been the basis for governmentwide competency models since the 1990s.
“Over 90,000 federal employees and supervisors from more than 300 job series were crucial in examining, rating, and participating in the development of the competency models . . . The survey results were used to develop competency models that will support the expanding use of skills-based hiring across the federal government with the increased use of valid assessments that carefully measure candidates’ ability to perform the job,” it says.
The memo notes that the effort began with a Trump administration executive order generally aimed at reducing the importance of formal education in setting qualifications for federal jobs—one of the few federal workplace initiatives from that administration that the Biden administration has continued. However, it also stresses that the initiative supports the current President’s Management Agenda, which calls for “data-driven tools for agency human resources professionals in their workforce planning endeavors.”
The result will support “human resources efforts such as workforce planning, recruitment, employee selection, training and development, and performance management,” it says.
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