DAU hosts fourth DoD Chancellor's conference: learning, leading, leveraging - Education and Professional Development

Program Manager, Sept-Oct, 2002 by Christina Cavoli

The fourth Department of Defense (DoD) Conference on Civilian Education and Professional Development was held Aug. 6-7, 2002, co-hosted by the Office of the Chancellor for Education and Professional Development and the Defense Acquisition University (DAU) at Fort Belvoir, Va.

Three Learning Tracks

The theme of this year's conference was "L3-Learning, Leading, and Leveraging," which focused on the need to reinforce the skills of the DoD civilian workforce through continuous improvement in these three aspects of educational institutions, professional development programs, and courses of instruction. In keeping with the conference theme, this year's participants could choose a variety of conference sessions from three concurrent informational groupings:

* Learning: To build the DoD educational community to develop a quality workforce.

* Leading: To enhance DoD civilian leadership to maximize workforce performance.

* Leveraging: To exploit education, training, and professional development to transform the DoD civilian workforce to meet emerging requirements.

Participants were invited from all DoD post-secondary educational institutions and professional development programs for DoD civilians. Professional Military Education (PME) institutions, other DoD components, and colleagues from higher education institutions and business/industry were also invited to attend. Over 400 professionals registered for the conference.

Organizing the conference into three concurrent informational groupings--Learning, Leading, and Leveraging--allowed participants to focus on the areas most relevant to their needs. The plenary and track sessions for each of these areas included speakers from government, business, industry, and higher education. Additionally this year's conference heeded the call from previous years' participants to increase the opportunities for interactive events such as workshops, panels, and role-playing exercises.

Keynote Address

Participants in the learning track could attend such interactive seminars as "Designing Instruction for Higher Levels of Learning" and "The Art of Teaching Online." Leading track seminars included "Managing Information Technology" and "Strategic Leadership in Education." For those interested in the leveraging aspects of education and training, seminars such as "Institutional Research Strategies" and "Institutional Measurement Workshops" were offered.

The keynote address, "Vision and Need for Transforming the DoD Civilian Workforce," was presented by Gail H. McGinn, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Force Management Policy), Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. McGinn explained how training and development are helping to address DoD's human resources crisis. She also discussed the role of education, training, and professional development in deploying the DoD Civilian Human Resources Strategic Plan for 2002-2008.

McGinn sought to represent from a policy level where educational institutions should be headed in regard to addressing the needs of the civilian workforce. "Human Resources are one of the hottest topics in the DoD," said McGinn. "It may have been considered of secondary importance in the past," she noted, "but now, everyone wants to fix the problem."

McGinn cited both the Quadrennial Defense Review and the President's Management Agenda as calling for skilled, motivated people to create a solid foundation for the DoD, and pointed out that improving the skills of both military and civilian workforces was considered a priority. The concept of "civilian training" is likely to become a specific issue, included as a line item in budgets and subject to review procedures.

The strategic management of human capital must consider the problematic effects created by the downsizing of the Department a decade ago, which include an aging workforce, increased layers of hierarchy that are too top heavy, and an imbalance of necessary skills. Additionally many outdated policies still exist that were created to address a workforce that existed 50 years ago.

As an example of how the playing field has changed, McGinn noted that in the '50s, 70 percent of the DoD civilian workforce were at the pay grade GS-7 or lower, while today only 30 percent fall into that category.

Between 1989 and May 2001, the total strength of the DoD civilian workforce has fallen 36 percent--376,000 people. There has been a significant shift from clerical and blue collar to professional and technical job titles. The workforce has become more highly educated, but also older; nearly a third of all employees are over 51.

There are no easy solutions to tackling these issues. Challenges include the massive size of the DoD civilian workforce--over 800,000 employees worldwide--that makes it a difficult group to manage. The workforce is complex and decentralized, comprised of hundreds of different jobs and job skills. Such a large and complex workforce has created its own complicated bureaucracy, such as 57 different pay plans. Congressional fixes will be necessary to create programs that address the needs of the entire workforce and simplify management. Finally, any solutions to the human capital crisis must also achieve the goals of the DoD Transformation.