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Career Management: What is Your Path?

At the most recent AFCEA Bethesda 2013 Federal Budget Review, the theme was “Doing More with Less”. The new Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel shared his plans for the Federal IT Budget followed by a panel of distinguished federal agency CIOs discussing the IT Budget in depth.

But whenever we hear about flat budgets or doing more with less, many people immediately react by saying “jobs will be cut”. So with this in mind, I asked the agency CIOs from USDA, DHS, DoD and VA what role does management play in maintaining its workforce through efficiency streamlining.

Chris Smith, CIO, USDA responded that there are no true career path management systems within the federal government to provide guidance to federal workers who want to carve out their career. At the USDA, they are making training available for all employees who want to keep up with their certifications and stay ahead of the curve on technology advancements.

Roger Baker, CIO, VA added that it is also the employee’s responsibility to find and complete the training that is necessary to stay current. Management and their employees share this responsibility 50/50. Additionally, Mr. Baker added that employees need to find their passion and share that with their management. Is there a particular challenge you want to tackle such as “I want to be the best mobile app developer for this agency” or “I believe efficiency can be found to solve this recurring problem and I am going to find it!”.

I really liked Mr. Baker’s point that federal employees had to find their passion and share it with the management as a step to a career management path.

What is your career path and how are you mapping it?

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David Dejewski

Kathleen – few people understand this subject as well as you do. Nice post.

For those interested in a management track, I’ve put together a series of posts that define the leadership pipeline – based loosely on the book with the same title. Of course, I’ve thrown in some personal experience to augment the material a bit. It starts with An Overview of the Pipeline. Hope it is helpful for your readers.