AUGUST 2023 ARMY DACM HOT TOPICS

WHAT’S NEW 

10^TH ANNUAL MAJOR GENERAL HAROLD J. “HARRY” GREENE AWARDS

 The Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology (ASA(ALT)) is now accepting articles, opinion pieces or essays for the 10th annual Major General Harold J. “Harry” Greene Awards for Acquisition Writing competition. Articles must be from 500 to 1,800 words and in one of the following four categories: acquisition reform, future operations, innovation or lessons learned. Entries are due by Oct. 2. For more information, visit: https://www.army.mil/article/268061/authors_encouraged_to_participate_in_the_army_acquisition_writing_competition.

2023 AAE AWARDS: CALL FOR NOMINATIONS

The Army Director, Acquisition Career Management (DACM) is pleased to announce the call for nominations for the 2023 Army Acquisition Executive’s (AAE) Excellence in Leadership Awards!

The Army Acquisition Workforce is filled with many impressive people—individuals and teams who toil away to develop new systems and products for the warfighters or identify new ways to get those systems funded and fielded. The 2023 AAE’s Excellence in Leadership Awards is the chance to spotlight their work. These awards honor individuals and teams whose outstanding contributions and achievements merit special recognition. The deadline for submitting nominations is Sept. 7, 2023.

New for 2023:

In alignment with Back-to-Basics, the AAE Awards welcome four new awards that recognize exemplary efforts in the Test and Evaluation and, Engineering and Technical Management, functional areas as well as in Digital Transformation:

• Test and Evaluation Professional of the Year
• Test Organization of the Year
• Engineering and Technical Manager Professional of the Year (incorporates the previous Science and Technology Professional of the Year and Engineer and System Integrator of the Year categories)
• Digital Transformation Professional of the Year

The 2023 award categories are:

• Acquisition Career Support Professional of the Year Award
• Business Operations Professional of the Year Award
• Defense Export and Cooperation Professional & Journeyman of the Year Award
• Test and Evaluation Professional of the Year Award
• Test Organization of the Year Award
• Engineering and Technical Manager Professional of the Year Award
• Digital Transformation Professional of the Year Award
• Logistician of the Year Award
• Product Management/Product Director Professional of the Year (O-5) Award
• Project Management/Project Director Professional of the Year (O-6) Award
• Product Management/Product Director Team of the Year (O-5) Award
• Project Management/Project Director Team of the Year (O-6) Award
• Contracting Professional of the Year Award
• Contracting Unit/Team of the Year Award
• Barbara C. Heald Deployed Contracting Civilian of the Year Award
• Outstanding Grants or Agreements Professional of the Year Award
• Innovation in Contracting Strategies Individual or Organization Award
• Construction Services Professional of the Year Award

Once you’ve identified the professional or team whose accomplishments put them far ahead of the crowd, be sure to read the complete nomination guidelines before putting that packet together. For detailed instructions on each award, please visit: https://asc.army.mil/web/aae-awards/.

ACQUISITION EDUCATION, TRAINING AND CAREER DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES

REQUESTING YOUR FEEDBACK – ACQUISITION LEADER ASSESSMENT PROGRAM (ALAP)

The FY25 centralized selection list (CSL) Board has closed and the Acquisition Leader Assessment Program (ALAP) invitees have been publicly announced! ALAP25, to be executed in October 2023, is a focused battery of interviews, screenings and assessments designed to determine an individual’s readiness for command, while identifying their underlying strengths and weaknesses in several behavioral domains. This helps ensure that the Army is making the most informed choices for its acquisition commands/key billets, while also providing opportunity for self-reflection and development. Over the next two months, we will begin the process of requesting feedback on these individuals, which is where we need your assistance.

Peer and subordinate feedback are vital to an individual and selection board to help them truly understand their strengths and weaknesses as a workforce professional and as a leader. It helps identify strengths that future leaders should continue to leverage and build upon, as well as provide narratives that can further endorse an individual for these positions of higher responsibility. The feedback gathered during the Army Leadership Assessment Tool (ALAT) window is consolidated and reviewed by the assessment facilitators and used to evaluate specific leader attributes and competencies demonstrated by an individual within recent history of their career.

Willing and honest participation in this process is essential, as this is the opportunity for participants to inform the Army’s selection of our future leaders. The ALAP Ops team uses extensive data to identify peers and subordinates to submit anonymous feedback on a candidate to ensure fairness and consistency, while obtaining honest feedback without concern for retribution. ALAP candidates cannot select survey participants themselves and cannot influence the direction of feedback submitted by those who choose to participate.

The survey takes 10-15 minutes to complete. Please be on the lookout for correspondence requesting you complete this survey. Not everyone will receive one, but we are requesting full compliance from those who do.
For more information on ALAP, please refer to the following:

ALAP Informational Video – https://www.dvidshub.net/video/858304/acquisition-leader-assessment-program.
ALAP Webpage – Acquisition Leader Assessment Program (ALAP) (army.mil).

CAREER MANAGEMENT

SEPTEMBER 30th – ANNUAL ACQUISITION ETHICS TRAINING REQUIREMENT

All Army Acquisition Workforce (AAW) members must complete annual acquisition ethics training by Sept. 30 of each year. DAU offers an approximately 1-2 hour self-register, self-paced online course titled “ACQ 0030 Overview of Acquisition Ethics.” ACQ 0030 is DAU’s successor course to CLM 003, a previous ethics course version, which expired on Sept. 30, 2022.

For more details, read the Army Director, Acquisition Career Management’s (Army DACM) October 2022 policy titled “Mandatory Annual Ethics Training for the Army Acquisition Workforce for Fiscal Year 2023” at  https://asc.army.mil/web/dacm-memorandum-fy23-ethics-training-policy-11-october-2022-1/.

The Army DACM’s ethics policy provides more detailed information about ethics training courses that meet the annual requirement and outlines instructions on how to properly record your ethics training completion. The DACM Office oversees and tracks AAW compliance to this annual requirement by pulling training completion data from the Individual Development Plan (IDP) within the Career Acquisition Personnel and Position Management Information System (CAPPMIS), located in the Career Acquisition Management Portal (CAMP) at https://apps.asc.army.mil/camp/.

To apply for DAU’s ethics course titled “ACQ 0030 Overview of Acquisition Ethics,” visit  https://icatalog.dau.edu/onlinecatalog/courses.aspx?crs_id=12650.

Press the “Apply for this training” button in the upper right-hand corner. Please note that this acquisition ethics training requirement is separate from the annual ethics training required for all financial disclosure report filers.

Another option for completing your annual ethics training requirement is to watch DAU’s 16.5 minute video titled “Ethics and Leadership,” presented by Dr. Joanne Ciulla, former president of the Society for Business Ethics and The International Society for Business, Economics and Ethics. The ethics video can be found at https://media.dau.edu/media/Ethics+and+Leadership/0_1kc6s9ge/62925211.

CONTINUOUS LEARNING POINT REQUIREMENT

In accordance with DOD and Department of the Army policy, AAW professionals are required to complete at least 80 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) by the end of each two-year Continuous Learning (CL) cycle. The start and end dates of a two-year CL cycle is the same for every AAW member. The cycle begins on Oct. 1 of each even-numbered year and runs through Sept. 30 of the following even year. For example, the current CL cycle dates are Oct.1, 2022 through Sept. 30, 2024.

The Army DACM Office has developed a glide path that identifies a recommended minimum CLP threshold to be attained by the end of each fiscal quarter within the two-year CL cycle. This way, AAW professionals can make steady, measured progress toward attaining at least 80 CLPs, as required, by the end of the two-year CL cycle. The recommended CL glide path is as follows:

EARN CONTINUOUS LEARNING POINTS WITH YOUR UDEMY LEARNING PATH

Speaking of CLPs, your assigned digital transformation learning path in Udemy is a great way to achieve the annual 80 points per year CLP requirement goal. To get started:

1. Go to Army Civilian Career Management Activity (ACCMA) (udemy.com) and fill-in the requested information. The email address/username that you utilize must be your army.mil address.
2. Complete the email verification and fill out the required registration information.
3. You now have access and can start learning!

Udemy digital foundations training is intended to develop an understanding on the topics of digital transformation, agile software development, DevSpecOps, cloud foundations, data science, machine learning, human centered design, artificial intelligence and cyber security in order to practically apply those tools as we lead, develop, test, field and sustain Army modernization programs. This training pathway includes three courses to prioritize for foundational digital literacy upskilling: Digital Transformation Masterclass, The Agile Samurai Bootcamp, and Product Management for Artificial Intelligence & Data Science.

To locate the digital transformation learning pathway that was assigned to you:

1. Log in to the Udemy portal at armyciv.udemy.com
2. In the upper right-hand corner select “My Learning”
3. Select the “Learning Paths” tab
4. Select “Digital Foundations”
5. To begin taking the first course, select “Digital Transformation 2023 – Masterclass”
6. Press the Play button

Once a Udemy course is completed, your CLPs will automatically be credited to your Individual Development Plan (IDP) and your Acquisition Career Record Brief (ACRB) in CAPPMIS; do not manually submit a CLP request to your supervisor. If you complete a Udemy course that was not assigned to you through your Learning Path, you’ll need to submit a manual request through your IDP.

For those who use the Total Employee Development (TED) system, the required Udemy courses are built in as course offerings. Upon course completion, CLPs will also be automatically transferred from your TED profile to your Career Acquisition Personnel and Position Management Information System (CAPPMIS) profile.  Please note TED system training completion updates transfer to CAPPMIS on a once per week refresh schedule.

If you require troubleshooting during registration or have questions about navigating the site, please refer to the “Udemy for Everyone Tutorial” available on MilSuite.

A reminder for those acquisition-coded employees within ASA(ALT), U.S. Army Acquisition Support Center and Program Executive Offices – the Digital Foundations learning pathway is a mandatory FY23 objective.

The three digital transformation courses are:

1. Digital Transformation 2023 – Masterclass
2. The Agile Samurai Bootcamp
3. The Product Management for AI & Data Science Course

MILITARY

ACS FOR NONCOMMISSIONED OFFICERS

The Army DACM Office is pleased to announce the Advanced Civil Schooling (ACS) application window for FY24 is currently open. The ACS program allows active-duty Army NCOs a chance to pursue advanced degrees in acquisition or business-related disciplines at civilian universities on a full-time, fully funded basis. ACS also unlocks enhanced skills and acquisition experience through top-tier university programs. This opportunity is currently open and will close on Sept. 29, with a program start window of July 1, 2024 through Dec. 30, 2025. Reach out to your Proponent NCO Team to see if you are a good fit for this opportunity. Visit the ACS webpage to learn more about the application process and eligibility:
https://asc.army.mil/web/career-development/programs/nco-advanced-civil-schooling/.