OPM tells agencies to put tech recruiting at the center of staffing plans

Agencies should prioritize recruiting tech talent in their hiring plans for next fiscal year, the Office of Personnel Management said in guidance released on July 30. 

“Planning for technology and planning for talent are no longer separate conversations,” wrote OPM Director Scott Kupor in an associated blog post. 

Specifically, agencies should reserve positions for individuals who specialize in areas like artificial intelligence, data science and cybersecurity. The government’s HR agency encouraged officials to fill these roles by utilizing Tech Force and Scholarship for Service. 

The Trump administration created Tech Force last year to bring on early-career software and data engineers for two-year tours. While officials set out to recruit 1,000 individuals potentially as soon as the end of March, OPM said in response to a question for this article that it has hired about 300 participants so far. 

Scholarship for Service was established in 2000 and covers college tuition for recipients who agree to work in a government cybersecurity role upon graduation. The program was recently updated to emphasize AI competency. 

Many scholarship participants told NextGov/FCW last year that agencies rescinded their job offers, as the Trump administration sought to downsize the federal workforce. In all, more than 19,500 technology employees left or were pushed out of the federal government in 2025. 

OPM’s guidance also directs agencies to address in their staffing plans how they plan to leverage AI technology, including through reskilling and upskilling current employees. 

“This process involves identifying mission-critical positions that deliver the greatest value while understanding how technology can enhance service delivery,” Kupor wrote in the blog. “And it requires an honest look at opportunities to simplify organizations, improve internal processes and maximize the use of taxpayer resources.”

Additionally, the guidance sets a governmentwide target that at least 33% of external hires be in the early stages of their careers and pushes agencies to use the Early Career Talent Network, which OPM created to bolster recruitment of younger workers.

While Kupor frequently touts OPM’s efforts to bring more early-career staffers into government, which has been a longstanding issue for agencies, the Partnership for Public Service, a good government nonprofit, reported that the share of civil servants who are younger than the age of 30 decreased last year. Partnership officials attributed this to the Trump administration’s federal hiring freeze and mass firings of probationary employees, which impacted many individuals who had been in their jobs for less than a year. 

The specific annual agency staffing plans that the guidance refers to were mandated by an October 2025 executive order that set new requirements for filling vacancies and new hiring. Kupor also wrote that these plans would provide a “centralized view of workforce needs across agencies” in order to determine which skills the government workforce is lacking and where duplication is occurring.