The Trump administration is tossing out strict higher-education necessities for federal tech roles and as a substitute shifting the main target to candidates’ hands-on abilities and competencies to do the job.
Just lately revised job requirements for federal expertise managers intention to maneuver businesses towards assessing job candidates based mostly on abilities, whereas lowering emphasis on whether or not candidates have superior levels.
The Workplace of Personnel Administration just lately introduced the overhaul of {qualifications} and requirements for the federal government’s 2210 job collection, which covers governmentwide info expertise (IT) administration positions.
“For the first time, your fitness for the job will be determined via a formal assessment rather than based upon whether you have a bachelor’s degree or some minimum amount of work experience,” OPM Director Scott Kupor wrote in an April 14 weblog put up concerning the job collection replace.
It’s step one in a broader workforce reform mission that OPM has dubbed the “federal workforce competency initiative.” OPM stated finally, it plans to revise all 604 federal job collection to make sure they’re based mostly on abilities and competencies that measure whether or not candidates are really certified for jobs. In that course of, OPM can be seeking to scale back the overall variety of federal job collection by at the least 25%.
“I don’t know how we got to that number, but it’s quite a large number. We are in the process right now of updating all of those and hopefully consolidating them down from 600 to a more reasonable number,” Kupor stated in an interview with Federal Information Community final month. “But the main objective of that reclassification process is to eliminate proxies for skillsets. If we care about skills, then we should stop having proxies for skills, and then redefine the job requirements as skills-based — things that we can ultimately assess through some type of formal assessment.”
In new steerage on the up to date expertise administration job collection, OPM stated the revisions align with “a fluid, fast-moving IT environment.” That features fast developments throughout cybersecurity, cloud expertise, synthetic intelligence and different tech fields. The brand new job requirements are additionally “intentionally structured” to adapt to future expertise shifts that, consequently, will affect workforce necessities.
“IT skills now have an increasingly limited shelf-life, often evolving faster than traditional policy and classification cycles. Technologies, tools and work methods shift rapidly, requiring classification standards that can adapt to continuous change,” Kupor wrote in a memo to businesses final week. “To reflect this reality, the updated [position classification standard] modernizes occupational information, clarifies distinctions between IT work categories and incorporates competency-aligned guidance that anticipates and supports evolving operational and strategic IT functions.”
In sensible phrases, the brand new 2210 job requirements embrace up to date definitions and job titles, in addition to clearer distinctions between IT and non-IT work. OPM stated the revised requirements will shift businesses towards evaluating people’ abilities and behaviors, somewhat than working by means of “outdated” credential assessments. The adjustments additionally mirror “modern work” within the IT subject and depart house for “continuous” upskilling and reskilling alternatives which might be obligatory within the quickly evolving job subject, OPM defined.
To assist businesses of their transition to skills-based assessments for IT administration roles, OPM additionally launched a number of on-line sources. Companies now have entry to steerage together with how you can design “competency-based” candidate assessments and classification processes, a useful resource listing for federal hiring managers and extra.
“Together, these products provide an integrated approach to aligning classification, qualifications and assessments with job-relevant competencies and proficiency levels,” Kupor wrote in an April 13 memo to company heads.
Going ahead, businesses are answerable for including any supplemental technical assessments, OPM stated, because of various competency necessities throughout totally different businesses and positions throughout the governmentwide 2210 job collection.
Revising federal job {qualifications} is a part of the Trump administration’s broader “merit hiring plan” for the federal workforce. Partially, the initiative pushes ahead skills-based efforts that had been underway throughout each the Biden administration and the primary Trump administration. The bipartisan Probability to Compete Act, enacted in 2024, additionally emphasised the position of skills-based federal hiring.
A few of the Trump administration’s adjustments beneath the advantage hiring plan embrace including contentious essay inquiries to federal job purposes. However different targets construct on longstanding, bipartisan reform efforts which have transcended presidential administrations.
As an illustration, throughout the subsequent few years, the Trump administration set a aim of transferring 60% of all federal hiring bulletins to shared certificates. The shared “lists” let a number of businesses rent from the identical pool of certified job candidates. It’s a method that has been proven to ease workloads for federal HR workers.
OPM can be working to totally remove “self-assessments” in federal hiring, the place job candidates attest to their very own talent ranges, usually resulting in biased candidate evaluations.
“In its place, we are requiring hiring managers to use formal assessments — skills-based ‘tests’ to determine one’s aptitude for the specific job skill requirements,” Kupor wrote in his weblog put up.
Regardless of the ahead momentum, businesses have additionally traditionally confronted obstacles in strengthening skills-based hiring. Jenny Mattingley, vice chairman of presidency affairs on the Partnership for Public Service, stated the Trump administration’s targets would require extra HR sources and personnel to turn out to be totally realized, particularly contemplating the current lack of hundreds of federal HR staff.
“Agencies have been told to do this. But what hasn’t been fixed are the underlying issues of why agencies don’t always use assessments. They don’t have funding to purchase off-the-shelf assessments,” Mattingley stated. “There’s a lot of work that goes into doing skills-based hiring — and doing it well. All of these budget and staffing and capacity questions, I think, are going to cause a challenge.”
If you need to contact this reporter about current adjustments within the federal authorities, please electronic mail drew.friedman@federalnewsnetwork.com or attain out on Sign at drewfriedman.11
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