Melvin Brown
Deputy Chief Information Officer, Office of Personnel Management
Melvin Brown’s major accomplishment was solving the problems of an aging workforce and a shortage of early-career talent to replace them.
Within his organization – the Office of the CIO – nearly 28% of the employees are retirement-eligible. This is the highest of any office within the entire Office of Personnel Management. The demographic profile by age cohort can be seen in the pie chart below.
Along with that, the pie chart shows that the overall average age of OCIO employees and managers is 49. These facts highlight the need to create an organizational structure that brings in early-career candidates and provides a way to hire them.
Like many public and private sector organizations, OPM OCIO has challenges in recruiting individuals with modern technical skills, particularly those needed in cloud computing. For this reason, Brown developed and led OPM’s strategy for recruiting interns with cloud-related backgrounds through the Pathways program. As a result, over 200 candidates expressed interest in this program.
After extensive interviewing, 18 interns were hired from across the U.S., not just from the Washington, D.C., area. Through its recently deployed hybrid (remote and in-office) work capabilities, OCIO can now recruit nationwide and tap into a much broader and more diverse talent pool.
“I’m proud to report that 16 of those original 18 interns have committed to staying with OCIO,” Brown said. “In the end, this was my most significant workforce achievement.”
Why Watch
OPM OCIO set up a Cloud Center of Excellence to ensure secure, resilient, scalable and cost-effective solutions are implemented. It guides OPM in building cross-organizational cloud environments for email, conferencing, collaboration and enterprise business systems.
With the foundation now laid, it’s on to the next phase. Adopting cloud-based business processes requires new models for managing IT costs. With cloud computing, bills are paid based on use, similar to electric or water utilities. Therefore, traditional recapitalization models are no longer sufficient.
The objective of this initiative is to give all teams the tools, resources and expertise to manage their cloud use. OCIO has a multidisciplinary group of IT, finance, product and operational professionals who work together to develop best practices. The group aims to help IT users access innovative services develop capabilities and streamline operations while having more financial control and predictability.