Photo By Stephenie Wade | Photo Caption: (Left to right) Mark Munsell, chief technology officer of the National...... read more read more
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SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. -- U.S. Transportation Command is embracing technology and processes to solve future problems.
More than 50 people attended the Technology and Human Capital Trends panel Nov. 11 at the T-REX center located in downtown St. Louis.
Mark Munsell, chief technology officer of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Deborah Kotulich, chief of staff for USTRANSCOM, and John Forsythe, managing director in the Federal Organizational Transformation service line at Deloitte, were the three panel members leading the discussion.
According to Munsell, the T-REX center was created to offer a safe, unclassified environment to enable these kind of conversations within the community and he has high hopes for the future of the space.
Among the audience were contractors, civilians, federal employees, educators, start-up enthusiasts, free-lancers and students interested in learning about how the evolution of technology in the workforce will change people's roles.
Kotulich was selected to be on the panel because of her unique experience serving as a U.S. Army Reservist and as a civilian, a full-time member of the executive team at IBM. She said the command’s current expectation for the workforce is they will find different ways to embrace technology and change-management methods for whatever is coming, whether artificial intelligence, cyber defense, machine learning or automation.
“I want [people] to think about analyzing data from the beginning rather than after, what tools do I have and how can I use them better,” said Kotulich. “It’s about identifying early on what we can change today, so we don’t have to do it tomorrow.”
It is also in the best interest of an individual to make sure they are adapting their talent.
“If you see your purpose has changed, look for something to transition to within [the organization] where you can make a bigger impact,” said Forsythe.
This could be an attribute of culture change, a topic of interest within the command right now. An example of culture change is not using traditional ways to solve problems.
“The traditional work force is civilian, military, and contractor, but there are more talent pools that need to be considered,” said Forsythe. “This is what we could envision in terms of convening talent pools … GIG [or contracted work], crowdsourcing, digital, freelance. Think about what your mission is and how you can solve problems using non-traditional solutions.”
Diana Van Winkel-Roach, chief of Change Management at USTRANSCOM, said events like this are important because it exposes people to other ideas on how to do things.
“It’s all about helping others learn something new and think about a process differently, which goes towards adoption and buy-in,” she said.
According to Kotulich, sometimes it’s not a matter of growing expertise, but finding someone with the expertise we need and bringing them to the command.
“I found this to be useful because at TRANSCOM we have opportunities in the [Joint Distribution Process Analysis Center] for data scientists and positions in the J6 [Command, Control, Communication and Cyber Systems directorate] that need to be filled for cyber," said Kotulich. "I’m excited because I think this [collaboration] is an avenue to help find additional talent to fill those positions.”
| Date Taken: | 11.13.2019 |
| Date Posted: | 11.15.2019 11:45 |
| Story ID: | 351915 |
| Location: | SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, IL, US |
| Web Views: | 61 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Collaborating talent to embrace technological change, solutions, by Stephenie Wade, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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