Presidential Management Fellows plan to enter the cyber reskilling game

Presidential Management Fellows plan to enter the cyber reskilling game

This story was updated on Friday, Sept. 11, 2020 at 9:55 a.m. to clarify the number of Presidential Management Fellows in the program. 


As the ongoing pandemic has forced nearly every agency to quickly rethink how its employees work and serve the public, the Presidential Management Fellows (PMF) Program is future-proofing its own organization too.


The goal, however, goes beyond the current pandemic.


“None of us actually know what our agencies are going to need in, quite frankly, six months, much less six years,” Michael Lawyer, a former PMF and current board member of the Presidential Management Alumni Association, said Thursday during an ACT-IAC webinar. “None of us thought six months ago this is how we’d be working now, and these are the challenges we’re facing now. We’re regularly wrong about the future.”

It’s why the PMF program will offer fellows in the upcoming class of 2021 the chance to take a cyber aptitude and attitude assessment.

The PMF program already offered a similar assessment to a subsection of fellows earlier this year through a pilot study, said Arianne Gallagher, director of the PMF program for the Office of Personnel Management.


Of those who took the exam, 30% demonstrated “high cyber aptitude and attitude,” she said.


“That will allow them to see [whether] they have the aptitude to learn cyber skills successfully,” Gallagher said. “And then do they have the attitude that their fit could be good for a cyber role, especially a cyber role with that leadership development in mind? We know agencies are looking to train folks with cyber skills who can help lead and manage other cybersecurity employees in the workforce.”


Interested fellows in the upcoming class will have the opportunity to take a similar ..

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