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Application Guidance for Career Planning & Training Initiative

The CFO Council is seeking applications from premier training providers to help revolutionize our approach to workforce training and to upskill our 140,000+ member federal financial management workforce. Instructions on how to apply and benefits of participating in this effort are found below.

Emerging technology is causing tremendous change within the federal workforce – making many current positions obsolete and creating new roles and processes. The roles created require new skills that are increasingly complex. To succeed, federal employees will need access to continuous learning tools and dynamic training content in a variety of modalities.

The CFO Workforce Modernization Working Group (the “WG”) is tasked with managing the federal financial workforce modernization needs. To do so, it is currently in the initial stages of implementing an overarching 10-year Workforce Modernization Strategy and implementing the Career Planning & Training Initiative described in further detail on this page.

As an extension of this broader workforce modernization effort, and in order to support the active lifelong learning that will be needed to succeed, the WG has recognized an urgent need for comprehensive employee career planning tools and a vast increase in access to training pathways for our employees. It is the CFO Council’s commitment to put in place a Version 1.0 career planning/training solution. This web page and resources below provide more details to education providers/vendors that may be interested in partnering in this initiative.

Note: This initiative is being taken on in close coordination with the Executive Office of the President / Office of Management and Budget and in coordination with other Executive Councils. It is anticipated that if this effort is highly successful, it could be expanded to serve broader segments of the 2.1 million federal workforce.

The envisioned tool will include two main features:

  1. FM career and training map: This feature will be an easy to navigate, highly detailed, career map for federal financial management (FM) employees hosted on CFO.gov.
    1. The career map will address the specific knowledge, skills, and experiences needed by federal FM employees within 54 competency areas and 3 General Schedule (GS) brackets (junior, mid, and senior-level employees).
    2. Employees will be able to reference this career map for detailed and timely guidance in determining what competency capabilities they should have at their current level and those recommended for advancement.
  2. Numerous embedded links to external trusted training/education provider content:
    1. The career map will integrate hundreds (an estimate) of links to specific external courses, or other training/educational content, provided by a limited number of external training providers. The external training content, of many different formats or modalities, will address specific employee career competency knowledge needs at different stages of career progression. Types of content sought may include:
      1. Graduate or undergraduate equivalent training content related to our 54 competency areas
      2. Content relevant for the ongoing education of Certified Public Accountants (or equivalent)
      3. Other content relevant to emerging knowledge/technology areas (e.g., Data Sciences, Analytics, RPA) or general federal employee skills/knowledge areas

Federal FM employees will be able to interact directly with the tool to procure courses and training content through and established procurement process. See the Application Package resource (also listed below) for more information.

Employees, while accessing the interactive web page career map (described above), would also find these embedded web links (to education/training provider content as described above), inserted where applicable, within the career map.

When employees looking for career guidance and training options click on the external links, employees would be taken off CFO.gov and onto the education/training provider website where they would be able to learn more about the offered course/content (curriculum, scope, modality type, pre requisites, price, etc.).

  • Employees would then be able to interact directly with the education/training provider to procure the course/content. Typically, the employee purchase process would make use of the government purchasing card (“P-Card”) – however, other modes of purchasing would be possible (e.g., bulk subscription, licenses, etc.).

We are seeking innovative and interested Training and Education providers that wish to partner with us in this expansive workforce modernization/upskilling effort. If selected as a partner, your course content will be interwoven as clickable links within our interactive career map for our workforce. Employees would then use their p-cards to purchase your content.

Given that we are only partnering with a few selected providers, this will give this small group of vendors promoted direct access to our employees.

How to Apply? Monitor this site for updates and revised contents. Mirror content, documents, and updates will also be shared on sam.gov. On sam.gov search for the RFI using the abbreviated search term “FEDS140K”.

Please note the milestone dates in the RFI that govern when/how questions should be submitted, when a Q&A Town Hall will be conducted, and the deadline for Applications.

12/13/21 Update: Due to increased interest in workforce initiatives, and coordination surrounding the launch of the President’s Management Agenda, we have further adjusted the timeline. Please note the changes in the documents above. We thank you very much for your interest in this initiative.

1/10/22 Update: Please note that we have published answers to questions on sam.gov.
Also attached here.

January 13, 2022 Update:
Thanks to all for your interest in this initiative and for accommodating the time extensions we’ve needed to make to the schedule. We look forward to sharing context about this initiative and answering your questions directly in our Town Hall session on January 21st at 9 AM. Please see the updated content posted on sam.gov for conference call information. You may locate the RFI on sam.gov by using the search term "FEDS140K".

3/4 Update: Thank you all very much for expressing interest in the RFI "Seeking Innovative Business Education Providers to Help Upskill a 140K+ Federal Workforce (FEDS140K)". We wanted to let you know that we've posted updated content. The updates include a change to the due date – which is now 3/8/22.

Successful applicants could realize the following benefits:

  • Actively promoted access to a 140,000+ member workforce via the Career Planning Tool: As a TTEP you will be one of seven, or fewer, organizations with the opportunity to embed links to your purchasable training content directly within the Version 1.0 Career Planning Tool. The Financial Management workforce is estimated to have approximately 140,000+ employees – each with an approximate training budget of $1,000+. In addition, leadership of the Financial Management functions of each of the CFO Act agencies will directly encourage usage of the Career Planning Tool and, by extension, links to your course content (if selected), and champion its value.
  • Controlled and monitored access to the full CFO Council and Member Agencies: TTEPs will be able to periodically present their course offerings, curriculum, and recommended approaches to workforce modernization and continuous learning to the CFO Council and Member Agencies (schedules permitting) as well as have the capability to conduct direct periodic surveys in order to gather training feedback and identify future and current course content needs.
  • Growth potential: If the Version 1.0 model is successful in meeting the needs of the 140,000+ members of the Financial Management workforce, it is likely that participation rates will be high and the approach could also be expanded to include other functional areas across Federal and state government (e.g., IT, Acquisitions, Operations, State Governments) – and larger segments of the Federal Workforce.
  • Visibility & fed-wide halo effect: TTEPs, by participating in this key Executive Branch initiative, will gain unique perspectives on agency workforce modernization needs and, to the extent the TTEP is willing, become a trusted partner advising and contributing to workforce modernization and continuous learning topics in the government sector. Reputational success in this area may serve as an enabler in pursuing other opportunities across government or the private sector.

Please see the RFI and Application Package Documents for the method to ask questions

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