The Trump administration plans to initiate reskilling programs in a bid to address the information technology and cybersecurity skills gap among federal employees, FedScoop reported Thursday.

The reskilling efforts, mandated by the President’s Management Agenda, will be under the oversight of several agencies including the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management.

Among the reskilling options available to the government is cross-training, a strategy that nonprofit company Mitre has implemented for decades.

Joel Jacobs, chief information and chief security officer for MITRE, said that his organization’s cybersecurity department would “borrow” personnel with backgrounds in information security from divisions involved in federally-funded research and development.

The R&D personnel would gain operational experience while cybersecurity staff would be exposed to new ideas and innovations in the field.

Although Jacobs is skeptical that the strategy can be used across the bureaucracy due to mission diversity, he says it could work if applied to “adjoining components.”

“I think they have to be looking for adjacencies in talent, not strictly or narrowly prescribed versions of cyber engineers or exclusively trained from a cyber curriculum,” Jacobs commented.

John Michael Loh, a former U.S. Air Force vice chief of staff and commander of Air Combat Command, has said he believes the military service should use “rollback” strategies along with stealth aircraft platforms and stealth weapons systems to carry out air campaigns.

The retired USAF general wrote in a Defense News opinion piece published Thursday that such strategy helped air forces in past operations, such as Desert Storm, that involved efforts against integrated air defense systems.

He noted that current guiding principle for the air campaign planning process calls for troops to ensure continuous operations in a contested environment.

“Air Force has visionary leaders whose challenge is to learn from past air campaigns, exploit the limitations of modern IADS, understand the mismatch between paper attrition and the realities of combat, invest in the right set of affordable forces and recognize the value of rapid rollback to create permanently uncontested airspace,” Loh added.

The Defense Department, NASA and the General Services Administration seek comments on a proposal to establish a standard method for collecting voluntary feedback from government contractors regarding contracts and solicitations.

In Federal Register notice posted July 26, all three agencies noted that voluntary comments on industry standards, alternative regulatory approaches and legal definitions for other areas of deals, among other things, would provide more substance in modifying the contracting process.

DoD, GSA and NASA also proposed a language under federal acquisition rules to encourage contracting officers to collect vendor feedback on the pre-award acquisition process and debriefings.

Another proposal invites government acquisition officials to open their contracting performance for assessment.

The comment period is open until Sept. 21.

The Office of Federal Procurement Policy originally established a standard survey in 2015 for vendor feedback on pre-award and debriefing processes for solicitations.

The initial guidance encouraged interested offerors to provide insights on issuing solicitations that cover various requirements.