Internship Intrigue

One of the things I'm most curious to see about hiring reform, if in fact the details of the plan are announced next week, is what gets done about internships, which are a critical part of candidate recruitment and vetting. There's just so much dissatisfaction with the current, sprawling internship structure. The National Treasury Employees Union is still pursuing legal challenges to the Federal Career Intern Program on the grounds that it bypasses veterans' preference and undermines the competitive hiring process. On the other hand, some groups think the competitive process is keeping promising interns out of government. I don't know how to reconcile the competing concerns. And so far, the Office of Personnel Management hasn't let anything slip about what, if anything, they've figured out about how to do it.