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News, announcements, training, search functions, Ask-a-Professor, and similar services with direct links supporting DoD acquisition.
Acquisition Process
Three processes cooperate to deliver capabilities needed by warfighters: the requirements process (JCIDS); the acquisition process (DAS); and the program and budget development process (PPBE). Includes links to DoD and Service policies, guidance, tools, and resources:
Policy
Encyclopedic source of acquisition policy that follows a hierarchy of policy issuance (i.e., executive, legislative, federal, etc.) and filtered according to organization, career field, and special topics.
Communitiesof Practice
Links to communities of practice and special interest areas, the latest contribution and discussion posts for open ACC communities, community highlights, and links to related communities.
Training andContinuous Learning
Information on training and continuous learning that supports DoD acquisition, information that helps manage professional training portfolios, and information on training available from DAU and DoD and Services activities.
Industry
Information on DoD industry partners that helps the participation and execution of DoD processes; including industry support pages, news, information, and links to private sector acquisition contractors.
Applications
AT&L Knowledge Management Systems (AKMS) applications.
Displays tabs for additional AT&L Special Topics Gateways:
And popular AT&L Career Fields Gateways:
Portals
Functional Gateways
Sixteen functional knowledge gateways, one for each of the defense acquisition career fields.
Special Topics
Links to gateways about important topics outside the general portals and beyond the standard career fields:
Bill Kobren Director Logistics & Sustainment Center
Encourage you to take a few minutes to read through yesterday’s testimony from the GAO Director of Acquisition and Sourcing Management entitled “GAO-12-232T Acquisition Workforce: DoD’s Efforts to Rebuild Capacity Have Shown Some Progress."
In part the GAO states, “DOD has made some progress in rebuilding the capacity of the civilian acquisition workforce and in completing competency assessments, which identify the current skills and capabilities of the workforce and help identify areas that needed further management attention. Included among the workforce issues facing DOD are (1) determining the right size of the acquisition workforce, (2) updating acquisition training based on ongoing competency assessments and measuring the effect of training on acquisition outcomes, and (3) identifying personnel outside the acquisition workforce who have a role in acquisition.”
In addition, the GAO states, “building workforce skills and expertise is just as important, however, as increasing the size of the acquisition workforce. DOD also made progress in completing competency assessments, which identify the current skills and capabilities of the workforce and help identify areas that needed further management attention. DOD officials reported that DOD has completed three assessments, including contracting, life cycle logistics, and program management, and is drafting final reports for another six assessments.”
In terms of “right sizing” our functional community, the Services and Defense Agencies, in conjunction with our Life Cycle Logistics Functional Leader have worked this particular effort very hard over the last several years. Hence, as life cycle logistics workforce has grown, it has been a measured and steady growth driven by Service requirements, with most new positions coming from more accurately coding existing non-acquisition positions rather than new hires, indirectly addressing the third area cited above.
Regarding competency assessments, as the GAO indicated, our life cycle logistics competency model has recently been updated. This has allowed us here at DAU to proactively focus on developing new and updating existing learning assets to better address key technical competencies, particularly in the product support and sustainment, supportability analysis, reliability, availability & maintainability (RAM) analysis, and O&S cost arenas.
Moving forward, collectively and individually we each must remain focused on and committed to the “one area where DOD still faces challenges” which GAO contends “is determining the effectiveness of its training in improving acquisition outcomes”, which for our community may arguably be represented by such things as affordable system readiness, continuous product and process improvement, enhanced system reliability and availability, reduced costs of ownership, and successful achievement of Warfighter requirements, among others. Agree? Disagree?
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