Carter Announces “Force of the Future”

Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Nov. 18 announced the first steps in his “Force of the Future” initiative, a months-long review of how the Pentagon can look to the private sector to better develop, recruit, and retain service members and civilians. The review, led by Brad Carson, the acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, was aimed at increasing DOD’s “permeability to new people and ideas,” Carter wrote in a me?mo. The effort, which ran from April to August, included more than 150 subject matter experts and the reviews of more than 100 studies related to personnel management, talent management, and private sector human resources practices. “While the military cannot and should not replicate all aspects of the private sector, we can and should borrow best practices, technologies, and personnel management techniques in commonsense ways that work for us … so that in future generations, we’ll keep attracting people of the same high caliber we have today,” Carter said in a Wednesday speech announcing the effort at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.