Army Expeditionary Civilian Demand

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has long turned to its civilian employees to support overseas operations and emergencies. Yet there is no standardized, systematic process in place for collecting data on past civilian deployments or for identifying a pool of civilians who are available to deploy to future contingencies. The requirements for these expeditionary civilians are often the result of a compromise among defense components rather than based on actual historical or modeled demand. As the largest provider of civilians for DoD operations, the U.S. Army stands to benefit to a great extent from a more robust process for forecasting future demand for its civilian workforce. Although it has established organizations and processes to fulfill its staffing mix obligations, there is some question of whether the processes are efficient and effective and whether the Army's current approach to providing civilian personnel will be appropriate for future conflicts. To address potential gaps, it is important to examine DoD's targets for civilian staffing, how these needs may change, and what policies and procedures should be in place to ensure that the Army can continue to meet these demands. The modeling process described in this report supports the Army and-by extension-other DoD civilian force providers in aligning their available expeditionary civilian workforces with the future demand for these capabilities, with the goal of helping them forecast demand and better prepare to deploy civilians to a range of future scenarios.