By Adam Starr, Chief Information Officer and Senior Advisor to the Director

Okay, we're not quite there yet, but we are helping move the federal government a whole lot closer. Every federal agency is now capable of adopting AI in the hiring process.

We owe job applicants and taxpayers a faster, better hiring process, and AI is an obvious step. But incentives are too often misaligned: the HR employee who innovates carries the risk of accusations of misuse of AI, while the benefits of a faster process accrue elsewhere in the agency. Absent clear policy, many people freeze. And freezing isn't free — it costs the applicant who waits on an offer or takes another job, the hiring manager staring at an empty seat with their mission at risk, and the taxpayer funding a broken process. It currently takes on average a whopping 87 days to hire in the federal government. Clearly, the current process is not working.

To accelerate AI use, OPM issued a memorandum titled, “Use of Artificial Intelligence in the Federal Hiring Process” that provides guidance on how agencies may approach hiring AI use cases, and adopt AI across the hiring lifecycle. Our guidance offers agencies a documented, defensible route to AI at every step of hiring.

Because OPM owns federal hiring policy, we are constantly looking for ways to streamline the process to hire top talent. As we talked with agencies about what is preventing them from utilizing AI more broadly in the hiring process, we learned that they were being overly cautious in interpreting what’s known as the "high-impact" standard outlined by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Too often, agencies were defaulting to the view that any use of AI in hiring was subject to the high-impact standard. In reality, that is not the case. Instead, the inclusion of AI as a complement to human judgement is not only acceptable but leads to better outcomes. s. For example, in a minimum-qualifications review, the job requirements and the résumé determine the outcome. AI that highlights the relevant résumé lines supports the decision; it doesn't become its basis when the official considers the whole package.

The Merit Hiring Plan's 80-day time-to-hire target stands. New AI features are coming to USAJOBS, USA Staffing, and USA Hire, including improved search capability, plain language job titles and job descriptions, and other tools to help job seekers connect with federal jobs. But we are not waiting. The path is clear. We are streamlining hiring to build a smoother experience for job seekers and a quicker, stronger hiring pipeline for managers. The American people deserve an efficient hiring process that utilizes AI to make sure that we get the right talent in the right seats. Today we are enabling that.