{"id":110222,"date":"2026-03-03T21:15:54","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T00:15:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tech.einnews.com\/article\/897364518"},"modified":"2026-03-03T21:15:54","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T00:15:54","slug":"opm-revives-defunct-gov-tech-efforts-with-tech-force-hires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/2026\/03\/03\/opm-revives-defunct-gov-tech-efforts-with-tech-force-hires\/","title":{"rendered":"OPM revives defunct gov tech efforts with Tech Force hires"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Eric White <\/strong>What is the big tech takeover? I guess they\u2019re calling it the Tech Force initiative to bring tech talent to the government. We\u2019ve seen things like this before, particularly, you know, we\u2019ve been covering those kinds of initiatives over the past decade. What exactly do they have in store here?<\/p>\n

Lauren Chambers <\/strong>I think you said some of the kind of top trivia about this initiative already. It\u2019s going to be a temporary way to bring in new tech talent into the government. They\u2019re talking about bringing in around 1,000 temporary workers for temporary stints of two to four years. What\u2019s really new about this Tech Force initiative is its relationship with big tech and other sorts of tech companies. So in particular, the launch of Tech Force was announced alongside almost 30 different tech companies ranging from Apple and Microsoft to NVIDIA and OpenAI. And the idea is that at the end of these temporary stints, these new Tech Force workers will be given the opportunity to be hired by these companies. When Business Insider was reporting on it, actually, they said, \u201cYoung tech talent hoping to land a job in the private sector has a new way in: the public sector,\u201d which is a really different kind of divergence from some of the prior sorts of federal tech initiatives that we had seen under prior administrations.<\/p>\n

Eric White <\/strong>Not to belabor that point, but as I mentioned, this is not a new idea. We\u2019ve seen this before, whether it\u2019s the 18F or U.S. Digital Service. The Trump administration put the kibosh on those and wanted to create its own thing. Is that the only main difference though, that you\u2019ve heard of so far \u2014 just the fact that finally the tech world had one of its own in Elon Musk creating it? What other differences are there?<\/p>\n

Lauren Chambers <\/strong>There are a few other differences indeed. So if we\u2019re thinking about 18F, that functioned as kind of an in-house consultancy in which the teams of experts at 18F would contract out to federal agencies. So those were more kind of permanent, civil-servant roles that were serving as tech expertise that the entire federal government could kind of rely on. Which obviously is really different than this sort of temporary two-to-four-year thing we\u2019ve got proposed here. And then comparing to the U.S. Digital Service, as you mentioned, that was in some ways more similar because the Digital Service functioned through what they called tours of civil service. They would bring in experts from the private sector for these sorts of temporary tours to kind of sit in the public sector for a while and bring their expertise and then eventually return. The important difference, at least as I understand it there, is that those were really aiming for experts and high-level, kind of more senior workers to come in and do these tours with the Digital Service, whereas the Tech Force is more advertising towards early career workers. And there\u2019s some open questions as to how much these kind of new minds who maybe haven\u2019t had a lot of experience working in companies or in the government will be able to kind of get settled and have an impact working in these agencies.<\/p>\n

Eric White <\/strong>Talking here with Lauren Chambers. She\u2019s a Ph.D. candidate at the UC Berkeley School of Information. Let\u2019s get into some of those questions that have kind of remained unanswered. And I guess I\u2019ll pick your brain to see if you could fill in the blanks as much as possible. Obviously, the Trump administration took a pretty big hatchet to a lot of these workforce initiatives. You had mentioned the ones that they got rid of, but there have been layoffs in just about every other agency, including a lot of the tech workers that worked in said agencies. Is this going to be able to fill in the gaps when you have layoffs like this? Is that going to really be an attractive avenue for young tech workers to go in? If it already has a predicted length, maybe that may be a bit more attractive just because there\u2019s a guarantee there, so to speak. But where is the attraction for young workers to actually do this?<\/p>\n

Lauren Chambers <\/strong>That\u2019s a great question.<\/p>\n

Eric White <\/strong>As I mentioned, fill in the blanks as much as you can.<\/p>\n

Lauren Chambers <\/strong>I\u2019m not sure at the extent to which I have the answer to that. I think one thing that was really awesome and singular about programs like the U.S. Digital Service and 18F is that they explicitly attracted tech experts who were nonetheless really interested in service opportunities, right? There\u2019s a fundamental difference between working in technology and trying to build a product that makes a profit, and working in technology and trying to improve services \u2014 such as the sorts of important services that the government offers that reach potentially hundreds of millions of people. What\u2019s always been hard about government technology work is how to attract these specific kinds of individuals who have this interest in service-oriented technology work. And I think the jury is very much still out. As you mentioned, we haven\u2019t even had any offers go out for the Tech Force yet. So it\u2019s not quite clear what sorts of workers and sorts of experts this initiative will be attracting. And it\u2019s not clear whether they will have that kind of boundary-crossing expertise that allows them to be effective in both government and in technology.<\/p>\n

Eric White <\/strong>There are also some unforeseen implications when it comes to working directly with these big tech companies. They have their own interests, so when getting this far into the realm of workforce development with them raises some possible conflicts of interests, right? I mean, if you\u2019re specifically tailoring a government agency or government workforce towards one company\u2019s needs, are there going to be some tug-of-war back and forth between company to company, company to government? It just sounds like it might get messy.<\/p>\n

Lauren Chambers <\/strong>I\u2019m glad you mentioned that. So I mentioned earlier that kind of the main demographic that Tech Force seems to be advertising towards is these sorts of early career folks who might be coming into Tech Force as their first sort of go-around of a job out of college. But there\u2019s also an important secondary kind of desired workforce that Tech Force is advertising to, which is more senior people who are inside companies. My understanding is the idea is these companies can nominate these senior employees to work in the Tech Force for, again, a temporary two-to-four-year stint in the public sector. Which maybe sounds good in theory, but exactly raises these sorts of conflicts of interest that you mentioned. So you can imagine if you have someone who\u2019s working at NVIDIA and has been at that company for a while. They leave that company for a couple years, come work for a particular federal agency with the understanding that at the end of that time they\u2019ll end up back at NVIDIA \u2014 at least the communications on the Tech Force website suggest they\u2019re trying to figure out how these employees could still hold on to their stocks and other sorts of financial benefit packages from these companies. So there are huge unanswered questions here around conflict of interest and how we can make sure that company representatives with company interests being placed inside federal agencies are actually working in the interest of the government and not in the interests of their companies. So yeah, remains to be seen.<\/p>\n

Eric White <\/strong>On that note \u2026 and this is going to be a loaded question. So if you just want to highlight one or two things that the federal government could do to make sure that they do have a pipeline of tech talent. Because this isn\u2019t a necessarily a something that people don\u2019t disagree with. It\u2019s just the manner and the approach that they\u2019re taking seems to be the hard part. What is it that federal agencies can do to make sure that they are still having opportunities for the nation\u2019s best and brightest to come work for them, whether it be on a temporary basis or having them there in the long term?<\/p>\n

Lauren Chambers <\/strong>The good news about this question is that we don\u2019t really have to reinvent the wheel, right? We can look to the sorts of really successful initiatives that were punching way above their weight that the Trump administration indeed, as you mentioned, gutted as soon as they came into office back in January 2025. So the models that we saw at 18F, which again was a sort of in-house digital consultancy in which teams of tech-savvy civil servants would be contracted out to federal agencies, that had great success. Some of their communications before they were dissolved mentioned that they had completed over 450 projects across 34 different agencies in the 10 years that they have been set up. So that was a hugely successful initiative. Even though, I\u2019ll flag, in 2024, they only had 90 full-time employees. So again, really crunching above their weight. And the U.S. Digital Service also was a really successful model where, again, they brought in temporary sorts of experts from the private sector for these tours of civic service. They, too, only had around 200 full-time employees in 2025 but were able to do amazing things, like helping to fix healthcare.gov when that whole debacle was going. So I think we can just look to those initiatives and continue to try to, again, not reinvent the wheel. Another thing I would like to flag is there is a remaining initiative within the GSA\u2019s Technological Transformation Services Division, the United States Digital Corps, which is still trucking. So this is a fellowship program that brings in tech talent for, again, two-year fellowships, but with the express desire of having them convert into civil servants that will be situated within these agencies at the end of their time. They\u2019ve had three cohorts so far since they launched in 2022, and they also have had really fantastic outcomes. So if there are people working in federal agencies listening, then maybe seeking out a Digital Corps fellow in future cohorts might be an easy, kind of low-hanging way that you can bring tech talent into your agency without having to reestablish models that have been dissolved.<\/p>\n

Eric White <\/strong>Last question, I\u2019ve got to hold your feet to the fire here. Were there any opportunities in the Tech Force initiative that you may have applied for, or maybe one of your fellow students may have applied for?<\/p>\n

Lauren Chambers <\/strong>I actually don\u2019t know of anyone in my circles who\u2019s been talking about applying for Tech Force, which maybe says something right there, right? I\u2019m a Ph.D. student and specifically study kind of social initiatives and technology. And so a lot of the people in my circles are interested in what we call public interest tech. There was a lot of love for the Digital Service and for 18F among myself and my communities and I have not seen the same sort of interest in the Tech Force. So of course I wish the best for our federal government initiatives and we want them to succeed. That\u2019s the ultimate goal is to do government better. Time will tell.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2026 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.<\/em> <\/p>\n

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… alongside almost 30 different tech<\/span> companies ranging from Apple … Digital Service, whereas the Tech<\/span> Force is more advertising … that they explicitly attracted tech<\/span> experts who were nonetheless … difference between working in technology<\/span> and trying to build …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}