Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Workforce Development topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
State Personnel seeks $160K portal contract and $500K for 50 internships to aid hiring
Summary
The State Personnel Office asked the committee for funds to build an online portal to speed personnel actions and for $500,000 to support 50 internships aimed at growing the state workforce; SPO said internships would be routed to agencies statewide and include training and mentoring.
The State Personnel Office (SPO) asked the committee to approve a modest set of investments intended to speed hiring and build workforce pipelines.
"This is one of the recommendations from the classification and compensation study: $160,000 to hire a contractor to create an online portal," SPO Director Dylan Lang said, describing a portal that would let agencies track personnel actions and locate bottlenecks in the approval process.
Lang also outlined a $500,000 request to fund 50 paid internships for high school, college and post‑graduate levels. SPO said past internship efforts have produced robust interest—more than 500 interest forms—and that the proposal would include training, mentor assignments and formal agreements with host agencies so internships more directly support hiring pipelines for rural and urban needs.
Committee members pressed SPO about placement of interns in underserved areas and timelines for digitizing hiring processes. SPO said agencies run their own hiring, that time to fill varies by agency (the statewide average was described as roughly 64 days but with wide variation), and that the portal and targeted recruitment efforts are intended to shorten vacancies and improve retention. SPO also committed to providing data on past intern placements and outcomes if the committee requests it.
No funding decisions were made; members asked SPO to provide placement and outcome data and to refine criteria that ensure internships serve rural and high‑need agencies.
