OSTP nominee Michael Kratsios sidesteps tech workforce questions
President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Office of Science and Technology Policy sidestepped questions Tuesday regarding the large-scale layoffs affecting the federal government.
During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee, Michael Kratsios said in response to questions about the mass firings across the federal landscape that he believes it’s important for agencies to have high-skilled technical and scientific talent, but that it isn’t unreasonable for the current administration to evaluate current talent.
Kratsios, who served as chief technology officer during the first Trump administration, said that one of the pillars of a national strategy for emerging technology is the workforce, and as OSTP director he would be a “big advocate” for that and happy to work with Congress on those issues. He added that the federal government can drive efforts by pulling levers like grants, fellowships, researchers and other programs for training and reskilling.
From his outside observations, Kratsios — most recently managing director at Scale AI — said “these considerations of employment are not specifically targeting science and technology, but are broad across all of the agencies,” and that it is an “important and necessary step” for new administrations to take.
“I also think it’s entirely reasonable for a new president to be able to evaluate the team that he has in the field across agencies and make necessary changes to ensure that he can achieve goals that he campaigned on and won,” Kratsios said.
Kratsios’s comments came in response to concerns voiced by Democratic Sens. Gary Peters of Michigan and Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware about the extensive firings at the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NASA and others.
Peters said during his questioning that “there’s no evidence that there was any evaluation going on; it was indiscriminate across the board.”
Peters also railed against the Department of Government Efficiency’s presence at federal agencies, saying “DOGE has also created a workplace environment for our issue area experts [where they] are essentially being harassed with the explicit goal of getting them to resign. This environment is not conducive to ensuring the government can retain the top talent in science fields, which is essential for our competitive advantage.”
Kratsios committed to advising the executive branch on the importance of science and technology at federal agencies.
