The Department of Homeland Security launched a pilot project on Monday to place employees into private sector companies for training stints of up to six months.
The public-private initiative is an effort to boost information sharing and workforce development in areas such as cybersecurity and engineering, DHS leaders said during an Intelligence and National Security Alliance event.
The program, dubbed “Exemplar,” will allow a small number of employees in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields at the DHS’s National Protection and Programs Directorate and the Science and Technology Directorate to go on short details to for-profit enterprises in order to learn private sector practices. It will be open to GS-11 through GS-15 employees, DHS announced, and 10 spots are open for the pilot program.
Participants will remain DHS employees and on the department’s payroll for the duration of their stint, and they will be required to return to the agency after they’ve completed their training detail, according to DHS’s Karinda Washington, who spearheaded the initiative. Due to financial laws on the books, there will be no money exchanged between the company and the employee, she noted.
The goal is to have DHS employees out and with industry in less than three months, Washington said, and there will be two tracks for each training assignment, one on the operational and another for management.
It is a “very aggressive timeline,” Washington said — and part of the reason for that is to try to get the pilot program completed before the administration changes over in January “so we can make the program permanent.”
DHS currently has six public postings on line to try to get private sector companies to sign onto the pilot program. The Department is looking for placements in cybersecurity, engineering, multi-hazard mitigation and infrastructure investment, physical and cybersecurity integration, research and development, and scientific research. Entities must be U.S.-based corporations, submit a letter detailing a training plan and undergo a background investigation in order to participate in the Exemplar program. Some postings are targeted to the D.C.-area, while others are open nationwide, for instance, employees could be sent to Silicon Valley companies.
“We now have an opportunity to send our employees into industry to get important training, to better understand your requirements, how you operate, understand how you make decisions,” Caitlin Durkovich, DHS Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection said. “So as we look at the next generation, next evolution of our tools and our requirements, we’ve really got an opportunity to be on the ground and understand how you’re approaching this very dynamic threat environment.”
Employees will have to return to the department for three times the amount of time they spent away, Washington noted.
“We want you to come back. We don’t want the private sector taking our folks. But really, what’s more important is we want you to be able to share that expertise with your peers and the leadership,” she said, noting participants will need to submit weekly and final reports about their detail.
DHS does not want this “knowledge just going out the door,” Washington added. “We want that institutional knowledge to begin to be created.” The hope is this model proves to be a success and will be turned into a full-time program in the near future for the whole of the DHS, she said.
DHS Under Secretary for Management Russell Deyo encouraged DHS employees to apply for the new training pilot program, telling the audience that “connecting the right people to the right opportunity” will “mutually benefit” both the private and public sectors.
“We need to be sharing information about threats and ways to prevent those threats with private industry,” Deyo said, specifically pointing to the cybersecurity realm.
Chuck Alsup, the president of INSA, said Exemplar is all about “cooperation between government and industry, and about providing the best training and tools possible for a workforce that’s going to protect that infrastructure."
“It is the type of innovation that is a win, win, win for government, industry, and the nation,” Alsup said, calling it an initiative with “great promise.”
DHS Under Secretary for Science and Technology Reginald Brothers said it is crucial for the government to boost its information sharing with the private sector. Exemplar will allow employees from both sides to understand what drives decision-making and problem-solving in the respective workforces, he said.
“We really have to reach beyond our building walls, we have to reach beyond the government itself,” he said. “We have to reach out to industry to understand what the best, creative solutions are, and to let you know what our problems are. If you don’t know what our problems are, you won’t know what to solve.”
