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A shared vision of the federal learning ecosystem would better allow the development of standards.
The US government is the largest single employer in the country, with nearly 3 million civilian employees, including more than 1 million in the Department of Defense (DoD). Each department, agency, bureau, and office has a different mission and culture. Disparate systems and authorities govern personnel actions, and in some cases, a literal act of Congress is required to update personnel policies. Despite those complexities, the federal government faces the same future of work headwinds as all employers, and it needs to modernize its talent management approach accordingly.
Current federal initiatives
In the federal government, the 2018 President's Management Agenda, along with several related initiatives, provides a longterm road map for developing a workforce for the 21st century. These federal-wide initiatives and policies seek to ensure that the future federal workforce is well trained, is managed by evidence-based requirements, and has the necessary supporting data to make well-informed decisions. Here are a few examples.
President's Management Agenda. In April 2018, the Donald Trump administration released this overarching strategy for modernizing government operations to improve their quality and cost-efficiency. The strategy starts with three foundational drivers:
* IT modernization-adopting modern technology to improve customer service, user experience, and data security
* data, accountability, and transparency-improving how the government uses the data it has, ensures its protection, and drives public value
* people-preparing for the 21st century workforce.
Each of those is considered a cross-agency priority, and the strategy includes 11 other cross-agency priorities, such as improving customer service and sharing quality services, which cut across those three foundational goals. The third priority-people-has the most obvious implications for the future of work. That priority outlines a thoughtful strategy that includes efforts that would look familiar to any large employer, such as improving employee performance incentives, investing in continuous learning, and using datadriven processes for people analytics.
Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018. The Evidence Act, signed in January 2019, encourages the use of data to inform policy decisions. It also establishes processes for modernizing federal data management practices and improving secure data access. Although this act does not direct any specific talent management applications, it reinforces the President's Management Agenda...