The Department of Defense and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced a memorandum of agreement to provide DoD access to OPM’s USALearning platform for training activities.
The memorandum of agreement will see DoD personnel using OPM’s platform for reskilling and training. DoD announced its intentions to shift to the platform as part of the department’s Reform Management Group’s efforts to streamline modernization efforts.
In partnering with OPM, DoD is embracing a shared services approach to training, supplemented by efforts to create a department-wide Common Course Catalog to ensure access to learning resources across the Pentagon. Currently, the department leaves training acquisition up to each component.
“The goals of this enterprise approach are to provide improved quality, more rapid acquisition and modernization outcomes, and more cost-optimized products and services as compared to status quo DOD acquisition processes currently undertaken by each of the DoD Components, separately,” OPM said in a press release.
The move to OPM’s shared service offering also comes in the wake of a memo from the Office of Management and Budget pushing greater adoption of shared services in select business support areas.
“This is a major step in accomplishing the goals of the President’s Management Agenda,” said Margaret Weichert, acting director of OPM. “We are creating a streamlined system to reskill DoD personnel with more speed, efficiency, and respect to the taxpayer dollar.”