Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has unveiled the third and fourth sets of the Defense Department‘s Force of the Future initiative in a move to reform strategies for DoD to manage its civilian and military personnel.
The program’s first link aims to increase the recruitment of professionals and adoption of new ideas across the department while the second link focuses on employee retention through family support programs, DoD said Thursday.
In a memo published Thursday, Carter said he will ask Congress to provide service branches a greater flexibility to adjust policies under the Defense Officer Personnel Management Act in order to help them address future unforeseen challenges and needs.
He proposed to incentivize best-performing military officers, offer an option for an officer to pursue career development opportunities without compromising their career progression at the department and allow the service branches to assign officers in cybersecurity and other specialized fields.
For DoD’s civilian workforce, he seeks to instituting a talent exchange program meant to help expose the department’s civilians to industry best practices.
He also wants the department to consider qualified civilian students for employment opportunities as well as seeks congressional approval to offer paid parental for civilian employees at DoD.
“Winning the competition for good people is a critical part of our military edge,†Carter said.
“This latest set of proposals, targeting both our military officers and our civilian workforce, will help win that competition so we can meet the security challenges of the 21st Century.”
