“There really are fewer unicorn positions out there than we all imagined” – Bob Leavitt, HHS CHCO on shared PDs and certificates for common positions

Creating a job announcement that attracts high quality applicants is critical to the hiring process. For hiring managers, finding a balance between identifying the unique details of the position and managing the time and resources required is a challenge. When defining a position, there are many potential “off-ramps.” While these diversions are sometimes necessary, they often result in significant time delays and demand scarce resources from both hiring managers and HR staff. Improvements over the past few years offer hiring managers opportunities to accelerate the process while improving applicant quality, primarily done through collaboration within and across agencies that requires a level of standardization.

In our previous blog posts, we outlined the hiring process and dove into the first phase – Getting Hiring Right from the Start. This post discusses the second phase of the process: planning for and announcing the job. This phase includes four steps:

1. Review Position Description and Confirm Job Analysis 
2. Classify or Reclassify the Position
3. Confirm Job Analysis and Assessment Strategy
4. Create and Post the Job Opportunity Announcement (JOA)

Our insights shared in this post are based on extensive interviews with hiring managers, program leaders, staffing specialists, workforce planners, and budget professionals as well as on-the-job experience. These recommendations for improvement focus on process and  do not require policy or regulatory changes. They do require adoption of these practices more broadly throughout HR, program, and permitting managers, and staff. Additionally, our insights here are not unique to permitting, rather they apply broadly to federal government hiring. These insights should be considered both for streamlining efforts related to environmental permitting, as well as improving federal hiring.

Breaking Down the Steps

For each step in this phase, we provide a description, explain what can go wrong, share what can go right, and provide some examples from our research, where applicable. 

Review Position Description and Confirm Job Analysis

The Position Description (PD) is core to the hiring process. It describes the occupation, grade level, job duties, qualifications, and any special skills needed for the job and agency. In hiring, it is used to develop the job announcement, review the position’s classification, and establish a  foundation for assessing candidates. Outside of hiring, it is used in performance management, position management, probation period evaluation, and serves as a reference for disciplinary action. 

At this step, a hiring manager reviews the position description to make sure it is an accurate, current depiction of the job requirements, which may require a review of the past job analysis, or the evaluation of the knowledge, skills, abilities, behaviors, and experience needed for the positions (i.e., the competencies). The PD can be inaccurate due to dynamic changes in the job: core duties, technologies used, process changes, and supervisory responsibilities. These updates can range from simple wording changes to major changes that require additional work. 

In our interviews, we heard from hiring managers and HR specialists that updating position descriptions had been a challenge and bottleneck in their hiring process. One hiring manager shared that they chose to not change their positions even if they wanted a different role because of the anticipated time delays. Other participants shared that they have begun moving towards standardized PDs within their agency to reduce redundancies and enable more collaboration.

What Can Go Wrong

• Based on hiring manager feedback to the HR specialist, a significantly out-of-date PD can result in major revisions that require a job analysis and/or reclassification of the position. This can delay the hiring process by weeks, or even months. If the grade level or other key aspects of the position need to be changed, the position requisition (SF-52 form) needs to be revised, adding even more time. 
• Overzealous staffing specialists or classifiers may perceive major job changes where they do not exist in practice, causing delays for additional reviews and revisions.
• Too much specificity in job task descriptions will require additional job analyses, causing further delays. Whereas not enough specificity provides insufficient guidance for developing the assessment strategy, JOA, and other management actions dependent on the PD (e.g., performance management, development plans, or disciplinary action).

What Can Go Right

• With permission from their Chief Human Capital Office (CHCO) office, a hiring manager can use a current PD from elsewhere in the agency that accurately describes the job. A number of agencies have created PD libraries that bring together common PDs from across the organization. One HR Leader we interviewed described having a library of available positions that hiring managers are encouraged to look through when creating a new position. Hiring managers can even include specialized skills in an existing PD to augment the fundamental job duties, avoiding reclassification.
• Hiring managers can offer flexibility in location, where possible. Based on our interviews, agencies are seeing greater success attracting strong applicants with flexible locations, remote work, or telework options.
• The HR staffing specialist can search for and find a shared certificate of eligibles (i.e., a list of eligible candidates) for their PD already available through their own agency HR talent systems or through the USAJOBS Agency Talent Portals. As long as the job and grade match, the hiring manager can bypass much of the hiring process and move quickly to identifying applicants. 
• Many agencies require managers to review and if needed, revise position description every year during the performance management process. This can make sure the PD is ready to go for the hiring process. In our interviews, we heard that this is required, but may not be regularly completed.

Classify/Reclassify the Position

Position classification is a structured process in every Cabinet agency in which an expert assesses the requirements of the job by evaluating factors such as knowledge, skills, abilities, complexity, and supervisory controls/responsibilities. The process is initiated when a PD is deemed inaccurate due to changes in the role. The HR staffing specialist will ask a classification expert to assess the role. This is done by reviewing the PD, existing job analyses, past classifications, and classification audits. They will also gather and review data from the hiring manager and others working in similar roles. Based on their assessment, the classifier can recommend changes to the grade level and/or the occupational series. These changes could be simple revisions or a more extensive reclassification. This process can take days or weeks to complete and can delay the hiring process significantly.

What Can Go Wrong

• HR staff and classifiers sometimes do not explain the need for classification and its benefits. This makes the process opaque and leaves the hiring manager wondering how long it will take to complete.

• HR staffing specialists and classifiers vary widely in how they apply the classification standards. Some seek greater specificity, and therefore insist on a full classification review when it may not be needed.
• Agency HR functions frequently lack workforce capacity for classification and job analyses. As a result, they have to prioritize requests, which can cause further delays.

What Can Go Right

• Collaboration and transparency between hiring managers, staffing specialists, and classifiers can lead to rapid approval of a PD and classification review. If there cannot be a quick approval, this close engagement leads to clearer expectations and realistic timelines.
• If the same position, at the same grade level, has recently completed a classification audit in a different part of the agency, the hiring team can use it. This can also be done across agencies with CHCO approval.
• Hiring managers who invest time to understand the position well and articulate the roles, duties, relationships, and complexity to the classifier can improve the outcomes and make the process more efficient. 
• Agencies that lack classification resources frequently engage with outside contractors or retired annuitants to provide more capacity for the classification and job analysis work. 

Develop Assessment Strategy

A critical, but sometimes overlooked step in hiring is developing the assessment strategy for the position. This determines how the HR staff and hiring manager will evaluate applicants and identify candidates for the certificate list, or the list of eligible applicants. The strategy needs to assess candidates based on the defined job duties and position criteria, and it plays a major role in determining the quality of candidates.The assessment strategy consists of three parts:

1. How job applications and resumes are reviewed
2. How the applicants demonstrate the required skills and abilities
3. How the hiring manager makes the final selection

Recently, agencies have moved toward evaluating applicants by assessing their skills, spurred on by the Executive Order and guidance on skills-based assessments and now reinforced by the Chance to Compete Act. This shift aims to move away from relying on education and/or self-assessments. Skills-based assessments can include online tests, skills-based simulation exercises, simulated job tryouts, as well as the Subject Matter Expert Qualifications Assessment (SME-QA) process developed by OPM and USDS/OMB. This improves the quality of assessments and aims to ensure the candidates on the certificate list are qualified for the job.

What Can Go Wrong

• If a hiring manager and HR staffing specialist bypass this step, this frequently results in a certificate list with unqualified candidates. Without a strategy, many default to using a resume review and self-assessments. Unfortunately, our research indicated that many agencies are still using self-assessments.
• Most of the time, resume screening is left solely to the HR staff. Lack of alignment between HR specialists and hiring managers on essential qualifications results in an inaccurate screening, leading unqualified candidates to make the cut. Too often, HR staff will only screen applications for the exact phrases that appear in the job announcement. Applicants know this and revise their documents accordingly.
• When a skills-based assessment does not exist for the position and specific grade level, it needs to be created. This takes time and expert resources, thus delaying the hiring process.
• Inaccurate resume screenings and self-assessments frequently lead to a high number of unqualified Veterans making the top of the certificate list due to Veterans preference. Unfortunately, this leads to a negative perception of Veterans preference. 

What Can Go Right

• Working with HR staffing specialists to find existing assessments can save time and improve candidate selection quality. In addition, USA Hire, Monster, and other HR talent acquisition platforms are offering compendiums of assessment strategies and tools that can be accessed, usually for free. 
• Deep engagement between hiring managers, staffing specialists, and assessment professionals in developing an assessment strategy and selecting tools pays off. This can lead to enhanced resume and application screening, stronger alignment between candidate and position needs, and higher quality certificate lists of eligible candidates.
• Engagement with staffing specialists and assessment experts can also help the hiring manager understand and make tradeoff decisions related to the speed and ease of administration. For example, an online test may be easier to utilize, while embedding Subject Matter Experts into the selection process may increase the efficacy.

Create and Post Job Opportunity Announcement

Though creating and posting the JOA is relatively straightforward, lack of attention to this step can reduce the number of attractive candidates. The HR staffing specialist usually creates the JOA in consultation with the hiring manager to ensure that it not only accurately reflects the job duties, but also sells the job to potential applicants. The JOA is an opportunity to showcase the importance of the role and its contribution to the agency’s mission. 

The JOA outlines applicant eligibility, job duties, job requirements (e.g., conditions of employment, qualifications, etc.), education (if needed), assessment strategy, and application requirements. It also lists the occupation, grade level, location, and other details. See USAJOBS for examples.

What Can Go Wrong

• Some hiring managers and staffing specialists are under the misapprehension that the JOA needs to contain the exact language from the PD in both the title and description. This can include jargon and terms that are unfamiliar to those not within the organization. 
• Unintentionally, a hiring manager may lock the job location in a specific city or metropolitan area when the job could be remote or in multiple locations. To correct this, the JOA will need to be taken down and re-posted if no suitable applicants can be found.

What Can Go Right

• JOAs need to be tailored to the target applicants, and working with those currently in the job or in a related-discipline can help in crafting an attractive JOA.
• Using plain language in the job title and description instead of jargon will attract more candidates. OPM has published plain language guidance to help hiring managers and staffing specialists do this effectively.
• Earlier in the hiring process, successful hiring managers and staffing specialists define recruiting and sourcing strategies to attract candidates. This can include posting the job on alternative sites (e.g., agency websites, LinkedIn, Handshake, Indeed, etc.) in addition to USAJOBS to reach a broader audience. One agency’s HR team described leveraging multiple platforms for outreach and was able to successfully recruit many qualified candidates for their open roles. Strategies can also include asking hiring managers, peers, agency leaders, and recruiters to message highly qualified candidates to expand the applicant pool and bring in more qualified applicants. 

Conclusion

Throughout this phase of work, there are many actions hiring managers and staffing specialists can take to streamline the process and improve the quality of eligible candidates. Most importantly, hiring managers and staffing specialists can collaborate within and across agencies to expedite and simplify the process. Using an existing PD from another part of the agency, finding an assessment tool for the job and grade level, pooling resources on a common job announcement with a peer, and using shared certificates to move straight to a job offer are all ways you can find a well-qualified hire faster. More tips and techniques to improve hiring can be found in OPM’s Workforce of the Future Playbook.

Changes that can be made to improve efficiency and promote collaboration. These center on moving to standardized PDs, where appropriate, leveraging shared certifications with those standardized PDs, and investing in skills-based assessments, which are now required by law in the Chance to Compete Act. 

Making these actions common practice is one of the key challenges to improving hiring. The Executive Order on skills-based hiring states “in light of today’s booming labor market, the Federal government must position itself to compete with other sectors for top talent.” It is critical we take advantage of these collaboration tools that can improve the hiring experience for all those involved.

Have you ever asked a civil servant in the federal government what it was like to hire new staff? It’s quite common to hear how challenging it is to navigate the hiring process and how long it takes to get someone through the door. At FAS, we know it’s hard. We’ve seen how it works, and we’ve heard stories from civil servants in government.

Following the wave of legislation aimed at addressing infrastructure, environment, and economic vulnerabilities (i.e., the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and the CHIPS and Science Act (CHIPS)), we knew that the federal government’s hiring needs were going to soar. As we previously stated, permitting is a common bottleneck that would hinder the implementation of BIL, IRA, and CHIPS. The increase in work following this legislation came in conjunction with a push for faster permits, which in turn significantly increased agency workload. Many agencies did not have the capacity to clear the existing backlogs of permitting projects they already had in their pipeline, which would not even begin to address the new demand that would result from these laws. As such, talent capacity, or having staff with the knowledge and skills needed to meet the work demands, presented a major bottleneck. 

We also knew that surge hiring is not a strength of the government, and there are a number of reasons for that; some we highlighted in our recent blog post. It’s a difficult task to coordinate, manage, and support the hiring process for a variety of roles across many agencies. And agencies that are responsible for permitting activities, like environmental reviews and authorizations, do not have standardized roles and team structures to make it easier to hire. Furthermore, permitting responsibility and roles are disaggregated within and across agencies – some roles are permanent, others are temporary. Sometimes responsibility for permitting is core to the job. In other cases, the responsibility is part of other program or regional/state needs. This makes it hard to take concerted and sustained action across government to improve hiring. 

While this sounds like a challenge, FAS saw an opportunity to apply our talent expertise to permitting hiring with the aim of reducing the time to hire and improving the hiring experience for both hiring managers and HR specialists. Our ultimate goal was to enable the implementation of this new legislation. We also knew that focusing on hiring for permitting would offer a lens to better understand and solve for systemic talent challenges across government. 

As part of this work, we had the opportunity to connect and collaborate with the Permitting Council, which serves as a central body to improve the transparency, predictability, and accountability of the federal environmental review and authorization process, to gain a broad understanding of the hiring difficulties experienced across permitting agencies. This helped us identify some of the biggest challenges preventing progress, which enabled us to co-host two webinars for hiring managers, HR specialists, HR leaders, and program leaders within permitting agencies, focused on showcasing tactical solutions that could be applied today to improve hiring processes.

Our team wanted to complement this understanding of the core challenges with voices from agencies – hiring managers, HR specialists, HR teams, and leaders – who have all been involved in the process. We hoped to validate the challenges we heard and identify new issues, as well as capture best practices and talent capacity strategies that had been successfully employed. The intention of this blog is to capture the lessons from our discussions that could support civil servants in building talent capacity for permitting-related activities and beyond, as many solutions identified are broadly applicable across the federal government.

Approach

Our team at FAS reached out to over 55 civil servants who work across six agencies and 17 different offices identified through our hiring webinars to see if they’d be willing to share about their experiences trying to hire for permitting-related roles in the implementation of IRA, BIL, and CHIPS. Through this outreach, we facilitated 14 interviews and connected with 18 civil servants from six different organizations within the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Defense, Department of Interior, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Commerce. The roles of the participants varied; it included Hiring Managers, HR Specialists, HR Leaders, Chief Environmental Review and Permitting Officers, and Chief Human Capital Officers.

In our conversations, we focused on identifying their hiring needs to support permitting-related activities within their respective organization, the challenges they experience in trying to hire for those new positions, what practices were successful in their hiring efforts, and any recommendations they had for other agencies. We synthesized the data we gathered through these discussions and identified common challenges in hiring, successful hiring practices, talent capacity strategies, and additional tips for civil servants to consider.

Challenges to Hiring

We identified many challenges hindering agencies from quickly bringing on new staff to fill their open roles. From the start, many teams responsible for permitting were already very understaffed. One interviewee explained that they had serious backlogs requiring complex analysis, but were only able to triage and take on what was feasible. Another shared that they initially were only processing 60% of their workload annually. A third interviewee explained that some of their staff had previously been working on 4-5 Environment Impact Statements (EIS) at one time, which is very high and not common for the field. Their team had a longstanding complaint about high workload that led to a high attrition rate, which only increased the need for more hires. In addition to the permitting teams being under resourced, many HR counterpart teams were also understaffed. This created an environment where teams needed to hire a significant number of new staff, but did not necessarily have the HR support necessary to execute. 

The budget was the next issue many agencies faced. The budget constraints resulting from the time-bound funding of IRA and BIL raised a number of important questions for the agencies. BIL funds expire at the end of FY2026 and IRA funds expire anywhere between 2-10 years from the legislation passing in 2022. For example, the funds allocated to the Permitting Council in the IRA expire at the end of FY2031, and some of these funds have been given to agencies to bolster workforce capacity for supporting timely permitting reviews. Ultimately, agencies needed to decide if they wanted to hire temporary or full time employees. This decision cannot be made without additional information and analysis of retirement rates, attrition rates, and other funding sources. 

In addition to managing the budgetary constraints, agencies needed to determine how they would allocate the funds provided to their bureaus and programs. This required negotiations, justifications, and many discussions. The ability of Program Leaders to negotiate and justify their allocation is dependent upon their ability to accurately conduct workforce planning, which was a challenge identified through interviews. Specifically, some managers were challenged to accurately plan in an environment that is demand-driven and continuously evolving. Additionally, managing staff who have a variety of responsibilities and may only work on permitting projects for a portion of their time only increases the complexity of the planning process. 

A number of challenges we heard were common pain points in the federal government’s hiring process, as noted in Many Chutes and Few Ladders in the Federal Hiring Process. These include:

• Assessments: Inadequate assessments have led to issues with the certificate lists of eligible candidates provided from the HR Specialist to the hiring manager. Some hiring managers have received lists with too many candidates to choose from, while others have been disappointed to not see qualified candidates on the list. This is largely a result of assessments that do not effectively screen qualified applicants. Self-assessments are an example of this, where applicants score their own abilities in response to a series of multiple choice questions. From our conversations, self-assessments are still a commonly used practice, and skills-based assessments have not been widely adopted.
• Job Descriptions: Both creating new and updating job descriptions has caused delays in the hiring process. Some agencies have started moving towards standardized job descriptions with the goal of making the process more efficient, but this has not been an easy task and has required a lot of time for collaboration across a variety of stakeholders.
• Background Checks: Delays in background checks have slowed the process. These delays often result from mistakes in or incomplete Electronic Questionnaires for Investigations Processing (e-QIP) forms, delays in scheduling fingerprint appointments, a lack of infrastructure for sharing and tracking information between key stakeholders (e.g., selected applicant, suitability manager, hiring manager), and delayed responses to notifications in the process.
• Candidate Declinations: Candidates declining a job offer have set a number of agencies back, especially those lacking deep applicant pools. The reasons provided have varied. Some applicants believed that the temporary positions were negotiable or did not realize they had applied to a term position, and they were no longer interested. In some cases, agency hiring managers did not know they had hiring flexibilities or incentives to offer that may have bridged the gap for the candidate. Others were unable to accept the offer for the specific location, citing the increased cost of living and housing prices as a barrier.

Lastly, recruiting was noted as a challenge by a number of participants. Recruiting for a qualified applicant pool has been difficult, especially for those looking to hire very specialized roles. One participant explained their need for someone with experience working in a specific region of the country and the limitations that came with not being able to offer a relocation bonus. Another participant described the difficulty in finding qualified candidates at the right grade level because the pay scale was very limiting for the expertise required. These challenges are exacerbated in agencies that lack recruiting infrastructure and dedicated resources to support recruitment.

These challenges manifested as bottlenecks in the hiring process and present opportunities for improvement. Apart from the new, uncertain funding, these challenges are not novel. Rather, these are issues agencies have been facing for many years. The new legislation has drawn broader attention back to these problems and presents an opportunity for action. 

Successful Hiring Practices

Despite these bottlenecks, participants shared a number of practices they employed to improve the hiring process and successfully bring new staff onboard. We wanted to share seven (7) practices that could be adopted by civil servants today.

Establish Hiring Priority and Gain Leadership Support

One agency leveraged the Biden-Harris Permitting Action Plan to establish and elevate their hiring needs. Following the guidance shared by OMB, CEQ, and the Permitting Council, this agency set out to develop an action plan that would function as a strategic document over the next few years. They employed a collaborative approach to develop their plan. The Chief Environmental Review and Permitting Officer (CERPO) and Deputy CERPO, the roles responsible for overseeing environmental review and permitting projects within their agencies and under their jurisdiction, brought together a team of NEPA Specialists and other staff engaged in environmental reviews and permitting across their organizations with equities. This group collectively brainstormed what they could do to strengthen and streamline permitting and environmental reviews at their agency. From this list, they prioritized five key focus areas for the first phase of their plan. This included hiring as the highest priority because it had been identified as a critical issue. Given their positioning within the organization and the Administration’s mandate, they were able to gain the support of the Secretary, and as a result, escalate their hiring needs to fill over 30 open positions over the course of FY24.

Collaborate and Share Across the Organization

Sharing and collaborating across the agency helped many expedite the hiring process. Here are examples that highlight the importance of this for success.
(1) One agency described how they share position descriptions across the enterprise. They have a system that allows any hiring manager to search for a similar position that they could use themselves or refine for their specific role. This reduces the time spent by hiring managers recreating positions.

(2) Another agency explained how they created an open tracking tool of positions they were interested in hiring across the organization. This tool allowed hiring managers across the agency to share the positions they wanted to hire. The initial list included 300 potential positions; it allowed them to prioritize and identify opportunities for collaboration. By leveraging shared certificates, they were able to reduce duplication. This tool evolved into an open repository of positions the organization was looking to recruit and a timeline for when they would be recruiting for those roles. Once announcements were closed, they would share the certificate lists widely to hiring managers.

(3) In another example, the participant explained how they facilitated ongoing collaboration between the CERPO, CHCO, HQ, and both HR and Program Leads from each relevant bureau to drive forward the hiring process. They initially worked with the Program Leads from the key bureaus impacted to identify their hiring needs and discuss the challenges they were facing. Then they reached out to the CHCO to engage them and share their priority hiring needs and worked to bring in each bureau’s respective HR teams to provide technical assistance. With everyone engaged, they set up a regular check-in to discuss progress, and the group collaborated to develop and classify position descriptions for the open positions. Later once candidates had been selected, they collaborated with operations to prioritize their hires in suitability. This ultimately saved time and streamlined the process.

Improve Hiring Processes

Participants described improving hiring processes within their organization through a variety of approaches. One method that we heard numerous times is standardizing job descriptions across the enterprise to reduce duplicative job revision and classification efforts and support the use of shared certifications. One agency approached this by facilitating focus groups with key stakeholders to define the non-negotiable and “nice to have” duties for the role. These sessions included classifiers, domain specialists, leadership, and data analysts. They found that when the group started discussing the knowledge and skills that really mattered, they were able to understand why combining efforts would help them achieve their goals more quickly. They realized that some of the minute details (e.g., expertise in Atlantic Salmon) did not need to be in the position description and rather could be deduced through the interview process. While this took a great deal of buy in and leadership support, they were successful in standardizing some position descriptions.

Other methods for improving hiring processes included standardizing the process for establishing pay to reduce competition across the agency, setting a 30-day time limit for making selections, setting applicant limits for closing job announcements, and using data to drive improvements. In one interview with an agency’s HR team, we learned about their role in collecting and analyzing data in each step of the hiring process (e.g., overall hiring time, time at each step, etc.). They use this information to monitor progress, track performance, understand which incentives are being employed, and identify opportunities for improvement in the overall process. This data helps inform their decisions and allows them to identify where they need to provide more support.

Leverage Position and Recruiting Incentives

Multiple participants described using incentives to make a position more attractive to a candidate and encourage the acceptance of a job offer. Multiple agencies offered remote and hybrid positions where possible, which they cited as generating more interest in the role. One HR team shared how they employ a series of OPM approved recruiting incentives to make positions more compelling. These included starting bonuses, student loan repayment, credit for industry work, advanced leave, higher step options, relocation bonuses, and additional leave time. They find these incentives to be particularly helpful when the location requires a far move (e.g., Alaska, Hawaii) or is difficult to hire into for whatever reason. 

Leverage Hiring Flexibilities

Multiple agencies cited using different hiring flexibilities to hire for their open positions and remove some of the barriers embedded in the competitive service hiring process. The flexibilities included, Direct Hire Authority, Schedule A, Pathways Programs, retired annuitants, internship conversions, internal detailees, Presidential Innovation Fellows via GSA, Digital Service Fellows Program, as well as contract staff to support IT development. Many agencies also hired for term or temporary positions that ranged from three to 10 years, depending on the additional funding sources that could be found. Employing these authorities helped to streamline the hiring process.

Seek HR Recruiting Support

One agency described how their HR office supported and collaborated with hiring managers throughout the hiring process, especially in bolstering their recruitment efforts. One HR team helped lead recruitment outreach, sharing their open positions on a variety of media in coordination with their communications team (i.e., their website, facebook, instagram). They also developed standard language for hiring managers to share with their networks that highlighted information about the role and mistakes to avoid when applying. This helped relieve the pressure on the hiring manager to lead the recruiting effort.

Invest in Dedicated HR Staff to Manage and Support Permitting Hiring

Multiple agencies shared how they hired a dedicated resource to oversee the hiring process for their organization. One agency hired a retired annuitant (i.e., someone who retired from working in the federal government and is rehired) to help manage the organization’s hiring process after they realized that they were making minimal progress against their hiring needs. This individual returned to the government workforce and brought a deep understanding of government hiring. They collaborated with the HR Specialists and hiring managers to develop position descriptions, organize procurement packages, schedule interviews, and support the applicant selection process. They said, “we would not have been able to do any of the 40 hires without this person.”

Another agency described how they detailed someone to manage BIL and IRA hiring requests across their organization. This person was situated outside of HR, and they were responsible for tracking the end-to-end hiring and recruitment efforts. They maintained a repository of the positions each office needed to recruit and generated weekly reports on BIL and IRA hiring efforts that highlighted how many positions are open, how many are closed, and where certificate lists are available. This allowed the broader team to identify how they could drive progress.

While there were a number of challenges, many participants described successfully hiring 15-30+ new employees over the last year alone. One agency in particular described hiring over 2,000 people in 2024 for the IRA, which was an all time high for their organization. These seven practices have enabled agencies to be successful in filling new positions to support permitting-related activities, and they can be applied to other hiring needs as well. Any future talent surge in the federal government could benefit from adopting these hiring practices.

Solutions to Build Talent Capacity

While the majority of the interviews focused on hiring due to concerns of understaffed teams and the new funding availability, there are many other ways to build talent capacity in government. Some of the participants we interviewed shared other strategies they employed to address high workload demands, which present opportunities for other agencies to consider, especially as we move into the new administration. Here are six (6) strategies for building workforce capacity.

Establish Strike Teams

During our conversations, two different agencies described creating a strike team, or making an investment in additional, flexible staff, to provide supplemental capacity where there is insufficient staff for the current demand. One organization accomplished this by hiring project managers with NEPA expertise into their CERPO Office. These Project Managers could then be detailed out to specific bureaus to fill capacity gaps and provide management for high priority, multi-agency projects. This helped fill immediate capacity gaps, as teams were continuing to hire.

Another agency piloted a relief brigade, or a pool of Headquarters (HQ) staff who could be detailed to support regional staffing needs on large projects, consultations, and backlogs with temporary funding. This team was formed from a national perspective and aimed to reduce the pressure on each region and center. Based on this organization’s needs, the team was composed of natural resource management and biological science generalists. Participants shared that some efficiencies have been gained, but there was a substantial learning curve that required training and learning on the job. One hiring manager stated, the “relief brigade is the permanent embodiment of what we need more of.” These types of teams can help address dynamic capacity needs and provide more flexibility to the organization more broadly.

Conduct Bottom Up Workforce Analysis

One Program Manager shared their experience joining a new team and conducting workforce analysis to quantify their staffing needs and inform strategic decisions for their organizational structure. In their initial discussions with staff, they learned that many employees were feeling overworked and capacity was a major concern. To understand the need, they conducted a bottom up workforce analysis to estimate the office’s workload and identify gaps. This involved gathering project data from the past two years, identifying the average time frame by activity type and NEPA category, the staff hours needed to accomplish the work, and the delta between existing and needed staff hours. This data provided evidence of capacity gaps, which they were able to bring to their senior leadership to advocate and secure approval for a team expansion. This analysis enabled them to make data informed decisions about hiring that would reduce the overall workload of staff and ultimately increase staff morale and improve retention rates, which had been a concern. This approach can serve as a model for other agencies who have had difficulty in workforce planning.

Reorganize Team to Drive Efficiencies

The Program Manager who conducted bottom-up workforce analysis applied this new understanding of the work and the demands to reorganize their team to drive efficiencies and share the workload. They established three branches in their team and added four supervisory roles. The branches included one NEPA Branch, one Archeological Branch, and a Program and Policy Branch, and a supervisor was established for each. An additional leadership Deputy role was created to focus on overseeing their programs and coordinating on integration points with relevant agencies.

With this shift, they created new processes and roles to support continuous improvements and fill outstanding duties. Specifically, the Program and Policy Branch is designed to be more proactive, support throughput, and build programmatic and tribal agreements. They added an environmental trainer who is responsible for educating both internal staff and external stakeholders. Two Environmental Protection Specialists now oversee project intake, collaborate with applicants to ensure the applications are complete, manage applicant communications, and then distribute the projects to the assigned owner. A GIS Program Manager was added to the team to support data and analytics. Their role is to identify process delays and their causes, analyze points of failure, and create a geological database to understand where there are project overlaps to expedite and streamline processes. In addition to these internal changes, the Program Manager has also brought on additional contractors to provide greater capacity.

These changes have significantly increased their team’s capacity and has over doubled the number of projects they are able to complete in a year, from 400 projects two years ago to over 900+ projects this year.

Reallocate Work Across Offices and Regions

Numerous participants described work reallocation as a solution to addressing some of their capacity gaps. For example, when one agency was struggling to hire people in a particular location due to the high cost of living, they redistributed the work to another region in the country, where the cost of living was lower. This made it easier to hire into the position. Another HR Leader described supporting their overcapacity teams by redistributing hiring efforts from one office to another in the same region. The original office had minimal bandwidth, while the other had capacity, so they were able to help post the job announcement for the region. They explained the importance of encouraging local offices to help one another deliver, when appropriate.

Others described the reallocation of staff and projects to different regions. This not only allows the organization to match staff with demand, but it also allows for staff to gain experience and knowledge working on a new topic or in a new region. For example, most offshore wind projects are located in the greater Atlantic region, but these projects are gaining traction in the Pacific, so they assigned staff to work in the Atlantic region with the goal of building experience and gaining lessons learned to apply to future Pacific projects. One of these participants emphasized the value and efficiencies that could be derived from developing staff to have more interagency and interservice experience. These examples highlight how leaders can be creative in addressing workload gaps by strategically reallocating work to pair capacity and demand.

Invest in Recruiting Networks

One agency stood out as being an exemplar for their recruiting efforts, which have the potential to be replicated across agencies. They have spent significant time and effort investing in building out their recruitment networks and engaging in career fairs to hire talent. Their organization has been building a repository of potential candidates that is maintained in a system to capture candidate information, educational background, contact information, locations of interest, areas of interest, and remote and relocation preferences. This has been used to generate a list of potential candidates for hiring managers. 

They have made connections through affinity groups, communities of practice, and social media. They’ve also built many partnerships with schools and organizations and have a calendar of events (e.g., career fairs) that they attend over the course of the year. At some events, they’ll have their HR team facilitate breakout sessions to discuss the benefits of working at their organization. To make sure they’re getting diverse candidates, they are continuously reaching out to new sources and potential candidate pools.

In addition to engaging in others’ events, they have hosted their own career fair, where they hired about 200 people. Prior to the event, they reviewed and vetted resumes to know who might be a qualified candidate for a position. With Direct Hire Authority for some of their positions, this allowed hiring managers to interview candidates at the fair and immediately make temporary job offers to attendees. HR staff also worked with the hiring managers at the career fair. This infrastructure sets hiring managers up for success and enables them to easily tap into a variety of networks to find qualified candidates.

Invest in Hiring Manager Training

One agency’s training and support for hiring managers can serve as a model for other HR teams to learn from. This agency offers a robust toolkit for supporting hiring managers through the hiring process. While the Supervisor is ultimately responsible for the hiring, the HR team ensures that they have the tools needed to execute and are equipped to be successful. These tools include:

• Handouts on HR highlights to ensure key information is simple and clear;
• Videos on Recruitment, Relocation, and Retention Incentives and Direct Hire Authority, which are posted on their website for all employees to access; 
• Annual talent acquisition workshops in-person and virtually to hear from speakers and discuss recruitment and marketing strategies; and 
• A Train-the-Trainer program on how to have recruitment conversations.

In addition to these tools and training, HR Specialists work with hiring managers to coach them on how to determine the duties for their open position, especially if they need to re-announce a position multiple times. They are also developing a new marketing strategy centered on everyone being a recruiter. This strategy will result in a new resource to support all staff in recruiting and retaining staff based on their needs.

Another participant identified this as a key opportunity. “Agencies need to educate hiring managers on those processes and what’s out there and available to them… [hiring managers need to] utilize those tools and work with HR to get the best candidates.” This agency’s approach empowers hiring managers to navigate the process, leverage incentives, and successfully recruit.

Establish Apprenticeship Programs

One participant highlighted the need for apprenticeship programs in their permitting work. Short-term or summer internship programs present difficulties with early career staff because there is not enough time for the interns to learn. They explained that it takes about six months for a new employee to become independent. Given this need, they have invested in a 1-year internship program through GeoCorps America. This duration provides interns with the time needed to learn on-the-job through practice, understand the laws and regulations, and gain exposure to the work (e.g., problem solving and stakeholder communication). This program has been successful in creating a pipeline of early career talent; 12 of their interns have moved into permanent federal service positions at different agencies (i.e., DOI, USFS, USGS, and BLM). This type of apprenticeship program could serve as a model for developing early career talent that can be trained on the job and build expertise to take on more complex projects as they grow.

These strategies offer a few examples for how agencies could build workforce capacity. These strategies do not necessarily require bringing on new talent, but rather finding opportunities to improve their internal processes to drive efficiencies and build a more dynamic, flexible workforce to respond to new demand.

Other Considerations

At the end of our interviews, we asked participants if they had any tips or recommendations that they’d want to share with others looking to hire in the government. Here are a few things we heard that we have not already captured in our best practices or talent capacity strategies.

1. Always Be Recruiting: Everyone is a recruiter, and you should always be building relationships and connections, being present at events even if you do not have any active job announcements.
2. Maintain Communication with Candidates: Stay in touch with potential candidates before there is a job open, while recruiting, and throughout the entire hiring process. This can keep them engaged and help you ultimately receive a job acceptance.
3. Invest in Suitability Case Management: Invest in a case management system that sends automatic notifications to each user (i.e., hiring manager, HR specialist, applicant, suitability team) when an action is required. This will streamline the process and ensure that no cases slip through the cracks.
4. Cast a Wide Net: Invest in a wide distribution for your job announcements, interview as many qualified people as you can, and identify multiple candidates that you would like to hire, in case someone declines. Also, leave the announcement open for longer, and if you have large offices with continuous turnover, consider keeping a job open on USAJobs, where you can always accept resumes.
5. Keep Certificate Lists Open: Keep certificate lists open for a long time, so if a candidate declines, you can return to the list of potential candidates. If it is a shared certificate, then this can also assist your colleagues in quickly finding qualified candidates to interview and hire.
6. Regularly Update Position Descriptions: Update your position descriptions to accurately capture the duties of the role and to align with any updated technology. Many agencies have policies for how regularly position descriptions need to be updated, but many question how well these guidelines are followed.
7. Listen to Your Staff’s Plans: Engage with your staff on a regular basis and pay attention to who says they may retire or leave in the next year. This will allow you to more proactively plan and predict your future staffing needs.

Hiring into the federal government is not easy – you will very likely experience challenges even if you follow the practices and strategies highlighted here. However, there are things you can do to set yourself up for success in the future and strategies you can use to address workload demands even if you are not currently hiring. This permitting hiring surge has offered an opportunity to learn how you can effectively hire people into the federal workforce, which can serve as an example for future talent surges. Within the permitting space itself, these strategies have proven successful in supporting more timely and efficient reviews. Bolstering workforce capacity has enabled more effective mission execution.

Validating the Need and Planning for Success in the Federal Hiring Process

Most federal agencies consider the start of the hiring process to be the development of the job posting. However, the federal hiring process really begins well before the job is posted and the official clock starts. There are many decisions that need to be made before an agency can begin hiring. These decisions have a number of dependencies and require collaboration and alignment between leadership, program leaders, budget professionals, hiring managers, and human resource (HR) staff. What happens in these early steps can not only determine the speed of the hiring process, but the decisions made also can cause the hiring process to be either a success or failure. 

In our previous blog post, we outlined the steps in the federal hiring process and identified bottlenecks impacting the staffing of roles to support permitting activities (e.g., environmental reviews). This post dives into the first phase of the process: planning and validation of the hiring need. This phase includes four steps:  

1. Allocate Budget for Program Staffing and Workload
2. Validate Hiring Need Against Workforce, Staffing, and Recruiting Plans
3. Request Personnel Action to Fill the Job
4. Launch Recruiting Efforts for the Position

Clear communication and quality collaboration between key actors shape the outcomes of the hiring process. Finance staff allocate the resources and manage the budget. HR workforce planners and staffing specialists identify the types of positions needed across the agency. Program owners and hiring managers define the roles needed to achieve their mission and goals. These stakeholders must work together throughout this phase of the process.

Even with collaboration, challenges can arise. For example, there may be:  

• A lack of clarity in the budget appropriation and transmission regarding how the funds can be used for staffing versus other program actions;
• Emergent hiring needs from new legislation or program changes that do not align with agency workforce plans, meaning the HR recruiting and hiring functions are not prepared to support these new positions; and
• Pressure from Congressional appropriators and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to speed up hiring and advance implementation, which is particularly acute with specific programs named in legislation;
• New tools outside of the boundaries of individual staffing (e.g., shared certificates of eligibles) that need to be considered and integrated into this phase.

Adding to these challenges, the stakeholders engaging in this early phase bring preconceptions based on their past experience. If this phase has previously been delayed, confusing, or difficult, these negative expectations may present a barrier to building effective collaboration within the group.

Breaking Down the Steps

For each step in the Planning and Validation phase, we provide a description, explain what can go wrong, share what can go right, and provide some examples from our research, where applicable. This work is based on extensive interviews with hiring managers, program leaders, staffing specialists, workforce planners and budget professionals as well as on-the-job experience.  

Step I. Allocate Budget for Program Staffing and Workload

In this first step, the agency receives budget authorization or program direction funding through OMB derived from new authorizing legislation, annual appropriations, or a continuing resolution. Once the funds are available from the Treasury Department, agency budget professionals  allocate the resources to the particular programs inside the agency. They provide instructions regarding how the money is to be used (e.g., staffing, contracting, and other actions to support program execution). For example, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) provided funding for grants to build cell towers and connections for expanding internet access to underserved communities. This included a percentage of funds for administration and program staffing.

In an ideal world, program leaders could select the best mix of investments in staffing, contracting, equipment, and services to implement their programs efficiently and effectively. They work toward this in budget requests, but in the real world, some of these decisions are constrained by the specifics of the authorizing legislation, OMB’s interpretation, and the agency’s language in the program direction. 

What Can Go Wrong

• Prescriptive program direction funding can limit the options of program managers and HR leaders to craft the workforce for the future. In some cases, the legislation even identifies types of people to hire or the hiring authority to be used (e.g., Excepted Service, Competitive Service, Direct Hire Authority, etc.). This limits the program leaders’ options to build or buy the resource solutions that will work best for them.
• Legislation can be ambiguous regarding how programs can use the funding for staffing. This delays implementation because it requires deliberation by OMB, the agency budget function, program leaders, and even the agency attorneys to determine what is permissible with the funding. This can also increase risk aversion as agency leaders have grown concerned with trespassing on the Anti-Deficiency Act, which prohibits federal agencies from obligating or expending federal funds in advance or in excess of an appropriation, and from accepting voluntary services. For example, with the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funding, one agency we spoke with decided to only authorize term hires because of the time-limited nature of the funding, despite having attrition data that predicted permanent positions would become available in the coming years. This can limit recruiting to only those willing to take temporary positions and reduce the ability to fill permanent, competitive roles.
• Delays between the passing of legislation, Treasury Department authorization, and OMB budget direction can create impatience and frustration by Congressional appropriators and agency leaders who want to fill jobs and implement intended programs. This pressures program leaders and HR specialists to make faster, sometimes suboptimal, decisions about who to hire and the timeline. They tend to proceed with the positions they already have, instead of making data-based decisions to match future workload with their hiring targets. In one case, a  permitting hiring manager under this kind of pressure wanted to hire an Environmental Protection Specialist, but did not have a current PD or recruiting strategy. They opted for a management analyst position for which they already had a PD because they could hire for this position faster.

What Can Go Right

• Budget/Legislative Integration: Agency Chief Financial Officers (CFOs), program leaders and Legislative Affairs consult with each other to anticipate the impacts of new legislation and changes to budget language that alter resource management and staffing decisions. For example, one agency we spoke with anticipated the increased demand for HR services resulting from the yet-to-be passed BIL, and thus used existing open positions to hire the HR staff needed to recruit and hire the hundreds of new staff to support the legislation.
• Clear Guidance: Establishing clear budget guidance as early as possible and anticipating upcoming changes helps program and HR leaders plan for and implement optimal program resources. This frequently requires collaboration and consultation with all the parties involved in resource decisions, especially when new legislative mandates are ambiguous or provide no direction on resource use. In one of our discussions with a science agency, we learned that the agency engaged in collaborative negotiations across its programs to allocate the resources from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in the absence of clear legislative direction.

Step II. Validate Hiring Need Against Workforce, Staffing, and Recruiting Plans

After receiving their budget allocation, program leaders validate their hiring need by matching budget resources with workload needs. A robust workforce plan becomes useful, as it allows leaders to identify gaps in the current workforce, workload, and recruiting plans and future workload requirements. Workforce plans that align with budget requests and anticipate future needs enable HR specialists and hiring managers to quickly validate the hiring need and move to request the personnel action. 

What Can Go Wrong

• Frequently, workforce plans do not address emergent needs coming from new legislation or abrupt program changes. This is often due to rapid technology changes in the job (e.g., use of geographical information systems or data analysis tools), dynamism in the external environment, or unfunded mandates. This means program leaders and hiring managers need to quickly adapt their workload estimates and workforce configurations to match these new needs. 
• Ambiguity in the legislative intent for staffing can extend into this step. This creates a delay as the program leads work to build consensus on the positions needed, the hiring authorities to be used, and the timeline for bringing new candidates onboard.
• If program leaders have been constrained in backfilling open positions (due to previous budget issues) these immediate needs limit their options to configure a workforce for the future. When coupled with competition across the agency for resources and a lack of workforce planning data, program leaders often sacrifice longer term, sustainable workforce needs for short-term solutions.

What Can Go Right

• Readiness: A mature process in which workforce planners, legislative analysts, and program leaders are anticipating and addressing changes in legislation and their external environment reduces surprises and enables HR staff and program managers to adapt when new staffing or changes are required. In one interview, a program leader described using empirical data on key workload indicators to develop workload projections and determine the positions needed for implementing their program requirements.
• Strike Teams: When legislation or outside changes result in a hiring surge, successful agencies form strike teams with sponsorship from senior leaders. These strike teams pull staff from across the agency – leaders, program leaders, HR leaders and implementers – to focus on meeting the demands of the hiring surge. In response to the infrastructure laws, affected agencies were able to accelerate hiring and target key positions with these teams. Many agencies are doing this to address the AI talent surge right now.
• Integration with Strategy Development: The best workforce planning emerges when key actors are embedded into the agency’s strategy; each strategic goal has a workforce component. Using scenario planning, simulation, and other foresight tools agencies can develop adaptive, predictive workforce plans that model the workforce of the future and focus on the skills needed across the agency to sustain and thrive in achieving its mission. When the future changes, the agency is ready to pivot. OPM’s Workforce of the Future Playbook moves in this direction.

Step III. Request Personnel Action to Fill the Job and Launch Recruiting Efforts for the Position

Note: Requesting personnel action to fill the job is a relatively straightforward step, so we have combined it with launching the recruiting process for simplification.

In most agencies, the hiring manager or program leader fills out an SF-52 form to request the hiring action for a specific position. This includes defining the position title, occupation, grade level, type of position, agency, location, pay plan, and other pertinent information. To do this, they verify that the funding is available and they have the budget authority to proceed. 

Though recruiting can begin before and after this step, this is the chance to begin recruiting in earnest. This can involve activating agency HR staff, engaging contract recruiting resources if they are available, preparing and launching agency social media announcements, and notifying recruitment networks (e.g., universities, professional organizations, alumni groups, stakeholders, communities of practice, etc.) of the job opening.

What Can Go Wrong

• If a hiring manager intimates that a potential candidate has an “inside track” on a position or promises that a candidate will be hired. These trespass on Merit Systems Principles and Prohibited Personnel Practices can result in financial damage to the agency and censure for the hiring manager.
• When an agency lacks recruiting resources and network connections, especially for highly specialized roles or a talent surge, this hinders agencies from reaching the right communities to attract strong applicants and restricts the applicant pool.
• Segmented recruiting to just HR and its resources results in a lack of expectation that the hiring manager plays a key role in recruiting and actively promotes the job to their networks.
• At any point in the process, funding can be pulled and the personnel action will need to be canceled. This disheartens the hiring manager and HR staff, who are ready to start the hiring process.

What Can Go Right

• Build The Pipeline: Hiring managers and recruiters who build and maintain pipelines of potential applicants for key positions have a ready base to begin outreach. This is permissible as long as there is no expectation that those on this list will receive any preferential treatment, as stated above. For example, in our discussion with one land-management agency, we learned that they keep in touch with potential candidates by sharing periodic updates on their programs and job opportunities. This continues to engage a pool of candidates and provides access to an interested community when launching a new position.
• Build Enthusiasm For The Job Across The Ecosystem: Rallying peers, fellow alumni, agency leaders, universities, contractor contacts, and others across HR and program networks to build enthusiasm for the open position and joining the agency. One sub-agency office we met promotes its positions on a variety of public sites (i.e., LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and their website). 
• Direct and Sustained Attention to Recruiting: Agencies that set clear expectations for hiring manager engagement in recruiting fare better at attracting qualified candidates because the hiring manager can directly speak to the job opportunity.
• Tell the Story: Hiring managers and recruiters that tell a compelling story of the agency and the importance of this job to the mission help potential applicants see themselves in the role and their potential impact, which increases the likelihood that they will apply.

Conclusion

Following What Can Go Right practices in this beginning phase can reduce the risk of challenges emerging later on in the hiring process. Delays in decision making around budget allocation and program staffing, lingering ambiguity in the positions needed for programs, and delayed recruiting activities can lead to difficulties in accessing the candidate pools needed for the roles. This ultimately increases the risk of failure and may require a restart of the hiring process.

The best practices outlined here (e.g., anticipating budget decisions, adapting workforce plans, and expanding recruiting) set the stage for a successful hiring process. They require collaboration between HR leaders, recruiters and staffing specialists, budget and program professionals, workforce planners, and hiring managers to make sure they are taking action to increase the odds of hiring a successful employee.

The actions that OPM, the Chief Human Capital Officers Council (CHCO), their agencies, and others are taking as a result of the recent Hiring Experience Memo support many of the practices highlighted in What Can Go Right for each step of the process. Civil servants should pay attention to OPM’s upcoming webinars, guidance, and other events that aim to support you in implementing these practices.

As noted in our first blog on the hiring process for permitting talent, close engagement between key actors is critical to making the right decisions about workforce configuration and workload management. Starting right in this first phase increases the chances of success throughout the hiring process.

The success of historic federal investments in climate resilience, clean energy, and new infrastructure hinges on the government’s ability to efficiently permit, site, and build projects. Many of these projects are subject to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which dictates the procedures agencies must use to anticipate environmental, social, and economic impacts of potential actions. 

Agencies use digital tools throughout the permitting process for a variety of tasks including permit data collection and application development, analysis, surveys, impact assessments, public comment processing, and post-permit monitoring. However, many of the technology tools presently used in NEPA processes are fragmented, opaque, and lack user-friendly features. Investments in permitting technology (such as software, decision support tools, data standards, and automation) could reduce the long timelines that plague environmental review. In fact, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ)’s recent report to Congress highlights the “tremendous potential” for technology to improve the efficiency and responsiveness of environmental review.

The Permitting Council, a federal agency focused on improving the “transparency, predictability, and outcomes” of federal permitting processes, recently invested $30 million in technology projects at various agencies to “strengthen the efficiency and predictability of environmental review.” Agencies are also investing in their own technology tools aimed at improving various parts of the environmental review process. As just one example, the Department of Energy’s Coordinated Interagency Transmission Authorizations and Permits (CITAP) Program recently released a new web portal designed to create more seamless communication between agencies and applicants. 

Yet permitting innovation is still moving at a slow pace and not all agencies have dedicated funding to develop needed technology tools for permitting. We recently wrote a case study about the Department of Transportation’s Freight Logistics Optimization Works (FLOW) project to illustrate how agency staff can make progress in developing technology without large upfront funding investments or staff time. FLOW is a public-private partnership that supports transportation industry users in anticipating and responding to supply chain disruptions. Andrew Petritin, who we interviewed for our case study, was a member of the team that co-created this digital product with users. 

In a prior case study, Jennifer Pahlka and Allie Harris identified strategies that contributed to DOT FLOW’s success in building a great digital product in government. Here, we expand on a subset of these strategies and how they can be applied to build great digital products in the permitting sector. We also point to several permitting technology efforts that have benefited from independently applying similar strategies to demonstrate how agencies with permitting responsibilities can approach building digital products. These case studies and insights serve as inspiration for how agencies can make positive change even when substantive barriers exist. 

Make data function as a compass, not a grade.

Here is an illustrative example of how data can be used as a compass to inform decisions and provide situational awareness to customers. 

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) recently launched a ​​Permitting Mapping Tool to support grantees and others in deploying infrastructure by identifying permitting requirements and potential environmental impacts. This is a tool that both industry and the public can use to see the permitting requirements for a geographic location. The data gathered and shared through this tool is not intended to assess performance; rather, it is used to provide an understanding of the landscape to support decision making. 

NTIA staff recognized the potential value of the Federal Communication Commission’s (FFC) existing map of broadband serviceable locations to users in the permitting process and worked to combine it with other available information in order to support decision making. According to NTIA staff, NTIA’s in-house data analysts started prototyping mapping tools to see how they could better support their customers by using the FCC’s information about broadband serviceable locations. They first overlaid federal land management agency boundaries and showed other agencies where deployments will be required on federal lands in remote and unserved areas, where they might not have a lot of staff to process permits. The team then pulled in hundreds of publicly available data sources to illustrate where deployments will occur on state and Tribal lands and in or near protected environmental resources including wetlands, floodplains, and critical habitats before releasing the application on NTIA’s website with an instructional video. Notably, NTIA staff were able to make substantial progress prior to receiving Permitting Council funds to support grant applicants in using the environment screening to improve the efficiency of categorical exclusions processing. 

Build trust. Trust allows you to co-create with your users. Understand your users’ needs, don’t solicit advice. 

Recent recipients of Permitting Council grants for technology development have the opportunity to define their customers and work with them from day one to understand their needs. Rather than assuming their customer’s pain points, grant recipients can gather input from their customers and build the new technology to meet their needs. Recipients can learn from FLOW’s example by building trust early through direct collaboration. Examples of strategies agencies can use to engage customers include defining user personas for their technology; facilitating user interviews to understand their needs; visiting field offices to meet their customers and learn how technology integrates into their work processes and environment; conducting observations of existing technologies to assess opportunities for improvement; and rapidly prototyping, testing, and iterating their solutions with user feedback. 

In the longer term, the Permitting Council and other funding entities can drive the adoption of a user-center approach to technology development through their future grant requirements. By incorporating user research, user testing, and agile methodologies in their requests for proposals, the Permitting Council and others can set clear expectations for user involvement throughout the technology development process. 

In comparison to DOT FLOW, where the customers are largely external to the federal government, the customers and stakeholders for permitting technology include internal federal employees with responsibilities for preparing, reviewing, and publishing NEPA documentation. But even if your end-users are within your organization (or even on your same team!), the principles of building trust, co-creating, and understanding user needs still apply. 

Fight trade-off denial. 

When approaching the complex process of permitting and developing technological tools to support customers, it is critical for teams to focus on a specific problem and prioritize user needs to develop a minimum viable product (MVP). A great example of this is the Department of Energy (DOE)’s Coordinated Interagency Transmission Authorizations and Permits Program (CITAP). 

DOE collaborated with a development team at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to create a new portal for interstate transmission applications requiring environmental review and compliance. The team applied a “user-centered, agile approach” to develop and deploy the new tool by the effective date for new CITAP regulations. The tool streamlines communication by allowing the project proponent to track the status of the permit, submit documentation, and communicate with DOE through the platform. Through iterative development, DOE plans to expand the system to include additional users, including cooperating agencies, and provide the ability for cooperating agencies to receive applicant-submitted materials. Deprioritizing these desired functions in the initial release required tradeoffs and a prioritization of user needs, but enabled the team to ultimately meet its deadline and provide near-term value to the public. 

Prioritizing functionality and activities for improvements in permitting can be challenging, but it is critical that agencies make decisions on where to focus and start small with any technology development. Having more accessible data can help inform these trade off decisions by providing an assessment of problem criticality and impact. 

Don’t just reduce burden – provide value. 

Our partners at EPIC recently wrote about the opportunity to operationalize rules and regulations in permitting technology. They discussed how AI could be applied to: (1) help answer permitting questions using a database of rulings, guidelines, and past projects; (2) verify compliance of permits and analyses with up-to-date legal requirements, and (3) automatically apply legal updates impacting permitting procedures to analyses. These examples illustrate how improving permitting technology can not only reduce burdens on the permitting workforce, but simultaneously provide value by offering decision support tools.

Fund products, not projects. 

The federal government often uses the project funding model for developing and modernizing technology. This approach provides different levels of funding based on a specific waterfall process step (e.g., requirements gathering, development, and operations and maintenance). While straightforward, this model provides little flexibility for iteration and little support for modernization and maintenance. Jen Pahlka, former U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer, recommends the government move towards a product funding model that acknowledges software development never ends, rather there is ongoing work to improve technology over time. This requires steady levels of funding and has implications for talent.

Permitting teams should be considering these different models when developing new technology and tools. Whether procuring technology or developing it in-house, teams should be thinking about how they can support long-term technology development and hire employees with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to effectively manage the technology. Where relevant, agencies should seek to fund products. While product funding models may seem onerous at first, they are likely to have lower costs and enable teams to respond more effectively to user needs over time. 

Several existing resources support product development in government. The 18F unit, part of the General Services Administration (GSA)’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS), helps federal agencies build, share, and buy technology products. 18F offers a number of tools to support agencies with product management. GSA’s IT Modernization Centers of Excellence can support agency staff in using a product-focused approach. The Centers focused on Contact Center, Customer Experience, and Data and Analytics may be most relevant for agencies building permitting technology. Finally, the U.S. Digital Service (USDS) “collaborates with public servants throughout the government”; their staff can assist with product, strategy, and operations as well as procurement and user experience. Agencies can also look to the private sector and NGOs for compelling examples of product development. 

Looking forward

Agency staff can deploy tactics like those outlined above to quickly improve permitting technology using existing authorities and resources. But these tactics should complement, not substitute, a longer-term systemic strategy for improving the U.S. permitting ecosystem. Center of government entities and individual agencies need to be thinking holistically about shared user needs across processes and technologies. As CEQ stated in their report, where there are shared needs, there should be shared services. Government leadership must equip successful small-scale projects with the resources and guidance needed to scale effectively. 

Additionally, there needs to be an investment from the government in developing effective permitting technology, with technical talent (product managers, developers, user researchers, data scientists) hired to support these efforts). 

As the government continues to modernize to meet emerging challenges, it will need to adopt best practices from industry and compete for the talent to bring their visions to life. Sustained investment in interagency collaboration, talent, and training can shift the status quo from pockets of innovation (such as DOT FLOW and other examples highlighted here) to an innovation ecosystem guided by a robust, shared product strategy.

In the last three years, the Biden Administration has passed a wave of legislation to address infrastructure, climate, and economic vulnerabilities: the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and the CHIPS and Science Act (CHIPS). These key laws provide funding and support to rebuild bridges, increase internet access, replace aging water systems, invest in clean energy technologies, build advanced semiconductor factories, and much more. These projects can improve the lives of all Americans, but all have one common implementation bottleneck: permitting. 

Permits underpin many of these projects because they are required for the use of land and other resources under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, and other laws. This means that before building can begin, environmental specialists, scientists, engineers, attorneys, and other experts need to form  federal agency permitting teams to conduct environmental assessments, analyses, community engagement, and legal reviews to provide the required permits and authorizations.

Prior to these new bills passing, the federal permitting workforce was already overwhelmed, according to agency professionals. With the implementation of BIL, IRA, and CHIPS, the demand for permitting has only ballooned, driven by these investments in our future; changing laws, regulations, and policies impacting permitting; and the need for more environmental reviews and authorizations. Additionally, improving existing processes and technology tools to increase transparency and manage the permitting workload has engendered complexity. Not only does this further the need for new talent and skill sets that vary from traditional permitting teams, but it also leads to thousands of new customers beginning new, modernized processes. The Permitting Dashboard, owned by the Permitting Council, illustrates the status of some permitting projects and shows over 7,400 permitting projects planned, in progress, or paused as of September 2024. These demands far exceed the current workforce capacity. 

The federal government is looking to address their surge hiring needs, but have run into challenges. In FY24, there were just under 11,000 full time employee permitting roles anticipated to be hired. However, hiring efforts have run into a number of barriers. Process delays caused by siloed ownership across the hiring process and outdated job descriptions; finding, selecting, or creating an assessment strategy; a need to reclassify roles; required multi-stakeholder reviews; and background checks have all slowed progress. Many of these have been exacerbated by the need for interdisciplinary permitting roles. Appropriation delays, misunderstanding regarding hiring flexibilities and authorities, and insufficient candidate pools have presented additional challenges for HR leaders, hiring managers, and HR specialists to navigate together. Additionally, the type of permitting work conducted and thus, the hiring needs, vary across agencies based on their mission and role in the permitting process, presenting challenges for collaboration and centralized solutions. Outdated federal hiring policies limit agency’s ability to recruit in a more competitive and geographically dispersed manner.

Most of these hiring challenges are not unique to permitting. Rather, they illustrate the pain points experienced by hiring managers, HR specialists, and HR leaders across government. Permitting hiring challenges are merely a microcosm of federal hiring and can serve as an example to identify critical talent reforms.

In the short term, all agencies involved in the permitting process need to prioritize hiring for permitting roles. The Biden Administration, agency leadership, and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) need to be focused on finding solutions to address these process bottlenecks, and agencies should be looking for opportunities to collaborate and support their shared hiring goals through activities such as, pooled hiring, shared certifications, and standardized agency job descriptions. Implementation of the guidance and recommendations in a recent OPM-OMB Memo on Improving the Federal HIring Experience will help close many of these hiring challenges for agency permitting teams.

Without the permitting workforce needed for implementation, the American public will not reap the benefits of this new legislation. A diversified energy portfolio, improved and safe transportation systems, rural broadband access, resilient supply chains, and clean, accessible water will remain unattainable. The federal hiring process is the linchpin to onboarding this critical talent, and agency leaders are key to prioritizing these efforts. Our nation has not had this opportunity for decades; we do not want to let this moment pass. But if we are not able to build the government capacity needed for implementation, the impact of this historic legislation will go unrealized.

A recent wave of historic federal investments in climate resilience, the clean energy transition, and new infrastructure charges the government with delivering on a broad range of ambitions. Those efforts will succeed or fail based on our government’s ability to implement—that is, to responsibly permit, site, build, and deploy key infrastructure and related projects. Given the importance of federal permitting in that equation, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and the Environmental Policy Innovation Center (EPIC) are collaborating to take advantage of a key window of opportunity for permitting innovation.  

As part of our efforts, we are focused on documenting the status quo in permitting technology, identifying bright spots and best practices where they exist, and making recommendations for center-of-government entities that can help agencies build, buy, and deploy better tools and processes. The latest of those efforts is an inventory of digital environmental permitting tools; a beta version of this inventory is now available. We built the inventory to provide a snapshot of the permitting technology landscape, and to open lines of dialogue for cross-application and cross-agency learning. 

Permitting tools in this inventory range widely in intended use cases and maturity levels. Most agency permitting tools we found are single-agency built and used, and in many cases, could be improved by reducing feature fragmentation and improving content reliability (more on that below!). 

Why we built this inventory

Systems and digital tools play an important role at every stage of the permitting process. From project siting and design, to permit application steps and post-permit activities, agencies use digital tools for an array of tasks throughout the permitting “life-cycle”—including for things like permit data collection and application development, analysis, surveys, and impact assessments, as well as public comment processes and post-permit monitoring. With the assistance of those tools, members of the public learn about the details of proposed projects and provide input through online public commenting platforms; in turn, agencies receive, store, and analyze community input and recommendations.

Understanding and improving how the federal government builds, buys, and deploys the technology that enables those activities can play a key role in accelerating permit timelines, lowering costs, expanding access to key information, and improving the rigor of permitting analysis. We built this inventory to enhance our collective understanding of how that software is used in the federal permitting process—and to open lines of dialogue for cross-agency and cross-sector learning. 

The inventory is currently in draft form; a final version will be shared in the coming weeks.

Inventory of Environmental Permitting Tools (beta)

Historic federal investments in climate resilience, the clean energy transition, and new infrastructure will hinge on the government’s ability to efficiently permit, site, and build key projects. That’s why EPIC and the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) are collaborating on strategies and resources to help accelerate permitting innovation.

It’s clear that there is ample momentum, dedicated resources, and an urgency among federal leaders to act to accelerate permitting’s speed and efficiency. In a recent public comment, we argued that National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reforms should be conceived, developed, and deployed with the end users in mind.  Similarly, agencies should consider how reforms and permitting modernization projects might leverage technology to improve how agency permitting teams, project sponsors, and the affected public engage with the process.

What this inventory includes

This inventory catalogs more than sixty permitting applications (software) across federal and state agencies, non-profit organizations, and private companies. Aside from the state-level tools, all applications we cataloged apply to federal NEPA permitting. We included state tools because they are examples federal and private developers can learn from.

While many software programs are used throughout the environmental permitting process, this compilation only includes those tools that are expressly intended for steps in the permitting process. The inventory emphasizes applications that are publicly accessible or advertised, rather than a comprehensive list of internal systems. We sourced these applications from staff interviews with the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), the Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Department of Energy (DOE)—as well as through federal agency permitting websites, Google keyword searches¹, and snowball sampling from private companies.

What we learned

Much of what we discovered as we found, analyzed, and cataloged the permitting tools in the inventory wasn’t surprising—and we see ample opportunity for more learning and improvements across tools. Initial take-aways from our analysis include: 

Bright spots exist among the many permitting tools out there—including applications that center user needs and leverage innovative technology. Much of the innovation we see in permitting tools is happening in the private sector—but with major potential for federal use cases.  For instance, breakthroughs in geospatial analysis and machine learning-empowered decision support are improving methods for siting and designing projects, reducing the time spent conducting feasibility studies, and on-the-ground surveying. Moreover, Artificial Intelligence (AI) text analysis and user-centered design are enabling rapid document writing, public comment processing, and easy to navigate databases. Real-time remote sensing and geospatial imaging innovations have also expanded the frontier of post-permit monitoring. 

Permitting tools in this inventory range widely in intended use cases and maturity levels. Applications we found span project siting and design, permitting, and post-permit activities—and range in age from two months to more than twenty years of active use. The most frequent intended user base of federal tools appears to be decision makers and officials, as opposed to field staff or public stakeholders. The public sector has primarily built project record databases, informational sites, and webforms for permit application development purposes. In contrast, the private sector’s tools are generally oriented toward pre-permitting geospatial analysis and scenario planning, as well as public comment submission and processing.

Most agency permitting tools we found are single-agency (including single-bureau) built and used. Over the past five years, several agencies have built permitting tools that incorporate transparency and public engagement best practices by making project information available online. Yet these tools—and the vast majority of others inventoried—are siloed across organizations since most are single-agency built and used, with the exception of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) Database, which encompasses all federal permitting agencies. That reality makes missed opportunities for interagency coordination around permitting data the norm.

Content reliability issues and feature fragmentation are common, which could have implications for timeliness and implementation.

Content reliability. Nearly every agency’s NEPA-permitted project database had significant gaps in important content—including tens of thousands of missing projects and the absence of dates, documents, and geospatial location data. Because the data collected during permit development and project implementation isn’t systematically captured, stored, or made available in an interoperable system, that information is lost both to science as well as to data-driven adaptive management practices from which future permitting decisions would benefit. Without complete information, the public can’t adequately review projects in their own communities and agencies can’t perform permitting workflows at the pace, rigor, and scale needed to meet national environmental and infrastructure goals.

Feature fragmentation. Despite numerous common steps and data needs across tool users, agency workflows, and permitting stages, we found numerous instances of application features spread over multiple programs rather than in a consolidated application. This fragmentation is often the result of tools built in silos by different departments and/or at different points in time. Fragmentation increases confusion throughout the permitting process because users (including agency staff) must know the exact source of a particular piece of information, both to search for and record it. With multiple entry points, we often see inconsistent record-keeping and reporting as well as missing information.

Looking ahead

Forthcoming work from FAS and EPIC will build on this inventory with focused recommendations on how federal agencies can leverage technology as a core tool in permitting modernization efforts. More broadly, our teams are also working to support federal agencies in their efforts to innovate across a host of permitting policy, talent, data, and systems challenges. The North Star of this work is to empower leaders in and around government to plan, site, and build key environmental restoration and infrastructure projects faster, better, and at lower cost in the months and years ahead. 

Is your tool missing from our permitting inventory? Interested in learning more about this work? Share your tools and any additional information with us!

This research was made possible with the generous support of Arnold Ventures.

Summary

With the Biden-Harris Administration and Congress together pursuing major infrastructure investments, there is an important question as to how best maximize potential economic and environmental benefits of new infrastructure. Reforming the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is one of the most straightforward and impactful ways to do so. Currently, many major infrastructure projects are delayed due to significant, NEPA-mandated requirements for environmental-impact review. Such delays are frequently exacerbated by vague statutory requirements and exceptional litigation risks. Updated guidance for environmental reviews under NEPA, coupled with strategic judiciary reforms, could expedite infrastructure approval while improving environmental outcomes.

Congress and the Biden-Harris Administration should strive to clarify environmental regulatory requirements and standing for litigation under NEPA. Specific recommended actions include (i) establishing well-defined and transparent processes for public input on governmental environmental-impact statements, (ii) shortening the statute of limitations for litigation under NEPA from two years to 60– 120 days, and (iii) requiring that plaintiffs against governmental records of decision must have previously submitted public input on relevant environmental-impact statements.