The U.S. Army is debuting a civilian capability for the service branch’s voluntary education and training portal – dubbed ArmyIgnitED – the agency announced on August 14.
With the latest civilian capability release, the Army’s voluntary education and training portal is now available to all user groups. As of Aug 9, ArmyIgnitED served nearly 253,000 users – soldiers, cadets, and civilians.
The ArmyIgnitED team at the U.S. Army Program Executive Office Enterprise Information Systems (PEO EIS) is methodically rolling out the civilian capability in collaboration with the Army Civilian Career Management Agency (ACCMA), and incrementally enabling workforce members to use the portal.
“This marks the third leg of the stool in our delivery of the Army’s enterprise voluntary education portal,” Keith Baylor, product lead for ArmyIgnitED at PEO EIS, said in a press release.
Initially, ACCMA opted to test the system with the Army’s second-largest career field of more than 40,000 civilians working in the human capital and resource management career field. In fiscal year 2024, ACCMA plans to enable civilians in five other career fields and two divisions to access the new ArmyIgnitED functionality. Users can request funds for education, training, and professional development opportunities.
“This test allows us to work through any of the funding or technical issues and allows us to develop training to use the system,” said Donald Harrison, ACCMA’s program manager for ArmyIgnitED.
“We expect this new automation to make applying for training easier, and payment to academic institutions and vendors faster,” he said.
The Army expects the ArmyIgnitED portal to reach the full deployment phase in late August, which includes rolling out additional enhancements like audit capability and an interface with the Army’s Integrated Personnel and Pay System-Army.
Once the portal reaches the full deployment phase, the ArmyIgnitED team plans to continue developing and releasing product enhancements via a continuous integration and continuous delivery process.
The ArmyIgnitED platform launched in 2021 and was previously operated by Deloitte. After the Deloitte contract expired, the service tapped BAM Technologies to continue running the portal.
