How CREC Partners with OEA to Capture Value of Industry Resilience Activities

By: Lee Winkler, Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness

CREC fulfills three key roles in the Office of Economic Adjustment Industry Resiliency Project. First, CREC acts as the teller of grantees’ stories, working with grantees to identify their impacts and summarize their activities. Second, CREC provides technical assistance to grantees, helping grantees implement their projects successfully and identify key resources to aid their projects. Lastly, CREC acts as a convener through the Annual OEA Convening and various learning communities, bringing together grantees to share best practices, individual challenges, and identify new strategies.

The Industry Resilience program, formerly known as the Defense Industry Adjustment program, originally framed grantees’ impacts in four categories: Organize, Analyze, Plan, and Implement. Many OEA grantees developed their projects around this initial framework. With new priorities from the DoD as part of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, CREC had to  reframe OEA grantee’s stories in terms of a new framework designed around increasing DoD resiliency, lethality, and readiness. As a part of this, CREC began collecting data on the quantitative impact of OEA grantees’ activities. The new DoD framework is designed to capture the following impacts on DoD:

• Resiliency: The DoD’s ability to respond to changes in military budget and demand for military services
• Lethality: The DoD’s ability to maintain superiority in its systems and capabilities
• Readiness: The DoD’s ability to ensure its equipment and technology can perform when needed, including ensuring the workforce is in place to respond to changes in DoD procurement.
• Cybersecurity Preparedness: Ensuring that DoD contractors are meeting DFARS cybersecurity standards, and not compromising the security of DoD military systems.

Additionally, the DoD is interested in community benefits that occur as a result of the OEA grant. This work helps companies manage the risks associated with the transition by the DoD to new technologies and weapon systems. Serious benefits exist for both the DoD and the grantees’ communities.