Army Seeks to Overhaul Civilian Hiring, Development

At the Association of the United States Army annual meeting today, the service will present its 2011 business transformation plan.

The plan includes a key section on civilian Army employees, which notes that "management of the civilian workforce has not enjoyed the same level of interest or resources as the military component of the Army workforce. As a result, the Army today does not have a civilian life-cycle management system that is integrated, or sufficiently resourced to transform the civilian corps for the 21st century."

To address that issue, the plan says the Army will:

• "Eliminate redundant civilian development courses offered by multiple Army or external schoolhouses and consolidate programs of instruction whenever it makes sense to do so."
• "Adopt a competency-based approach for managing the development of the civilian workforce."
• "Develop and publish individual civilian development pathways to meet career goals and expectations."
• "Provide the tools the Army needs to identify required competencies, measure individual competencies and develop strategies to close competency gaps."

In addition, the plan promises a review of "talent management" of the Senior Executive Service, with an eye toward "building a bench of senior civilian officials who can lead transformation within the Army, the Department of Defense, and the federal government." This year, the Army revised its process for hiring new SES members and began creating succession plans.

In the area of training, the plan bluntly says "commanders/supervisors do not value civilian career development and have not been willing to devote the necessary time and resources to ensuring that their civilians receive training to make them as well prepared or ready to support the mission as their military counterparts." The plan pledges various efforts to upgrade development of civilians.

Bob Brewin will have more on this story later today.