AgLearn's Commitment to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility
As the "People's Department," the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) continues to fulfill its vision to serve millions of Americans every day through the work we do work with food, agriculture, economic development, science, natural resource conservation and preservation, and a host of other programs. To deliver on our mission, DISC’s AgLearn invests in a motivated workforce comprised of a diverse array of backgrounds, cultures, experiences, and ways of thinking. Data continues to show that organizations with greater diversity, particularly in leadership teams, have higher financial returns, are more innovative, and deliver smarter results. Diversity is one of our greatest strengths as we reach towards new opportunities and solve challenging problems. Having diverse teams and an inclusive culture is not only the smart thing to do, but the right thing to do as USDA seeks to serve an increasingly diverse country and help ensure America’s competitiveness across the globe.
AgLearn’s Health and Well-Being Events and Resources
The Office of Human Resources Management’s Employee Health and Wellness Program invites you to commemorate National Cancer Prevention Month (February) with a variety of programming and events for all USDA employees. AgLearn partnered with OHRM's Employee Experience team to create a Health and Well-Being site announcement, listing events sponsored by the Department, as well as courses and resources centered around health and well-being.
DISC launched the U.S. Air Force Contracting Information Technology (CON-IT) system in production 6 months earlier than planned, which enabled the USAF to decommission their legacy Standard Procurement System (SPS) contracting system ahead of schedule. The overall CON-IT Program has achieved over $80M in cost avoidance and/or savings by leveraging USDA DISC services. In November 2022, CON-IT will have 5,000 users, more than half of the current 8,000 contracting personnel and will continue to deploy to additional weapon system program offices. While supporting over 140 sites this year, CON-IT has set records for the number of active users using CON-IT, Contract Actions (67,909 and amount obligated ($20.4B versus last year FY21 at $15.6B).
DISC launched FEMA’s PIVOT application into production on September 30th, 2019 – approximately 1 year ahead of schedule. FEMA uses PIVOT as their primary System of Record (SOR) for the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). This was also recognized as one of the most secure applications ever tested by Johns Hopkins University in an independent review. The PIVOT services and support that DISC provided, have saved tens of millions in National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) Modernization dollars.
DISC has a rich history of meeting the demands of its customers and developing services and platform offerings that are not only technically sound, but also cost competitive in the Federal market space. Through years of efficiencies, additional footprint and economies of scale, we feel that not only are we cost competitive, in most cases we beat our competitors’ prices for like services.
DISC teams successfully completed Vulnerability Remediation Sprints; this persistence resulted in zero high, medium or low vulnerabilities in the DISC infrastructure, infrastructure support systems, FedRAMP and DoD Impact Level 4 environments.
Additional areas of excellence:
- Data Center Optimization
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- Closure of 37 agency-managed data centers saving $72.2M including the National Finance Center's migration of financial systems to DISC’s hosting services.
- Service Portfolio Modernization
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- Robotic Process Automation: early adoption already demonstrating a $3.7M return on investment—the equivalent of 53 FTEs!
- Enterprise Application Integration: Multiple applications successfully integrated with commercial cloud toolsets such as Salesforce.
- Commercial Cloud Brokering
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- Assisted seven USDA mission areas, four USDA staff offices and federal partners – with access to nearly $100M worth of commercial cloud services for agency-specific needs.
- DISC exceeds all Federal compliance standards at the highest level
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- The DISC Hosting Services effectively supports 100 additional security controls over other Government Cloud Service Providers that generally only support accreditation up to the FedRAMP level.
- DISC has been FISMA compliant within DISC Hosting Infrastructure managed services since 2004.