Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management John Berry says the federal government needs to attract younger, more tech-savvy applicants.

When Barack Obama hired Berry to head his Office of Personnel Management earlier this year, the president did not mince words.

“John, we’ve got to make it cool again,” Obama said to his new hire.

Many of the nation’s brightest graduates are snapped up by tech startups claiming to offer not only high compensation, but also the feeling of being part of something exciting—not to mention such perks as meals by gourmet chefs, exercise and laundry facilities, haircuts, massages, and other amenities designed to smooth the transition from college to adulthood while instilling a sense of loyalty.

The president’s mandate to the director: Bring that approach to the federal government, the largest and arguably most bureaucratic employer in the country, with nine million people on its payroll if you count retirees and dependents. The government has much to learn from Silicon Valley innovators about how to attract young, competent employees. As things stand now, much of the federal workforce is nearing retirement age and is unfamiliar with the latest popular communication techniques—many of which they’re prohibited from accessing on their computers.

“We don’t currently use any of the technology solutions that are out there well,” explained Director Berry in an exclusive interview with Wired.com. “Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter—the modern methods of connectivity—we don’t take advantage of at all. Essentially, we’re missing a whole generation.”

To learn how cutting-edge firms hire, facilitate communication between, and retain employees, Director Berry recently met with Facebook, Google, and design firm Ideo on a recent trip to California, also touring each facility to see how they’re laid out in the hope of replicating some of that magic in a federal setting. He plans to attend such meetings with other companies in the future.

The impetus here, according to Berry, is that Obama wants to bring back the same youthful energy to governmental staffing that helped the United States to put a man on the moon.

“When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, the average age of the federal workers who were at Mission Control—the people who got him there safely and got him home—was in the late twenties,” Berry said. “We’re not the first generation to try to involve young folks…the government did it very effectively in the ’60s, and those people produced miracles.”

The government’s approaches to recruitment and technology are broken, Berry admitted, because they ignore social networking, modern perks aimed at maintaining a healthy “work/life balance,” and today’s communication technologies. All of that could change. Berry said he’s “still in discovery,” but that he’s considering installing Skype or something like it, and possibly an open-source Twitter client like Identi.ca for facilitating communication between federal employees and with potential applicants.

“Many of our policies and practices are—I wouldn’t go so far back as the 19th century, but certainly the 1950s in terms of their approach,” Berry said. “Our hiring, for instance, has become so cumbersome and so complicated that it is a nightmare…we need to make that simpler…allowing people a fair shot at a federal job.”