Tired of the Landlord Special? We Need Tech Talent to Update Federal Digital Infrastructure
By: EmmaLi Tsai and Reed Van Beveren
From renting an old apartment, I’ve grown accustomed to the “landlord special.” For those unfamiliar with the phrase, it’s an all-too-common scenario: warped floors, windows that don’t quite open fully, and walls caked with layers of eggshell white paint covering holes from years of previous tenants. Despite its decent outward appearance, our apartment building’s aging infrastructure cries out desperately for updates. Unfortunately, the digital infrastructure of the federal government bears a striking resemblance to the landlord special.
With the rapid development of technology in recent decades, federal agencies have been spending more money to maintain obsolete IT legacy systems. A 2019 study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) discovered 10 “critical IT legacy systems,” some of which are 51 years—over half a century!—old, and collectively require $337 million annually to maintain. And while efforts are underway to sunset many legacy systems, the innumerable paint layers on the walls are beginning to crack; we need to bring the federal government fully into the digital age.
Technical Debt, and Talent, Matter.
This accumulation of technical debt—deferred investments for updating outdated software or applications—hinders federal agencies’ ability to meet mission goals by devouring time and resources, ultimately resulting in a poor user experience and impaired delivery. Investing in modernization involves not only addressing that debt—but also implementing strategies to prevent its accumulation in the future. The recent drive to modernize among lawmakers and government personnel led to the American Rescue Plan in 2021, which allocated $1 billion dollars to the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF); an effort to tackle sprawling modernization challenges across the federal government. With help from TMF, environmental bureaus like the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) invested $9.2 million toward digitizing land records to make them publicly accessible, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) received $2.5 million to modernize aging digital infrastructure to address security concerns. And while such investments are a key first step to bringing environmental bureaus in particular into the digital age, it’s also vital to embed the right technical talent into these agencies.
In practice, that means talented staff not only implement and direct digital transformations, but also that they continue guiding efforts into the future. Fortunately, those needs have spurred nothing less than a movement of organizations and advocates determined to bolster technical capacity across the federal government. Groups like the Partnership for Public Service, the Tech Talent Project, and Federation of American Scientists have done extensive work on federal workforce trends and strategies for strengthening technical capacity. Additionally, EPIC’s own Digital Service for the Planet (DSP) initiative—aimed at facilitating interagency collaboration around key environmental tech and data—continues to iterate on a vision for improving digital infrastructure where we need it most. Building off of the insights generated by this larger movement, this blog is the first in a series aimed at diving deep into the tech talent landscape, its trends, and the needs EPIC sees across federal environmental and natural resource agencies.
How We Analyzed Tech Talent Trends
It’s a de facto founding principle of EPIC’s Tech Program that better technology and data have a central role to play in accelerating environmental solutions—but we also see using tech productively, especially across siloed federal organizations, as more about people and processes than technology itself. That’s why we used this crosswalk developed by the Tech Talent Project to identify key job series representing staff in technical roles—in effect, translating federal jobs in tech to corresponding private sector roles. To analyze federal employment trends, we leveraged data from 2013 to 2023, supplied by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and filtered to compare trends at the following environmentally-focused bureaus:
Jobs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) were automatically identified by OPM. For the purposes of our analysis, jobs within STEM were further split into two smaller categories to investigate tech-specific trends: tech/IT jobs (i.e., IT technology management, operations research, computer engineering, and computer scientist job series), and researchers (all other STEM jobs, e.g., botanists, ecologists, natural resource managers, etc.). Given those categorizations, we recognize the limitations associated with federal job series—i.e., that categories may not accurately reflect job responsibilities. For instance, many Geographic Information System (GIS) jobs currently listed on USAJobs are categorized under catch-all job series like “miscellaneous admin” or “business”, which we did not include for the purposes of this preliminary analysis.
To understand trends in tech talent, we focused on the following:
The percentage of workforce in tech and STEM positions as a lens onto how successful agencies and bureaus have been at recruiting and retaining tech talent
The ratio of tech to non-tech workforce as an indicator of access to tech talent within agencies and bureaus—and as a proxy for possible accumulation of technical debt.
We used relative measures of the tech workforce to put them in context, and to allow for more meaningful comparisons between varying approaches across agencies. Some of our major findings to date include:
Eight Environmental Bureaus Have Less Employees Now Than in 2013
When investigating tech-specific employment trends over the past decade, it’s also important to contextualize those trends within broader employment changes at each bureau during the same time period. For example, out of the ten environmental bureaus we analyzed, only the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and the Forest Service (USFS) had a net increase of employees since 2013. USACE in particular expanded by 1,461 employees over the past decade, and grew particularly quickly (nearly ~550 employees/year) from 2016-2023. All other bureaus indicated net employee decreases over the last decade; the National Park Service (NPS) in particular had the largest drop of 3,542 employees, followed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), with a net drop of 1,956 employees.
Although the net changes at eight of the bureaus we looked at have trended downward, between 2020 and 2023, there’s been slight growth in employment writ large at environmental bureaus (with the exception of the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR)). Considering the four-year lag from when USACE started growing in 2016, trends in workforce size at environmental agencies could be tied to presidential elections. The point is that, overall, bureau-level employment trends are important to keep in mind when looking at workforce breakdowns over time. Indeed, declines in the percentage of the workforce in tech positions could actually reflect employment growth in the bureau, rather than actual declines in the number of technical staff.
Employment Trends at Environmental Bureaus
Employment trends at environmental bureaus from 2013-2023, faceted by department. Click on the legend to toggle trends on/off.
Most Environmental Bureaus Expanded the Share of their Tech Workforce
Exploring the percentage of workforce in tech and STEM positions, we investigated whether agencies and bureaus have been successful in recruiting and keeping staff with technical skills. Out of ten environmental bureaus across five different departments, six of them—EPA, USACE, the US Geological Survey (USGS), BOR, NPS, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS)—expanded the percent of their workforce in tech positions over the past decade. BOR saw the largest percentage increase in tech positions (1.16%) since 2013. EPA also increased their share of the workforce in tech positions by 0.8%—but that change is minimal in comparison to the 16.5% increase in STEM positions over the same period. This disproportionate workforce shift could indicate more STEM personnel filling technical roles within the bureau since 2013.
Four environmental agencies—the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and two USDA bureaus (USFS and NRCS)—had a net decrease in the percentage of the workforce in tech positions over the past decade. Although the workforce at NOAA grew from 2019-2023, most of that growth is in STEM positions rather than tech positions (which have dropped by 0.68%). Similar to trends at the EPA, it’s possible that staff outside of technology-focused roles are shouldering the weight of tech responsibilities. Anecdotal evidence from various personnel interviews we’ve conducted over the last year or so indicates that non-technologists—for better or worse—across natural resource agencies often perform or take on tech-focused functions in the course of their work. Unsurprisingly, those trends are difficult to determine based on the job series information we currently have available.
Lastly, both US Department of Agriculture (USDA) bureaus exhibited precipitous declines in their tech workforces since 2017. The Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) in particular dropped from 67 tech employees to 0 by 2023. Jobs in tech appear to have been replaced by STEM jobs, which have increased by 10% in the workforce from 2017 to 2023. At USFS, the percentage of both STEM and tech jobs have decreased in the workforce since 2013—likely indicating more non-STEM employees across the Forest Service’s workforce. A deeper dive into trends at other USDA bureaus indicates that tech responsibilities may have been consolidated as part of reorganization-of-mission support functions (including IT), which were migrated to the Farm Production and Conservation (FPaC) Business Center in 2018.
Percentage of Workforce in STEM and Tech Jobs in Environmental Bureaus
Percentage of workforce in STEM and Tech jobs in EPA, USACE, and NOAA (top), DOI (middle) and USDA (bottom). Dashed lines represent department-level trends for DOI and USDA for comparisons. STEM jobs include research-oriented positions (i.e., not IT). Click on the legend to toggle trends on/off.
Six Environmental Bureaus Possibly Reduced Technical Debt
With shifts in the STEM and tech workforce at environmental bureaus, how might these changes relate to technical debt? Agencies, such as the Department of Labor, have used the ratio of IT staff to non-IT staff as a proxy for understanding trends in technical debt at the department level; early involvement of technical expertise has proven vital for designing and deploying systems that continue to serve user needs well into the future.
Out of ten environmental bureaus, six of them (USGS, BOR, USFWS, EPA, USACE, and NPS) exhibited positive trends in the ratio of IT to non-IT staff from 2013 to 2023. NOAA had the largest ratio of IT to non-IT staff with a mean of 0.11 over the past decade—but that ratio has been declining since 2013. The ratio of IT to non-IT staff has grown the fastest at BOR, exhibiting an increase by 13 per 1,000 since 2013.
Lastly, similar to trends in the tech workforce, four bureaus (NOAA, USFS, NRCS, BLM) exhibited declining ratios of IT to non-IT staff since 2013. Both USDA bureaus, USFS and NRCS, exhibited significant declines since 2018, likely due to factors described above. Still, it’s important to note that while this ratio has been used as a proxy to understand technical debt, it is not the only factor—and other information is needed to reach more definitive conclusions.
Ratio of IT Staff to Non-IT staff as a Proxy for Technical Debt at Environmental Bureaus
Ratio of IT staff to Non-IT staff from 2013-2023 for ten environmental bureaus of interest. Department-level trends are shown as dashed lines. Click on the legend to toggle trends on/off.
Looking Ahead: Building Tech Capacity is Key
Proactive investments in technical capacity—to design, deploy, and manage systems effectively—are urgently needed if we want environmental agencies to meaningfully accelerate progress on their respective missions. The good news is that, from invasive species management to protecting drinking water quality or equity, agencies have more tools than ever to do so—what they often need are clear pathways and personnel to leverage technology and data. For example, the recent Executive Order on Artificial Intelligence authorized agencies to use direct hire authority (DHA) to speed up the talent acquisition process. Environmental bureaus can also collaborate with partners in and around government to find ready technical expertise. Innovative examples include Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIFs) or programs at non-profits like the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) or the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Building technical capabilities—not just personnel volume—tied to agency mission areas is also important. The findings we outlined above include the not-always-obvious fact that many non-technical staff in practice assume technical responsibilities with minimal training. Providing adequate support and training—upskilling, reskilling, and clear professional development pathways—to such staff could build capacity within the existing workforce, and thereby nurture mission-aligned skills via multiple means. Collaborative mechanisms for learning like Communities of Practice could also facilitate productive capacity building among agency teams—including by incorporating external or industry partners—and go a long way toward breaking down siloed work across data and tech experts. Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP), for example, offers training for scientists in data management and has over 30 Collaboration Areas focusing on various data challenges—their forums have accelerated work in remote sensing, air quality, cloud computing, biological data standards, and more.
With the consequences of climate change increasingly on display, environmental agencies are already facing a myriad of looming obstacles—and constrained resources—as they enter the next decade. What’s clear, at least on the federal tech capacity front, is that the landlord special won’t get the job done. It’s time to start fully dismantling outdated infrastructure and embrace modern technology in ways that serve our shared goals. In practice, that means doing what we can’t afford not to do: sourcing and retaining the right technical talent—and helping bring environmental bureaus into the digital age.
Are you interested in this work? Do you have feedback or input for us? We want to hear from you.