Transferring Background Checks, Boosting Cyber Workforce Are Top Goals of Trump Government Reorg

The Trump administration’s plan to reorganize the federal government is still in its very early stages, a White House official told lawmakers Wednesday, but proposals to reform background checks and cybersecurity should get started sooner rather than later.

Transferring responsibility for federal background checks to the Defense Department and filling the government’s cyber workforce gaps are at the front of the line among 32 proposals in the reorganization plan, Margaret Weichert, the top White House management official, told members of the Senate’s Homeland Security Committee.

The administration has already begun the first part of the cyber workforce plan by polling agencies about skills gaps among their current cybersecurity employees, Weichert said. The reorganization plan’s longer-term cyber workforce goal is to standardize cyber job categories using a framework developed by the Commerce Department and to make those jobs more competitive by reducing hiring bureaucracy and raising pay.