Adding Agility to Department of Navy Acquisition Workforce Management in Digital Collaboration Centers

Abstract

The Department of Navy (DoN) spends $7 billion annually on salaries and benefits for the acquisition workforce (AWF) that manages about $60 billion of expenditures across a Future Years Defense Program. To help develop smart buyers who understand that every person matters, every day matters, and every dollar matters, the DoN Director, Acquisition Career Management (DACM), has created paper-based and digital war rooms to promote ready, relevant lateral learning across programs and career fields. In aid of managing the acquisition workforce like a major acquisition program, DACM uses the war rooms to promote case study discussion of successful and failed programs; to enable Naval leaders to explore feedback loops and unintended consequences of workforce policy decisions; to develop approaches to better understand workload planning, affordability, and willingness to pay; to investigate organizational system problems in the context of larger systems; to develop a more comprehensive view of workforce health; and to develop cross-career field and cross-SYSCOM career navigators, career guides, and career paths.