Acting OPM director Margaret Weichert has again stressed one of the administration’s themes for the federal workplace, to “reskill and retrain our federal workforce to better serve the American people for the 21st century.”
In a posting on performance.gov, Weichert–who also is deputy director for management at OMB–noted that reskilling was a theme of the President’s Management Agenda and of a recent symposium that the White House sponsored on the federal workforce.
“The conclusions drawn from those discussions are clear: we need to reduce the skills-gaps so our workforce is better aligned to the needs of the 21st century. But how do we do that? With every modernization action we take, we must be both mission-driven and people-driven; those actions and practices will focus on a common sense of purpose and mission; and that they will engage employees, stakeholders, and other related parties in that shared purpose and mission,” she wrote.
She cited as an example the way the IRS handled thousands of employees who had been working primarily on data transcription at several service centers the agency closed.
“Rather than let the employees go, the IRS prepared for the transition by providing training to the impacted employees. The goal was to prepare the people for the future and the changing nature of work. This is a great model for how we can help align the skills of our workforce to modern needs, while ensuring our dedicated employees continue to have great opportunities,” she wrote.