Agencies get creative to recruit AI experts 

When she worked at the White House, Jennifer Anastasoff helped found the U.S. Digital Service, which recruits senior technologists from the private and public sectors to improve government services that the public uses. But after she left in 2017, she noticed something. 

"I kept getting calls from folks asking me 'You know the tech people, right? So we need some tech people for this thing,'" she said. "What really became clear is there needed to be a more institutionalized way for folks to be able to connect the people in government who are seeking technical talent and the people who are in the technical world who are ready to give their talent to government — because both exist." 

So she co-established the Tech Talent Project, a nonpartisan organization that aims to increase government hiring of technical leaders. In the wake of the 2023 layoffs in the tech industry, the project led a coalition that sponsors virtual job fairs to connect private sector technologists with government employment opportunities. 

Nearly 4,700 individuals have attended at least one of the four job fairs the Tech to Gov coalition has put on, which more than 100 government agencies have participated in. 

"There is a really strong group of people who want to go into government,” Anastasoff said. “But they don't know how to navigate government hiring. They might see an interesting government position, but they don't understand the job description. Or they're deterred by a long hiring process."

These career fairs, where job seekers can apply to roles directly and some recruiters make tentative offers on the spot, are one way the federal government has executed President Joe Biden’s directive for a national artificial intelligence talent surge, which is a component of his 2023 AI executive order. 

By the numbers

According to a White House fact sheet released on July 26, federal agencies have hired more than 200 technologists through this talent surge.  

“Personally, I think it's impressive,” said Denise Zheng, chief AI officer at Accenture Federal Services. “There is such a shortage at this time of AI talent, not just in the federal government, but across all industries, that I would say those numbers are quite impressive, especially when you consider the fact that the government is competing against major tech companies, major pharma companies [and] major universities that are all going after the same pool of talent.”

Applications for federal AI and AI-enabling roles doubled between January and March  compared to similar periods in 2022 and 2023, according to an April report to the president from the AI and Tech Talent Task Force. Agencies are planning to hire more than 500 additional such roles through fiscal 2025. 

Hiring flexibilities

The task force, which is composed of representatives from multiple personnel and technological agencies, is focused on accelerating hiring of AI professionals into the federal government. 

Pat Tamburrino — chief administrative officer at NobleReach Foundation, which works to link experts from the private sector, academia and government to develop emerging technologies for the public good — said the task force “did all the right things” to bolster recruitment of AI experts for agency positions. 

“I think the important thing is the task force set itself up to enable success. The [hiring] numbers are interesting, but that the task force and Office of Personnel Management set the government up so that it can go do this now in a more efficient and effective manner is what's important,” said Tamburrino, who spent nearly 40 years in federal service including stints as the Defense Department’s chief human capital officer and chief of staff for the Defense undersecretary for Personnel and Readiness. 

For example, OPM granted agencies direct hire authority for certain AI positions. Such authority “speeds up hiring by eliminating typical hiring processes that rate and rank candidates” and has been used in about 30% of AI and AI-enabling job postings since Biden’s executive order, according to the task force report to the president. 

Public technology fellowships

The federal government also uses tech talent programs to recruit AI experts. Olivia Zhu, who is the assistant director for AI Policy in the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, said the U.S. Digital Corps and Presidential Innovation Fellows are two particularly effective initiatives. 

The Biden administration launched the U.S. Digital Corps to provide two-year fellowships for early-career tech experts to come and work for the government, which leads to a permanent federal job. The Presidential Innovation Fellows program, established in 2012, places senior technologists from private companies to serve for one year at a federal agency. 

In total, the two programs are on track to bring in 114 technologists, approximately 75% of whom work on AI, into the federal workforce in 2024, according to the task force report. 

Zhu herself was a presidential innovation fellow after working for companies like Microsoft and Amazon. But she said that she wanted her career to be “optimized for impact” and that serving in the federal government is the best place to develop technology that improves people’s lives. 

Likewise, the Homeland Security Department in June began its AI Corps, which is recruiting experts from the public and private sectors to better utilize the technology across multiple national security agencies. 

Risks under a different administration

These advancements to bring AI technologists into the public sector, however, could be at risk if former President Donald Trump is elected to a second term. 

The platform adopted by the Republican National Committee earlier in July would repeal Biden’s AI executive order apparently due to a disagreement over requirements in it that mandate certain AI developers to share safety and other information with the government. 

But revoking the full executive order could derail the hiring policies enacted under it. 

“I do think repealing [the AI hiring] section would make an impact. I can’t say that it wouldn’t because having a president say it’s important to bring in the capacity that’s required in order to be able to address a technical issue is important,” said Anastasoff, who emphasized that bringing tech talent into the government has been a nonpartisan issue in her experience. 

New paradigm for public service

Tamburrino said the AI talent surge could upend the widespread notion that entering federal service means spending the rest of one’s career there. 

“As the government starts to embrace this idea of…‘I'm hiring you for a part of your career,' I think it creates a lot of energy, and I think it makes the hiring actually a little bit simpler,” he said. “Because maybe somebody doesn't know if they want to spend 40 years in federal service, or five years in federal service, but they love the idea…of being at the leading edge of helping the government implement policy. And [they’d] love to do it for two or three years.” 

He argued that this dual-sector experience would yield increased sharing of ideas and benefit the country. 

Work still to do

Individuals hired under the talent surge generally will help federal agencies write AI policy and figure out how to effectively use the technology. 

Specifically, Zheng, who in her role supports agencies on implementing AI initiatives, said her organization is assisting the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office utilize AI to check if applications for a new patent are similar to any existing ones as well as incorporating it into the disability claim process to provide more accurate and faster decisions. 

But she stressed that AI will not replace federal workers. 

“What's super important in all of these use cases is that AI is not replacing the human. It is augmenting the human in their job,” she said. “They still need to ensure the accuracy, the precision, the ethical use, responsible use of these systems.”

Zheng also encouraged agencies to not only recruit new AI talent but also upskill current technology-focused employees. 

Relatedly, a survey by the AI and Tech Talent Task Force found that more than half of agency employees reported they did not have access to, or were not aware of, generative AI tools for their work. 

While agencies continue to mitigate issues that could prevent AI experts from joining the federal workforce, it’s clear that one issue they don’t need to deal with as much is a lack of interest. 

“What I've heard consistently over the last decade is the folks that have these skills don't want to come into government. And the answer is they do,” Anastasoff said. “We know we need tech-savvy folks to help address the fact that we’re supposed to be a 21st century government.”