b'The Army is doing a wonderful job of recognizing that its talent management must evolve for both its military and civilian staff. My challenge is how do you do that within the confines of the general schedule for federal employees, competition,and fair practice.What are some of the key challenges facing and interest in coding or software development to apply them you in your role?in the Army. The exciting challenge for us is building new career models for talent that is being pulled from established One of the prevalent challenges we face is operatingcareer paths. The misconception has been that we need to go within the constraints of some very antiquated legacy systemslooking for this talent outside of the Army, when, a lot of it is that mark the current federal workforce hiring environment.exists in the Army family today. We are currently exploring The Army is doing a wonderful job of recognizing that itsoptions within the larger Army to expand career pathing for talent management must evolve for both its military andthese participants so we can grow an internal capacity that civilian staff. My challenge is how do you do that within theattracts more of this talent and retains Army capabilitiesconfines of the general schedule for federal employees, competition, and fair practice. Would you tell us more about the Army Futures Command Software Factory? It has also been quite challenging, and somewhat surprising, in standing up this command over the past three years. AFCThis is our incubator and accelerator to improve digital established this new command not on an Army installationcompetency. We create teams of individualscohortswho but in an office building in downtown Austin, Texas, whichhave discreet roles on software development product teams is a high-cost urban setting. While establishing headquarters,that understand how to build, how to code, and how to we also had to merge the existing scientific and researchdevelop viable applications that solve Army problems. These communities across the Army, along with its analysis andteams also have the requisite platform engineer and support data components and concept writersall merging to bestructures to deploy these new tools in a secure way, onto part of this new entity called Army Futures Command. It wasnetworks. This is a very interesting model informed by a a complex, difficult, and, quite frankly, lengthy process ofcouple of learning campaigns we did. simultaneously merging and acquitting existing entities, while also creating a startup in Austin all at once.What are you doing to discover untapped talent? There is a prevalent narrative that the federal government must find ways to bring needed talent in information technology, network architecture, software, and data analytics, from the private sector. By canvassing our current workforce, we found that we had this talent in our ranks. When we brought them into the Army, we did not have data specific career models. We did not have software design career models. Instead, we assessed this talent into the existing legacy career models, even though this talent can do things like DevSecOps or big data analytics. Today, we are pulling this talent from existing career models, creating an environment for those individuals with the skills 2022 IBM Center for The Business of Government 49'