Workforce members often ask us what drives Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act (DAWIA) certification training requirements.  As a public service, wanted to share a few insights. First and foremost, it is important to understand that each defense acquisition workforce career field Functional Leader (in most instances a senior executive-level career field functional expert from the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) staff), advised by a Functional Integrated Process Team (or FIPT) comprised of Service/Agency and DoD functional and Defense Acquisition Career Manager (DACM) representatives, is responsible for establishing and validating career field competencies and DAWIA certification training requirements. Additionally, those changes result from a myriad of factors, including (but not limited to):

·         Changes to or new Federal Law/Statute (e.g., 10 USC 2337)

·         Changes to the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and/or the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS)

·         Changes to or new DoD policy (e.g., January 2015 DoD Instruction 5000.02)

·         Changes to or new DoD guidance (e.g., updates to the Defense Acquisition Guidebook (DAG), issuance of the DoD Performance Based Logistics (PBL) Guidebook, the updated MIL-HDBK 502A, etc.)

·         DoD Policy Initiatives (e.g., Better Buying Power, or the 2009 Product Support Assessment)

·         Career Field Functional Leader/ Functional IPT-directed changes

·         New or updated Career Field Competencies, or requirements to address competency gaps

·         Component-requested changes as approved by the Functional Leader

Bottom-line is DAWIA certification changes are requirements/competency-driven and Functional Leader-directed/approved.

Note: this information was originally posted in a July 2014 blog, and is being republished as a public service for those who may be new to our community, or who may not have seen the original blog. It is provided for informational purposes only and should not be interpreted to mean any changes are planned or being considered for the Life Cycle Logistics community.