Major federal IT contracts to remove ‘unnecessary’ degree requirements
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By
Natalie Alms
The push to focus on skills-based hiring for federal jobs dates back to the first Trump administration. The Biden White House has continued these efforts.
The General Services Administration will be using a skills-based hiring approach for IT cybersecurity jobs in its planned Polaris and Alliant 3 governmentwide contracts, the White House announced Wednesday.
Skills-based hiring is a method that de-emphasizes requirements for educational degrees and years of experience for jobs where they’re not necessary, instead stressing the use of testing for actual skills needed to do the job.
Just over half of the U.S. workforce has post-high school education, per 2022 data, according to the Lumina Foundation.
GSA is removing “unnecessary” degree and experience requirements for IT cybersecurity jobs at the master contract level, the White House says, for the estimated $100 billion in agency task orders.
The announcement is part of a Classroom to Career summit hosted by President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden on Wednesday. The White House reported a series of actions and new commitments on career and technical education, community college training, registered apprenticeships and White House “workforce hubs” created during this administration.
The Trump White House also pushed to move the government to skills-based hiring with an executive order on the topic that directed the Office of Personnel Management to review requirements for the government's competitive service and only use educational requirements when legally required.
The Biden White House has continued those efforts, with Vice President Kamala Harris even making the removal of degree requirements for federal jobs a campaign issue during the recent presidential election.
The latest announcements from the White House also follow a commitment made by the administration earlier this year to rewrite requirements for the government’s own IT and cyber jobs by next summer in order to move away from a reliance on college degrees and years of experience.
“Under the Biden-Harris administration, the federal government is leading the way in implementing skills-based practices, opening up pathways to good-paying jobs for more Americans by valuing their skills and abilities — regardless how they acquired those skills,” the White House fact sheet on the summit said.
“At the summit, administration officials will urge employers in all sectors — public, private, and nonprofit — to remove unnecessary degree requirements, and to recognize the value of and provide high-quality alternative pathways such as registered apprenticeship and community college programs,” it continued.
GSA isn’t the only government agency making moves on skills-based hiring.
The White House also announced Wednesday that the Energy Department will change its multi-billion-dollar, enterprise IT contract to remove degree requirements for cyber and IT jobs, something it previously previewed in April when the administration said that Energy would move to skills-based hiring for federal and contractor IT and cybersecurity jobs.
The change to the enterprise IT contract is expected to impact over 1,000 positions by December.
The Defense Department’s $40 million Naval Air Systems Command contract is also moving to a skills-based hiring approach.
Employers that want to move to skills-based hiring can also look to a new “starter kit” from the Departments of Labor and Commerce for a practical guide.
This isn’t the first time the White House has zeroed in on the resume requirements attached to cybersecurity jobs at government contractors.
National Cyber Director Harry Coker, Jr. spoke about the need to “reduce unnecessary barriers” for cyber jobs in his first remarks after he took the White House gig.
Although minimum experience and education requirements aren’t required in federal contracts for IT services, government contracts often do include them, stymieing contractors’ efforts to move to skills-based approaches and offer apprenticeships, Nextgov/FCW previously reported.
The federal government and its contractors aren’t alone in this work.
A new analysis from nonprofit Opportunity@Work on skills-based hiring in state governments in 2022 and 2023 found that 15 states worked to remove four-year degree requirements from job postings.