Federal CIO Says AI, Tech Skills to Become Core Competencies for All Feds

Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) Greg Barbaccia said Tuesday that artificial intelligence (AI) and technical skills are set to become core competencies for every federal employee as the government works to recruit more tech-savvy talent.

Speaking at the Workday Federal Forum in Washington, D.C., Barbaccia said the push is part of a broader effort to challenge “preconceived notions about why coming into the government to work isn’t a great experience.”

“Technical and AI competency are going to be core competencies for all federal employees moving forward; that’s a must,” said Barbaccia, who also serves as the federal chief AI officer and the acting director of the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services.

“We cannot move forward if we don’t have those competencies at every level of the government,” he added.

Barbaccia pointed to the US Tech Force as one initiative aimed at making it easier to recruit and onboard technology-focused employees. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) launched the program in December to hire early-career technologists for two-year employment terms across the federal government.

“We’re targeting people who are innovators, who are builders, who are not going to come into the government and get mired in policy and bureaucracy, but will be able to have the tools they need to be successful,” Barbaccia said. “They’ll have the agency to work on problems that are interesting to them.”

Barbaccia also highlighted efforts to remove longstanding barriers to federal employment, including degree requirements and rigid hiring structures that can limit entry points for technical talent.

He pointed to recent moves by OPM to eliminate degree requirements for some federal roles, calling the change a way to make government service more accessible and competitive.

“When we remove an arbitrary barrier that says you need a degree … now you could come in at a much higher level, and that’s more palatable for people,” Barbaccia said.

The federal CIO also pushed back on the idea that federal careers must come at the expense of private-sector opportunities, emphasizing more flexible career paths between government and industry.

“[There’s a] misconception that you’re either choosing a career in the private sector or you’re choosing a career in the government, and those are two binary lives you’re going to have,” Barbaccia said.

“The Tech Force is a great example of [how] you could come into the government, you could do a tour of duty, and you could return to the private sector,” he said.

Beyond hiring, Barbaccia stressed that equipping employees with modern tools – including AI capabilities – will be critical to both recruitment and retention. He noted that many prospective hires already use AI tools in their personal and professional lives and expect similar capabilities in government roles.

“How could we possibly recruit people who use AI and [large language models] in their personal life in so many interesting ways, and then you have to come into the government, and you’re just staring at a word processor all day? It’s just not fair,” he said.

Barbaccia said the federal government is looking to have employees “working on things that are interesting to them,” adding, “That will be the No. 1 way to attract people [to] government.”

Ultimately, Barbaccia said the federal government offers a unique proposition for technologists: the opportunity to work on large-scale, high-impact challenges that cannot be found elsewhere.

“You can’t get to the scale of things that we have in the United States government,” he said. “We’re doing things that touch 350 million people and have historical impact. This is the only place to get access to the most interesting problems in the world.”