Concerns persist over self-reported cyber readiness as DoD overhauls workforce management – Federal News Network

Cyber readiness reporting shouldn’t be treated as a “compliance drill,” but rather a tool the services can use to advocate for resources, Matthew Eisner said.
Pentagon officials acknowledged that military services could inflate cyber readiness levels as the Defense Department works to standardize how it manages its cyber workforce, but said the effort is still in its early stages and validation mechanisms are being developed to prevent “rubber-stamping” qualifications. 
While the Pentagon is moving away from relying solely on individual military services to self-assess cyber readiness, it still largely depends on self-reported data, which raises concerns about the accuracy of readiness reporting.
But Timothy Beard, associate civilian cyberspace and information technology career field manager at the Department of the Air Force, said commands are engaging with the process more seriously instead of treating it as paperwork and “making efforts to do that validation at those levels themselves.”
“It’s a concern of ours. We don’t want the, ‘Hey, it’s time to report. Just fill in something and send it. There needs to be some accuracy, there needs to be some validation in that process. And we know we’re in the early stages of reporting … I would expect at some point validation is going to come into play, whether it’s happening at the local level or somewhere within the command,” Beard said Friday during an Air & Space Forces Association Warfighters in Action event. 
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“Right now, it’s a ‘be honest,’ but we expect and we hope that, for the sake of your mission, you are doing the right things to qualify your folks,” he added.
Matthew Eisner, the department’s cyberspace workforce development lead, said readiness reporting shouldn’t be treated as a “compliance drill,” but rather a tool the services can use to better understand their workforce and advocate for additional resources.
“We need to change the script. We want to change what the way people are looking at this is. This is a benefit for you,” Eisner said.
“There isn’t a single organization out there that hires an individual, lets them in the front door and says, ‘You can start doing all the defensive networks right now.’ They all run them through something, that’s the intent of residential qualifications to make sure that people have the capability. That’s all we’re trying to codify, is understanding what people can do and make that from a broader perspective in the department so we can present that to our senior leaders, and then we can advocate for resources for you, go to our congressional members and really push the envelope,” he added.
The Pentagon is moving toward an enterprise-wide approach to managing its cyber workforce as it works to bring consistency to how it identifies and qualifies cyber talent across the military services.
At the center of that effort is the DoD Cyber Workforce Framework, or DCWF, which establishes an “authoritative lexicon based on the work an individual is performing, not their position titles, occupational series, or designator.” The framework supports implementation of the department’s 8140 policy for developing its cyber workforce. Under that policy, the Pentagon has broadened its definition of cyber work to include roles spanning cyber operations, artificial intelligence, data and software engineering, among other job categories.
One of the promises of the new framework is improved visibility. Beard said the cyber workforce dashboard is a primary tool for gaining a “wide, big picture view of the overall cyber workforce.” The Defense Department uses its Advana data platform to integrate data from multiple systems and present a department-wide view of cyber readiness.
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But integrating data across the services is an ongoing effort. Both the services and the Defense Department are still learning how to report, aggregate and interpret cyber workforce data consistently.
“It’s a learning side on both ends. Just on the HR side, that’s 10 different systems, because we separate manpower and personnel across each of the military departments, and then we’re still working through how we’re collecting some of the qualification data. Some people have systems. Some people are doing that manually. I’m having to integrate all that up at the Department of War level so we can paint the department’s posture,” Alfredo Rodriguez, workforce innovation directorate deputy director, said.
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