Transforming DAWIA and DAU to Empower the Acquisition Workforce

As a member of the modern acquisition workforce, you face challenges unknown to your predecessors. You have to work with a different kind of industrial base, use new tools in a changing acquisition system, and keep up with new technologies that are transforming both the workplace and the battlefield. All of this happens at a pace unimaginable during the Cold War, the last time we faced a near peer threat. To help you succeed in this environment, DAU has to adapt along with you, and we are.

We regularly reach out in a variety of ways to hear from you about how DAU can better serve you. One thing you’ve told us is that the existing DAWIA certification program forces you to spend too much time on training that isn’t relevant to your work. In this fast-paced world, you don’t have time for that. We’ve responded by working with the Services and components to modernize the certification structure and drastically reduce the hours spent on required training. No longer will everybody learn everything. The goal now is to limit required training to a core that applies to everyone in a given career field. This new structure, often referred to as Back-to-Basics, is rolling out now, with full implementation planned for February 2022.

Having gotten that required core, you will want additional training that you tailor for yourself, based on your needs as you grow and adapt to our changing world. We will help you by providing packages of curated learning called credentials. These credentials will give you the knowledge and skills you need and provide documented evidence of your expanded capabilities. We have released 24 credentials, ranging from career-field subjects like industrial property contract management, to more general emerging areas like agile development and data analytics. Many more credentials are being built today to meet your needs.

In addition to courses and credentials, you need new knowledge and assistance every day. Here too, DAU is changing to create more online content and smaller chunks of learning material. This can take the form of webinars, videos, podcasts, tools, communities of practice, and a wide range of content from DAU and elsewhere. We want DAU.edu to be the place you can turn to for help, and where you will find what you need.

Taken together, these initiatives are changing DAU from a schoolhouse where you come to get a certification, generally early in your career, to a platform that serves your needs every day over your entire career. A precept of modern organizations is empowerment – the recognition that the closer decisions are to the work that’s getting done, the better. That applies to training, too. The new DAWIA structure gives you the power to own your training and development and make decisions about what you need as you succeed today and grow for tomorrow. We are transforming DAU so that we can be there to help you every step of the way.

[RELATED RESOURCE: GETTING BACK-TO-BASICS webpage]

DAU’s new resource page explains the changes to the DAWIA certification structure. It outlines the new functional areas and provides overviews on what is different and what will be required under the updated framework.