Details of new IT job standards released

The Office of Personnel Management made public last week the details of its latest efforts to transform the way federal information technology jobs are classified.

In an October 1999 proposal, OPM suggested agencies replace minimum entry-level IT job requirements, such as years of experience or schooling, with general and technical competencies, and added 11 new specialty titles to help better describe positions in the computer specialist (GS-0334) and telecommunications (GS-0391) job series.

Now OPM has drilled down to another level of detail in describing the jobs classified under the IT family, also known as the Information Technology Group Series (GS-2200A).

"The majority of position classification standards currently applied to the federal information technology workforce were published before the advent of the client-server environment, popularization of the Internet and World Wide Web, and similar developments that are now taken for granted," OPM explained in its latest draft of the IT job family standards.

The draft standards are available for review online at http://www.opm.gov/fedclass/html/whatshot.htm. They include detailed definitions of jobs, instructions on how to assign titles to various jobs and examples of the different types of IT work classified.

The descriptions of different types of IT jobs can be expanded, revised or deleted over time, as new specialities emerge or current IT job functions evolve, OPM said.

OPM developed the IT job family standards in partnership with federal IT and human resources experts through focus group meetings and fact-finding missions. Comments and suggestions on the draft standards are due to OPM by October 20. Send comments to: