FedRAMP director put on admin leave after veterans’ hiring preference comments
A senior General Services Administration technology official has been placed on administrative leave after criticizing the government’s veterans’ hiring preference on his personal LinkedIn page, the agency confirmed Monday.
Pete Waterman, director of FedRAMP and a career GSA official, said in the July post that his office needs experienced tech professionals, but federal hiring is “terribly broken.”
“Veterans preference is brutally unfair when taken to the extreme of blocking any consideration of non-veterans, but we’re seeing that everywhere these days,” he wrote. “The future for FedRAMP is pretty dark if we can’t hire experts from private sector who have actually worked on cloud services.”
GSA Administrator Edward Forst said in a statement that “we categorically and completely disagree with a senior employee’s recent remarks denigrating veterans preferences in hiring,” noting that veterans represent about 30% of GSA’s workforce.
“GSA has zero tolerance for comments that disparage or disrespect America’s veterans,” Forst said. “The men and women who have worn and continue to wear our nation’s uniforms deserve our respect and unwavering support.”
Veterans’ preference requires federal agencies to prioritize hiring qualified veterans before civilians. Waterman specifically apologized to civilian FedRAMP Cybersecurity Service applicants in his LinkedIn post, writing that “Tech Force wouldn’t let us look at normal folks until we made offers to all the veterans first.”
Waterman said FedRAMP was “told we’d have access to the highest qualified candidates based on the specialized experience and job analysis worksheets we created but our HR decided instead to only review veteran applicants.”
In addition to his FedRAMP duties, Waterman is the acting deputy director of technology for the GSA’s Technology Transformation Services. He was slated to take over as acting TTS director after federal Chief Information Officer Greg Barbaccia departs government at the end of the month if another director is not chosen, a GSA employee involved with TTS said.
Officials at both GSA and the Department of Veterans Affairs said the VA was not involved in the decision to place Waterman on leave.
Waterman, whose disciplinary action was first reported in GovExec, will remain on leave until further notice, the statement said.
