Sustain a Highly-Skilled, Professional Workforce Equipped with the Training, Tools, and Infrastructure to Meet Our Mission

  • Measures of Success: Increased knowledge of user needs; increased mix of interdisciplinary skills across workforce; improved employee satisfaction; operational collaboration and knowledge-sharing tools for NWS workforce; increased high performance computing capacity; expanded and sustained facilities and infrastructure; expanded availability and interoperability of environmental data

Objective: Extend weather, water, and climate services to provide ecological and health-based forecasts and services

Strategies for Achieving :

      • - Training:
        • - Train workforce in climate science to make NWS a strong partner in the delivery of NOAA climate services
        • - Increase and apply knowledge - through partnering, collaboration, and learning opportunities - of the missions and needs of NWS users across multiple sectors
        • - Enhance development and training programs to improve and expand core competencies of all NWS employees, including more interdisciplinary areas such as, ecology and health, social sciences and economics, communication, information technology, leadership, and management
        • - Implement new and enhanced methods and technologies for training delivery, such as simulations and on-demand training integrated into forecaster applications and other systems
      • - Diversity: Continue to promote and expand policies, programs, and practices that lead to a diverse workforce at all levels of the organization
      • - Recruiting: Improve recruitment strategies to ensure future workforce skills align with NWS vision, including hiring university-trained hydrologists, space weather forecasters, forecasters with training in social sciences and economics or other multidisciplinary skills
      • - Succession Planning: Partner with universities and professional societies on adapting curricula to emerging national and NWS needs
      • - Regional Collaboration: Continue to take a lead role in building and sustaining regional partnerships to better serve and adapt to changing needs
      • - International Collaboration: Continue to provide global leadership to advance NWS mission and vision by working with other countries and international organizations

      Objective: Provide state-of-the-art, reliable, secure, and extensible infrastructure

      Strategies for Achieving :

      • - Information Technology & Communications: Transform information technology and communication infrastructure to accommodate increasing data
      • - Internal Communication & Collaboration: Use emerging technologies and other tools to improve internal communication, collaboration, and knowledge sharing across NWS and NOAA
      • - Computing: Expand and sustain state-of-the-art computing architectures and high-performance computing to achieve modeling and prediction improvements
      • - Observing Systems: Seek new approaches and opportunities to ensure the integration and sustainment of NWS operational observing and dissemination systems
      • - Facilities:
        • - Expand opportunities to co-locate NWS facilities with key partners, as well as sustaining existing facilities through "green" improvements
        • - Ensure NWS facilities portfolio is appropriately aligned to support a reliable and secure work and living environment
      • - Equipment: Develop the next generation forecast and decision support system, to include data mining tools, advanced visualization, and interoperability with partner systems