The Office of Personnel Management has issued a memorandum to authorize agencies to use “excepted service appointments†as stated in the 5 Code of Federal Regulations 213.3102 to meet technical personnel requirements in support of information technology modernization efforts.
Kathleen McGettigan, acting OPM director, wrote in a memo released Friday agencies can use the authority to temporarily hire technical staff for up to a year in order to carry out Smarter IT Delivery and IT modernization programs funded under budgets for fiscal 2017 and fiscal 2018.
The recruitment of employees for technical roles covers grade levels 11 through 15 under the General Schedule and can be implemented through the end of fiscal 2018.
OPM restricts the use of the authority to technical roles whose basic functions include solutions architecture, cloud migration and cloud architecture.
“OPM expects the use of this authority to inform our development of future qualifications standards and assessments for use in competitive examining,†McGettigan noted.
Agencies seeking to meet their technical requirements can use other hiring options such as the Presidential Innovation Fellows program, government-wide direct hire authority for IT management and consultant appointments, the memo added.