Make government cool again: US federal workforce chief on how to encourage the smartest people into civil service
Scott Kupor, the recently-confirmed director of the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM), has set out details of his objective to encourage the most talented people to work for the federal government.
Kupor, who served as a managing partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz before joining government, said his objective in the role was to “make government cool again” to the most talented young graduates.
“We have to make civil service super exciting,” he told the TBPN technology podcast, adding that president Trump had helped do so by setting out how he plans to transform government with artificial intelligence. Last month, the Trump White House published its artificial intelligence action plan, building on an executive order signed in January to drive AI innovation across the country.
Kupor said that he wanted to make government attractive by providing graduates with “moonshot” projects to work on – “and the good news is we’ve got no shortage of moonshots now”.
Read more: US government sets out merit hiring plan in line with Trump priorities
Getting talent for an AI revolution in government
He said that he wanted to make working in government more attractive to graduates, and discussed the creation of a programme to bring in the smartest people into government for two years, provide some student loan forgiveness, and then work closely with private sector organisations to guarantee them a job at the end of their term. “And they might even give you full credit for those two years, so you come in [to the company] as a third year [employee].”
Such an initiative could share some elements with the US government’s Digital Corps, a two‑year fellowship for early‑career technologists. Kupor also compared it to the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a voluntary government work relief programme that ran from 1933 to 1942.
This would help provide government with the talent needed to meet the Trump administration’s objective to transform the government with AI, he said.
“We need an Apollo-mission-like moonshot, which I think the president has given people with AI and [we’ve] got to go tell that story [of how they can transform government] – and if we can do that, then I think we’re in a totally different situation.”
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Pledge to ‘institutionalise’ DOGE reforms
Kupor’s comments come as he also launched a new suite of training opportunities, called the Executive Development Programs, focused on helping civil service leaders to drive performance, accountability, and results.
These programs are aligned with president Trump’s executive order on hiring and talent development for the senior executive service, part of wide-ranging reforms to federal workforce recruitment intended to bring in “the most talented, capable and patriotic Americans” to work for government.
Read more: ‘Not just another back office function’: US government pledges to empower federal CIOs
Kupor said the training meant government was “equipping federal leaders with the tools they need to meet today’s challenges and deliver for the American people”.
The OPM chief has also pledged to “institutionalise” the reforms being led by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
DOGE was set up by Trump and led by billionaire Elon Musk with an objective to cut the federal government workforce and reduce spending, with actions including offering public servants eight months’ pay to resign, and placing all staff at the international development agency USAID on administrative leave and cutting aid payments. DOGE has also led initiatives such as requesting that federal government employees detail their work in order to plan what it calls “reductions-in-force”.
Speaking last month, Kupor said that what DOGE had done was “the start of a process”, and now the government would work to “institutionalise” measures to pursue “operational efficiency”.
Addressing the federal government’s plans for a revised performance management regime for civil servants with the aim of building a “culture of excellence”, Kupor said it seemed “off” that roughly 70% of federal government employees receive the highest remarks in their performance reviews.
The revised performance management regime set out by the OPM focuses on three pillars:
- Reform of federal performance management.
- Available tools for preventing and addressing unacceptable job performance.
- Changes to agency policies to improve performance management.
However, one element of the DOGE reforms that is not being continued is the high-profile requirement for public servants to set out their five major accomplishments every week. The OPM is no longer going to manage the so-called ‘What did you do last week?’ emails, or utilise it internally, Kupor said in a written statement.
“Our view is simple: every federal manager has an obligation to track and prioritise what their team is working on – be that through regular one-on-ones or otherwise,” Kupor said in the statement. “The ‘five things’ email was an augment to that, so if managers find it useful to deploy, they of course are free to do so directly. But OPM will no longer maintain a centralised inbox for this practice.”
It has also been reported that more than 148,000 civil servants have involuntarily or voluntarily left the government workforce as of July 21, according to the nonpartisan good government group Partnership for Public Service.
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