OPM gives agencies August deadline to report cybersecurity jobs needs

The Office of Personnel Management is giving agencies a deadline to let it know what cybersecurity jobs are most in need across the federal workforce.

Following OPM’s April release of guidance on how to identify cybersecurity and IT skills shortages and what steps are needed to fill those gaps, officials are calling for Chief Human Capital Officer Act agencies to submit a preliminary report on their compliance with those requirements by Aug. 31.

Mark Reinhold, OPM’s associate director of employee services, said in a memo this week that the August report should focus on describing the IT and cybersecurity roles identified within the agencies and defining the substantiation for critical needs.

The request comes as the Government Accountability Office, in a report released Thursday, detailed how OPM and the National Institute of Standards and Technology missed deadlines for issuing a cybersecurity and IT workforce classification structure by months.

That report also alleged multiple agencies had failed to disclose all of the information required by OPM about their cyber workforces, including whether personnel had certifications and if the organizations had established complete baseline assessments of their cybersecurity professionals.

The GAO report issued 30 recommendations to agencies on how to improve their compliance with the Cybersecurity Workforce Assessment Act, a 2015 law that required OPM to establish a three-digit coding structure to designate cybersecurity job roles while working with various agency partners to define and standardize the duties of those roles.

Full agency reports are due to OPM by April 30, 2019, followed by annual reports after that.