Short tenures at OFPP hurt acquisition initiatives

Experts say a short tenure has

a tendency to stall initiatives

The Office of Federal Procurement Policy is losing another administrator relatively soon after his confirmation, which may be an impediment to advancing policies, according to one former OFPP official.

Since the late 1990s, administrators have stayed at OFPP for roughly two years. Steve Kelman was the last administrator to stay at OFPP for longer than that, from 1993 to 1997. Kelman is now a Harvard University professor and columnist for Federal Computer Week.

Dan Gordon, the current administrator, will leave at the end of the year for the George Washington University law school, where he will be associate dean of government procurement law studies.

When he leaves his office for the final time, he will have been administrator for about 25 months. Gordon was confirmed in November 2009.

A result of such short terms as administrator is that the office staff is pulled away from their inherently governmental functions of working on governmentwide procurement policies that affect agencies and industry.

“Unfortunately, the news of Dan leaving is that it disrupts the office and the focus on current initiatives,” said Robert Burton, former deputy OFPP administrator, who spent several years in the 2000s as acting administrator. He now is a partner at the Venable law firm.

Confirmation process

As Gordon leaves, the Barack Obama administration will once again have to find a suitable nominee. Once the next nominee is chosen, the White House staff will have to prepare the nominee for the Senate confirmation hearings, along with a crash course in the ongoing initiatives.

“It’s a lot of work,” Burton said.

While that's disruptive enough, Burton said it's also difficult for the office when leaders come and go so frequently. Consistent leadership is good to have, but hard to attain under those circumstances. And it's detrimental to the office-holder himself, Burton added, because accomplishing anything of note in just a couple of years in office is unlikely.

Gordon, however, was one who did manage to make some progress on initiatives during a brief tenure, Burton said.

Gordon's initiatives

One of his most significant initiatives was that Gordon worked to rebuild the federal acquisition workforce.

He gathered support to provide funding for more employee training, and he updated the certification standards for contracting officers. Gordon's reforms also increased training standards for contracting officer's representatives and program managers, both of which are considered part of the acquisition workforce.

Gordon also pushed agencies to think strategically when buying commodities. He encouraged strategic sourcing and getting agencies to take advantage of the government’s size.

“We are—finally—leveraging the federal government’s purchasing power as the world’s largest customer to deliver a better value for the American taxpayers,” Jacob Lew, director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote on the OMBlog Nov. 2.

Gordon also brought attention to innovative methods to purchasing, such as electronic reverse auctions and interagency contracting.

The listening ear, the reasoned mind

In addition, Gordon was someone that government officials and industry leaders felt like they could talk to.

“Perhaps his most important contribution was his tireless efforts to bring open, reasoned debate and discussion back to federal acquisition,” said Stan Soloway, president and CEO of the Professional Services Council.

Gordon sought to mitigate the hyperbole and rhetoric of the procurement world with a Myth-Busters Campaign, Soloway said.

Steve Schooner, a procurement law professor at the George Washington University law school, said Gordon deserves a lot of credit for reviving the Front Line Forum, which was instituted by Kelman and had largely fallen away in recent years.

The forum let the procurement policy leaders hear from the workers dealing daily with government purchasing.

“It's hard to quantify how important this outreach is—not just engaging with the operational community, but actually listening to the concerns and suggestions and aspirations of the people upon whom the entire process depends,” Schooner said.

He said he’s hopeful that future OFPP administrators will recognize the importance of being “the acquisition workforce’s cheerleader-in-chief.”

Schooner said a major difference between Gordon and Kelman is the workforce. Kelman faced trend in the 1990s to decrease the size of the acquisition workforce, which he could not stop. Gordon inherited a far more starved acquisition workforce. One of his high-profile initiatives was rebuilding the workforce, and he had kept it on everyone’s radar screen.

It will be “one that will pay dividends to the government and the taxpayers for years to come,” Schooner said.

Kelman too said the government will benefit from the emphasis on the workforce.

“Dan did a good job fighting for increasing the numbers in the depleted contracting workforce,” he said.

What the next administrator needs

As the search will begin for the next administrator, the nominee needs the know-how understand the procurement world and the skills to see what in that world needs attention, experts say. Decisions and policy initiatives have far-reaching effects, such as rebuilding the acquisition workforce and insourcing government work.

Burton said it’s a very technical field and not merely a management position.

“And with only two years, you don’t want to spend the first six months helping the new administrator understand the Federal Acquisition Regulation, he said.

Gordon brought significant expertise from his 17-year stint at the Government Accountability Office, where he served in several legal roles, finishing as acting general counsel.

“Dan has brought a mixture of great substantive procurement knowledge and great interpersonal skills to this job—exactly the mix of skills you want in an OFPP administrator,” Kelman said.

Gordon set the bar high for the next political appointee to have technical knowledge, according to experts.

And so the search for a new administrator begins.

Read the story: FCW.com - Short tenures at OFPP hurt acquisition initiatives

DHS requires 'Hi, I'm a contractor' intro

Could the requirement undermine the teamwork
that's essential in a workforce?

Homeland Security Department officials want to draw a bright and shiny line between the two teams that work inside a federal department: the federal employees and the contractors.

Under DHS’ FirstSource II draft request for proposals, officials are telling contractor employees to announce in all interactions that they are not federal employees but are, instead, contractors.

For example, contractor employees must introduce themselves, in person and in voicemails, as employees of their companies. They cannot try to elide the difference by saying they work for DHS. And if they're employed by a subcontractor, they have to identify the company, not say they are employees of their prime contractor.

And federal Homeland Security Department officials—not to be confused with contractors—are suggestion that these announcements aren’t something for people to laugh about over lunch.

“Failure to adhere to this requirement may constitute grounds for termination for default of the base FirstSource II contract,” the draft states. Serious stuff.

The Defense Department has a similar rule. Contractors must announce, wherever they go, that they are contractor, not a federal employee. Officials instituted the rule in 2010.

The “Hi, I’m a contractor” rule may show who’s who in a conversation or meeting. But it won’t help in blending the workforce, some readers have said.

Contractors fear that the rule could undermine the teamwork that’s essential in that type of workforce.

“How do you maintain unity of community when segregation is forced?” a reader asked.

Read the Acquisitive Mind blog: FCW.com - DHS requires 'Hi, I'm a contractor' introduction

DOD’s use of services contracts gets congressional scrutiny

The House version of the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act would require the Defense Department to hire an outside organization to assess its use and oversight of services contracts.

The House Armed Services Committee believes DOD doesn't have a strategic approach to managing its service contracts, according to the committee’s June 18 report on the authorization bill (H.R. 2637).

As a result, “the department is at risk of being unable to identify and correct poor contractor performance in a timely manner and is at risk of paying contractors more than the value of the services they performed,” the committee wrote.

The House passed the bill June 25 by a vote of 389-22. The Senate committee has marked up its version of the bill, but the committee has yet to approve it.

Under the House bill, the assessment would be conducted by a federally funded research and development center. The center would look at the guidance DOD provides its acquisition workforce on how to develop a services contract, including how to define requirements and the associated performance metrics.

The center also would look at whether or not DOD has enough people in its acquisition workforce to do the work appropriately. The report would be due in March 2010.

Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the legislation supports the Defense Secretary Robert Gates' plan to increase the civilian acquisition workforce’s size and to reduce DOD’s reliance on contractors for critical acquisition duties. DOD officials want to hire 9,000 new government employees and convert 11,000 contractor jobs to DOD civilian personnel.

“Defense acquisition reform is a top priority for our committee,” Skelton said in statement June 17 after his committee approved the legislation.

In another acquisition reform, the committee wants to find ways for DOD to buy IT more quickly.

IT systems require regular updates, because of changes in technology, which affects critical parts of the DOD infrastructure. But DOD’s process for buying IT makes it difficult for the department to keep up, according to a DOD task force.

The acquisition process is time-consuming and cumbersome, the task force wrote in a March report. "The process should be agile and geared to delivering meaningful increments of capability in approximately 18 months or less."

The House bill would allow DOD to pick 10 IT programs every year in which to test new procurement processes.Acquisition reforms in the House's fiscal 2010 National Defense Authorization Act concentrate on oversight of service contracts and buying information technology quickly.

Read the story: FCW.com News - DOD’s use of services contracts gets congressional scrutiny

Acquisition workforce: Social media could be big draw

The government acquisition community ought to take a cue from President Barack Obama’s campaign strategy and use social media technology to bolster its ranks, one lawmaker says.

The government needs to be brave enough to draw on the younger generation’s new ways of interacting to help attract them to government service and to simply improve how agencies run, said Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.), speaking at a congressional hearing last week.

Many older federal employees may not be as comfortable with that technology, but the up-and-coming employees live by it. “This is their primary way of thinking,” he said.

Obama’s campaign captured young people’s attention like no other presidential candidate has before. It created Change.gov, a hip Web site describing Obama’s agenda. But Obama also sent out text messages and had a presence on Facebook, MySpace and numerous other social networking sites. Obama posted videos on YouTube. He even tweeted.

As a candidate, Obama was “a socially enabled, socially connected, socially aware, socially conscious leader,” Barry Libert, author of “Barack, Inc.: Winning Business Lessons of the Obama Campaign,” said in a recent speech.

At the hearing, Bilbray said the older generations that didn’t grow up with this technology will always be somewhat blind to it, unlike the younger people who have never known life without that technology.

“First of all, it intimidates us to some degree, and we may not understand it. But the potential is huge,” he said.

The next generation is heading toward more Web 2.0 tools and collaboration from the crowd.

The General Services Administration already has a technology-rich culture, said David Drabkin, acting chief acquisition officer at GSA, who testified at the hearing. The agency is adopting cloud computing and Web 2.0 collaboration tools internally and using social networking sites such as Facebook to interact with the public.

“We are on the edge,” he said.

Mary Davie, assistant Federal Acquisition Service commissioner for assisted acquisition services at GSA, is already thinking about the application of social media to acquisition. In a column in this week’s print edition of Federal Computer Week, Davie suggests opening the process of defining an acquisition’s requirements to get insight from a community of experts, inside or outside of the government.

“Using the wisdom of the crowd to define requirements and the best development process, participants could propose ideas based on experience, good practices, and standards, question and weed out bad ideas, build on one another’s ideas, and float the best to the top,” she writes.

Like Bilbray, Davie sees an opportunity not only to improve procurement but to appeal to younger recruits.

“Imagine what this might do to attract and retain the Net Generation workforce we are always seeking out,” Davie wrote.

At the hearing, Shay Assad, acting deputy undersecretary of defense for acquisition and technology, said technology will bring major changes in acquisition during the next two years.

The department is developing a database that will give Defense Department contracting officials quick access to information on business deals across the department, such as how the department negotiates with certain contractors, what they buy, and how much they may.

The system will be based on information collected by the Defense Contract Management Agency, which is the hub for analysis of the value and costs of DOD’s procurements.

At present, the individual services often don’t share information and know little about what the other services are buying, even from the same contractor, Assad said. “The fact of the matter is that we are not as capable as a number of organizations in terms of being able to share that information, but we are getting there,” he said.

Read the rest of the story: FCW.com News - Acquisition workforce: Social media could be big draw

Think twice before insourcing government work

A report says the Obama administation should be careful before taking jobs from contractors and giving them to agencies

The Obama administration and Congress should proceed cautiously as they attempt to take work away from contractors and hand it to agencies' employees, according to a report released today.

“A rush to insource thousands of positions, while trying to take on ever more government programs, can end in disaster,” wrote Raj Sharma, president of the Federal Acquisition Innovation and Reform Institute, in a report titled "The Move to 'Insourcing'…Proceed with Caution."

Agencies should concentrate first on removing contractors from jobs already defined as inherently governmental and duties central to agencies’ missions, the report states. At the same time, officials need to consider insourcing other jobs in longer-term phases, he wrote, adding that the government can handle the shifting load much easier in stages rather than all at once.

“Rushing to undo what has been in the making for years — perhaps decades — will be counterproductive,” Sharma wrote.

Moreover, taking work from contractors must be done deliberately and based on facts, not innuendo and rhetoric, he wrote.

President Barack Obama often depicts contractors as taking advantage of the government.

However, contractors are a major component of how the government operates, Sharma said, and they often perform work that requires specialized expertise, Sharma added.

“The current rhetoric that demonizes all contractors, instead of those few that are guilty of fraud and abuse, will only deter the best suppliers that we so badly need from competing for government business,” he wrote.

He added that an essential component of success for Obama’s plans for health care reform, energy independence and social innovation will be the technical expertise, innovation and scale that industry can bring.

Meanwhile, experts say experienced federal employees are attractive to private-sector companies, which often offer more to those employees than the government does. Also, a large number of government employees are nearing retirement, and agencies’ acquisition jobs are remaining vacant because few people are seeking those jobs.

Obama’s calls to join public service can only do so much to help find people to do the work, Sharma wrote. The government needs to reconsider its recruiting efforts, pay and professional development policies to make them competitive with the private sector before agencies dramatically insource jobs.

“While it may be feasible to hire thousands of people during the current economic downturn, it will be difficult to retain this talent unless systemic human-capital issues are addressed,” he wrote.

Sharma said officials should answer the following questions before bringing work in-house:

Which positions should be insourced?
How and when should they be insourced?
What will attract the people needed to do the jobs once they are brought in-house?
How will the government retain the employees who are doing the insourced jobs?

Read the story: FCW.com News - Report: Think twice before insourcing government work

Acquisition work a tough sell

Bureaucracy, lack of prestige drive away potential workers

With the summer hiring season getting under way, the federal government would appear to be in a perfect position to expand the ranks of its acquisition workforce, if only it could stop driving away potential hires.

The good news is that the job market is swamped with college graduates looking for work — and some seasoned professionals who are re-entering the job market for financial reasons.

The federal government, which some workers might have avoided in years past, should be an attractive employer because it offers something many companies cannot: stability.

But then there is the bad news: The federal government is still a bureaucracy. New employees are likely to be frustrated by their lack of decision-making authority and little opportunity to try innovative ideas.

“The federal government is sitting in a pretty good place right now,” said Steve Kempf, assistant commissioner of acquisition management at the General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service. “But I’m not sure we’re going to stay there.”

Several years ago, Congress gave agencies some help by granting them direct-hire authority for acquisition-related positions. That means managers can hire new employees themselves rather than going through the cumbersome process at the Office of Personnel Management.

Congress has also allocated money for agencies to set up booths at job fairs, making it possible to reach potential hires who might not have considered government work.

Once the new employees have been hired, officials often take them on field trips. A visit to a Coast Guard cutter or air traffic control tower shows the new recruits how their work helps the government and country. Many experts say people take more pride in their jobs when they know what their participation brings the government.

However, the thrill of such visits fades fast, leaving new employees wondering what the future holds for them. “You have to have a path to success, and right now the government doesn’t provide that,” said Max Stier, president and chief executive officer of the Partnership for Public Service. There are a number of barriers to success, he added.

The acquisition field has some unique obstacles, experts say. At most agencies, contracting officers are considered less important than they once were, giving the job less prestige and visibility despite its importance to agencies’ success, said Kempf, a career acquisition employee.

“I think we’ve lowered them in the food chain,” he said. When Kempf entered the field two decades ago, contracting officers were revered and had their own offices. Today, they’ve been downgraded to cubicles, he said.

That demotion leaves the contracting officer as simply another step in the purchasing process. But procurement skills should be a core competency because they involve negotiating prices, researching the marketplace, reviewing proposals and awarding contracts on a basis that will withstand protests, said Alan Chvotkin, executive vice president and counsel at the Professional Services Council.

However, once they’ve chosen the acquisition field, employees have no incentive to pursue a career in government procurement, experts say.

“Frankly, they have every reason to fear for their careers,” said Steven Schooner, an associate law professor and co-director of the Government Procurement Law Program at George Washington University.

Congress, watchdog groups and the news media criticize the acquisition community and pounce on mistakes regardless of whether they are fraud or honest errors.

“Competing with the environment we have now, we will find every way to push them out the door,” Kempf said. Bosses will criticize acquisition employees for every mistake they make, even when they’re still learning, he said. The employees who were wowed at the job fair by the stories of being the United States’ buyer will find they don’t have the job that had piqued their interest. Agency managers won’t trust them to judge situations and will instead give them less challenging work, he added.

Younger workers recognize that situation and are not attracted to acquisition.

“The jobs just don’t smell good,” Schooner said.

Meanwhile, young employees can easily be attracted by the private sector’s portrayal of opportunities for leadership, excitement and playing a part in something that’s going to change the world. Companies can woo them with more money and benefits, too.

Beyond the younger generation, the government retirement system creates incentives for experienced career employees to leave for the private sector, taking their knowledge with them, said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), a member of the congressional Smart Contracting Caucus and ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

As the government faces that workforce shortage, its spending has increased dramatically in recent years — nearly doubling since 2000 — and the size of the workforce has increased only minimally. As a result, contracting officers’ jobs now require getting as much done as possible in a short time, despite the fear of a news-making mistake, experts say.

“Their incentive is volume,” said John Needham, director of acquisition and sourcing management at the Government Accountability Office.

Read the story: FCW.com News - Acquisition work a tough sell

Experts: Acquisition jobs offer few incentives

Federal contracting careers losing appeal

Federal acquisition employees have no good reason to continue their careers in government procurement, a panel of experts said May 19.

Contracting specialists have been relegated to ordinary positions at agencies after once being held in high esteem, said Steve Kempf, assistant commissioner of acquisition management at the General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service.

“I think we’ve lowered them in the food chain,” said Kempf, a career acquisition employee. When Kempf entered the field two decades ago, contracting officers were revered and had their own offices. He said today though they’ve been downgraded to cubicles.

His point was an underlying theme of a discussion among eight government acquisition experts hosted by the congressional Smart Contracting Caucus. They said the acquisition community is being criticized by Congress and the news media, which pounce on mistakes regardless of whether they are fraud or honest errors.

“Contracting officers get beat down a lot,” Kempf said, adding that one mistake could end a career.

“Frankly, they have every reason to fear for their careers,” said Steve Schooner, an associate law professor and co-director of the Government Procurement Law Program at George Washington University.

Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, said oversight and accountability aren’t punishment. However, overseers inside and outside government need to determine when an error is fraud or an honest mistake.

Despite the fear of making a career-ending error, contracting officers today focus on accomplishing as much as possible in a short time, the experts said.

“Their incentive is volume,” said John Needham, director of acquisition and sourcing management at the Government Accountability Office.

Government spending has increased dramatically in recent years — nearly doubling since 2000 — and the size of the overall workforce has increased only minimally. The workload pressures are stressful for acquisition employees. They hope they don’t make a major mistake, but they don’t have time to check all the details of each acquisition, experts said.

There are few other incentives for acquisition employees to stay with the government. The private sector can offer them more money and benefits. Furthermore, the government retirement system creates incentives for employees to leave for the private sector, said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), a caucus member and ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Experts also said it takes months to get a job with the government because of its broken hiring system.

Overall, the field has lost its luster because it’s now an administrative job, the panelists said.

Members of the younger generation recognize that and are not attracted to the acquisition field. Schooner said the descriptions of government openings on USAJobs.gov are generic and boring. “The jobs just don’t smell good,” he said.

Read the story: FCW.com News - Experts: Acquisition jobs offer few incentives

Acquisition Workforce: Clerk vs. Businessman

Government officials have been concerned for several years about the coming wave of retirements by federal employees, especially in the field of acquisition. But the Obama administration sees a real upside.

In its fiscal 2010 budget proposal’s Analytical Perspectives, the administration writes:

The retirement wave also presents an opportunity to reform and re-energize the federal workforce by re-evaluating what the workforce does and how it does it. It will provide an opportunity to transform the government’s workforce capacity to address 21st-century challenges by implementing 21st-century systems and processes to acquire, develop, engage, compensate, recognize and effectively retain talented employees.

At a procurement conference on Thursday, a former Army contracting officer said the retirement wave will allow the acquisition workforce to become a new breed of thinkers and strategists. And the days of procurement clerks who have for decades pushed their papers and rarely taken time to consider business strategies will fade away, he said. Meanwhile, he said the incoming workforce will arrive with a business-savvy outlook, instead of the bureaucratic rubber-stamping of program managers’ demands.

He said the retirees’ replacements will come with a 21st-century mindset and want to be more involved throughout the process. They will want to find the best solutions for a contract — sort of like bargain hunters. The incoming generation of new workers wants to make a difference in their field, and that will make a huge difference in contracting. The incoming generation won’t clock out of work as soon as their shift is over as “the clerk generation” does, he said but they will stick around until the work is done.

That workforce will also learn that the actual procurement is only one small piece of a broader process known as acquisition. It’s a change in thinking that acquisition leaders are trying to incorporate today. Purchasing along with planning out strategies before and managing contracts after they’re awarded entail acquisition. Contracting officers, contracting officer’s technical representatives and even program managers are parts of the acquisition.

However the former contracting officer said, the mentality of the 21st-century workforce may not take hold until the retirement wave hits.

Will the retirement wave have such an effect?

The hidden force in acquisition

Some of the most influential people in the federal acquisition community are also the least well known.

They make critical decisions at every step of the acquisition process, yet the Federal Acquisition Regulation does not mention them. Any reform initiative that does not take them into account is bound to fail, yet the Office of Federal Procurement Policy rarely takes note of them in memos.

But that is beginning to change. Slowly but surely, federal agencies are coming to realize that contracting officer’s technical representatives (COTRs) play an essential — if underappreciated — role in government contracting.

Even the Government Accountability Office is trying to get a handle on the community.

“We have no really clear picture of how many of those there are, what their training and skills are, and so forth,” said John Needham, director of acquisition and sourcing management at GAO, during an April 28 congressional hearing on the Defense Department’s acquisition workforce. “That’s one area we saw as a need.”

COTRs serve as a vital link between their better-known colleagues — program managers and contracting officers — and help translate operational requirements into executable and manageable contracts.

“They’re the principal people who bring these worlds together,” said Robert Burton, former deputy administrator at OFPP and now a partner at Venable law firm.

COTRs also keep tabs on how well contractors are meeting their requirements. Agencies have learned the hard way that they cannot hand that task to new employees or pile it on an already overworked acquisition staff.

So as contracting spending rises and the complexity of contracts increases, COTRs have become the linchpin of government contracting.

Performance pressure points

Agencies are finally beginning to appreciate COTRs because agencies are spending much more money on services compared to a decade ago. For example, DOD spent $202 billion through services contracts in 2008, compared to $92 billion 2001.

“There are a lot more moving parts to keep hold of and a lot more contracts to manage today,” said Mary Davie, assistant commissioner of the Office of Assisted Acquisition Services at the General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service.

Davie took a job as a COTR in 1989, when she was 23 years old. It was a good way to get some on-the-job training, she said. She made sure that products came in on time and in good condition. “They were sort of turning to me for getting what was needed and keeping the project on schedule,” she said.

In recent years, agencies have been under pressure from the White House and Congress to determine whether they are getting their tax dollars’ worth from contracts, said Elizabeth Miller, vice president of Government Horizons, a nonprofit acquisition training organization.

Therefore, they are trying to develop more sophisticated ways to measure contractor performance. Those metrics and disciplines such as earned value management can get complicated when it comes to technical services contracts.

COTRs are responsible for building such metrics into contracts and sounding the alarm when contractors go astray. Communication must happen early and often, Miller said. “It’s not about waiting for the monthly progress report to find out, ‘Oh, we have a problem.’”

Davie said COTRs also explain to contractors what the program managers need and what the contracting language requires of them.

In addition, COTRs must keep in close touch with contracting officers about progress and suggest modifications if things are off kilter, experts say.

“The COTRs go back and forth,” Burton said.

COTRs come of age

With President Barack Obama’s push to put more contracting information online for public consumption, several experts said COTRs’ duties will become more visible, which will force them to manage projects even more carefully.

With billions of stimulus dollars to spend, the increased burden on COTRs worries many inspectors general. They know agencies will have their hands full managing that money, which comes with new demands from the administration to track where the money is going and what it yields.

Numerous IGs have issued reports recently detailing their concerns about their acquisition workforces. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s requirements seem to demand larger acquisition workforces than agencies have. Existing employees are already struggling to manage increasing sums of money and transactions, even without the stimulus funds.

Procurement officials expect that actions associated with the stimulus funding will be complex, requiring more rigor and oversight. That will, in turn, increase the demands on COTRs and other contract specialists, according to a recent report from the Energy Department’s IG.

In today’s environment, COTRs can’t be young people fresh out of college, as they often were in the past, officials say. They must be savvy and experienced experts in their fields who understand both the procurement and program management sides of acquisition.

In recent years, “there was a shifting expectation for a higher level of competence in understanding and collaborating on the ‘how’ versus the ‘what,’” said Chuck Harris, a former Air Force contracting officer and now president and chief executive officer of Inflection Point Solutions, a training and consulting company.

It hasn’t always been that way. DOD, the world’s biggest buyer, has not always filled the slots for contracting officer’s representatives -- DOD's equivalent to the COTR -- with the best people. It is not uncommon for CORs overseas in war zones to have no training. And generally, all COR training is geared for times when operations are slow, so it is barely adequate when situations get tense, the Senate Armed Services Committee wrote in a report last year.

Assigning a soldier to the role of a COR would seem like a good way to boost someone’s career by providing a launching point into the contracting field. But too often, the soldier who takes on that role doesn’t have any relevant experience, the committee wrote. Then the situation gets worse.

“The COR assignment is often used to send a young soldier to the other side of the base when a commander does not want to have to deal with the person,” the committee wrote.

The Army wants to correct the situation. Officials are spreading the word about CORs’ role in contracting and are teaching Army commanders, staff members and people outside contracting the value of CORs.

“The COR’s role is key to ensuring that the government is getting what it is paying for with appropriate oversight,” Edward Harrington, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for procurement, told a House subcommittee in March.

In April, Jeffery Parsons, executive director of the year-old Army Contracting Command, said an entire division is dedicated to fixing its COR program. And the Army published the “Deployed COR Handbook” to supplement CORs’ training when they’re out in the field.

Sizing up the COTRs

But even as COTRs grow in importance and receive more recognition, officials are still struggling to form a clear picture of the community.

One official called it a mysterious group because agencies and analysts know so little about them. They’re often hidden behind full-time jobs in areas such as information technology or engineering.

In its 2008 report on the acquisition workforce, the Federal Acquisition Institute said it couldn’t identify COTRs because agencies’ records and official guidance about them are so ambiguous. It deferred analysis of COTR demographics until the role is better defined and agencies keep better records.

Officials recognize that the COTR’s role is also growing in importance because the future of government contracting will likely mirror the recovery act rules.

“The program managers rely on them, and the contracting officers rely on them,” Burton said. “They’re really the bridge.”

Read the story: FCW.com News - The hidden force in acquisition

17 words that will change acquisition

Buried deep within the $787 billion economic stimulus law is a small provision, barely noticeable on a quick skim, that could well change the federal government’s procurement practices for years to come.

The provision is just 56 words long, and the core of it is only 17: “To the maximum extent possible, contracts funded under this act shall be awarded as fixed-price contracts.”

President Barack Obama frequently promises change, but the procurement approach of setting a price first and then proceeding with work is old school. Other approaches to federal contracts, such as cost-reimbursement and no-bid awards, have emerged in recent years to give procurement officials more flexibility while accepting more risk.

Obama’s Office of Management and Budget now calls fixed-price contracts “safe investments” for the massive amounts of taxpayer funds going out the door in the stimulus package. Last year, Democratic lawmakers clamped down on cost-plus contracts in the fiscal 2009 National Defense Authorization Act, which became law Oct. 14, 2008. And now, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that Obama signed Feb. 17 includes the provision that limits contracts as much as possible to those with fixed prices.

However, many procurement experts are critical, worried that the administration is limiting the use of other contract approaches that have a legitimate place in a contracting officer’s toolbox.

It’s an old debate. While proponents say fixed-price contracts commit companies to performing work for a set amount and allow agencies to budget appropriately, some experts say other contract types offer a flexibility that is necessary in certain situations. And, they add, fixed-price contracts can eventually cost the government more because contractors are likely to base their bids on the upper end of their expected costs. Other contract types, such as cost-plus, allow agencies to pay less if the final cost to the contractor is closer to the lower end of the range.

Many see fixed-price contracts as “the panacea for waste, fraud and abuse,” said Ellen Brown, former legislative director for the Republican staff of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “Those of us who understand government procurement…know it’s not true.”

Avoid risk

In their fiscal 2010 budget proposal, titled “A New Era of Responsibility,” Obama administration officials wrote that cost-type contracts -- any of several kinds that start with the actual cost as a base and adjust the final price to include such things as a profit margin or an incentive for superior work -- are particularly vulnerable to exploitation. Such contracts offer no incentive for companies to control costs, they wrote, adding that those contracts increased 75 percent under President George W. Bush.

Furthermore, many lawmakers have said they believe contractors often take advantage of the government, especially when agencies enter into agreements in which prices aren’t set from the beginning.

The Obama administration said the stimulus package seeks to halt such abuses. Office of Management and Budget officials said agencies should ensure reasonable contractor risk and economic performance when selecting the contract type for a project that will use stimulus money.

“Fixed-price contracts provide maximum incentive for the contractor to control costs and perform effectively and impose a minimum burden upon the contracting parties,” OMB Director Peter Orszag wrote in a memo issued Feb. 18. “These contracts expose the government to the least risk.”

When an agency proposes using a riskier type of contract, it must first make certain it has evaluated all alternatives, Orszag wrote. If the agency doesn’t choose the fixed-price approach, officials must appoint an appropriate number of qualified acquisition employees to oversee the contract.

In his address to Congress Feb. 24, Obama said Cabinet secretaries — just like the mayors and governors who will receive stimulus money — are accountable to him and to the American people for the money they spend.

“Here in Washington, we’ve all seen how quickly good intentions can turn into broken promises and wasteful spending,” Obama said. The administration plans to track stimulus spending at a Web site called Recovery.gov.

Casting a dark shadow

Recovery.gov features another measure that more subtly nudges agencies to choose fixed-price contracts: Other kinds of contracts and sole-source awards must be posted in a special section of Recovery.gov.

“A summary of any contract awarded with such funds that is not fixed-price and not awarded using competitive procedures shall be posted in a special section of the Web site,” the legislation states.

Stan Soloway, president and chief executive officer of the Professional Services Council, an industry trade group, said that approach puts contracting officers under pressure to keep their work out of the spotlight. Posting the information in a separate section could cast a dark shadow over the contract by implying there’s something unsuitable about it, even when it might be the best kind of contract for that procurement, Soloway said.

Contracting officers prefer to do their work in quiet obscurity, but they can face significant repercussions for making bad acquisition choices. “They already feel like they’re on the front lines,” Soloway said.

One contracting officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss legislation, criticized the micromanaging nature of the provision. “When are they going to stop telling me how to do my job?” he asked.

The officer said he and his fellow professionals understand the procurement process better than members of Congress do. Although lawmakers act like they know the process as well as the people in the field do, he said, they fail to recognize that contracting officers need many options for finding the best fit for agencies seeking a contractor’s services.

Learn from the past

In an era in which development proceeds rapidly in areas such as back-office information technology systems and military combat systems, contracting lessons from a decade ago can offer insight.

Computer software development expanded rapidly in the 1990s. However, it was still new, and agencies struggled to write clear definitions when buying new software that would work with old systems. At the time, the government used fixed-price contracts to buy software, Brown said. With the companies taking on the risk, the government paid a lot more for the software.

“Fixed-price contracts are completely appropriate when we know what we’re going to buy,” said Paul Kaminski, chairman of a National Research Council study on systems engineering for the Defense Department and undersecretary of Defense for acquisition and technology from 1994 to 1997. If there’s uncertainty, “I think we end up on the wrong end of the bargain negotiating a fixed-price contract.”

Experts agree that returning to the era of fixed-price contracts won’t protect the government from ballooning costs and could even lead to overpriced contracts.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said fixed-price contracts aren’t a simple solution to saving money, but they do work in certain circumstances.

“No acquisition of any kind, however diligent, can overcome a fatally flawed statement of work,” said Elliott Branch, executive director of contracts at the Naval Sea Systems Command.

Read the story: FCW.com News - 17 words that will change acquisition

Obama wants contracting overhaul

The way government agencies acquire the goods and services needed to carry out their responsibilities will take an abrupt 180-degree turn if President Barack Obama gets his way.

Obama made it clear last week that he wants to abandon the Bush administration’s drive to push more federal work into the private sector and, at the same time, toughen on contracts that he considers prone to exploitation by companies and wasteful to agencies.

“It’s time for this waste and inefficiency to end. It’s time for a government that only invests in what works,” Obama said in a news conference March 4. The same day, Obama signed a presidential memo putting the overhaul into motion.

The president’s push to have agencies interact differently with contractors is a sea change from the Bush era. Departments have become overly reliant on contractors, Obama's memo states. As a result, government spending through contracts has more than doubled since 2001, reaching more than $500 billion in 2008.

Obama would put more obstacles in front of contractors who might want to cheat the government with substandard work. And he plans to “in-source” federal work, a process of identifying outsourced work and bringing it back into agencies.

Furthermore, he’s moving away from cost-reimbursement and no-bid contracts by demanding that agencies use fixed-price contracts as much as possible.

The unexpected scope and sweep of Obama’s directive took Washington’s procurement community by surprise and prompted a wave of criticism from outside contractors and acquisition officials inside the government. Obama’s campaign rhetoric against procurement abuse might play well with the mainstream press and the general public, they say, but he’s missing some of the most crucial problems that plague federal procurement.

Critics say Obama’s proposals would do little to stem an explosion in the use of of task and delivery orders rather than full contracts. And it does not seem to offer any relief to an already stressed acquisition workforce.

“In an area as technical as procurement, it is not a good idea simply to translate campaign rhetoric into the nuts-and-bolts of government management,” said Steve Kelman, administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy from 1993 to 1997 and now a Harvard University professor, on his FCW.com blog, "The Lectern."

A major point of contention is the administration’s negative view of no-bid and cost reimbursement contracts. Although Obama’s memo cites the increase in those contract types, he misses the larger picture, Kelman said, which is all contracting has increased significantly in that span of time. According to an OFPP memo from 2008, the proportion of contracts that are fully competed has remained steady at more than 60 percent from 2003 to 2007.

“It is a higher priority to seek to increase [the] use of performance and cost incentives in cost-reimbursement [or time-and-materials] work than to attack cost-reimbursement contracting per se across the board,” Kelman wrote.

Obama said the Office of Management and Budget will issue governmentwide guidance by Sept. 30 on the appropriate use and oversight of sole-source and other types of noncompetitive contracts. He said the amount of money funneled through those types of contracts jumped from $71 billion in 2000 to $135 billion in 2008, which is a 47 percent increase. He instead wants to see more full-and-open competition for contracts.

Furthermore, OMB will develop more detailed guidance by July 1 to help agencies review their existing contracts to find the wasteful ones that are unlikely to meet their needs, the memo states.

“We will end unnecessary no-bid contracts and cost-plus contracts that run up the bill that is paid by the American people,” Obama said. He predicted his reforms would save the government $40 billion each year.

While those reforms might save money, experts said more dramatic savings could come from a well-educated and better-trained acquisition workforce. Obama needs to make training the workforce the paramount priority, not simply curtailing certain types of contracts, they say.

“That’s got to be the central theme,” said Robert Burton, former deputy Office of Federal Procurement Policy administrator from 2001 to 2008 and now partner at Venable law firm.

Many acquisition employees don’t fully understand the 1,949 pages of the Federal Acquisition Regulation and their agencies’ own regulatory supplements, Burton said. Training them to improve their understanding of and adherence to the laws could solve many contracting programs, he said.

Meanwhile, task and delivery orders are increasing with little guidance, Burton said. Today, more than 50 percent of the federal contracting expenditures go through huge task and delivery orders. Core problems exist with these orders, such as poorly defined requirements that are often out of scope of the contract, and limited competition for work. It’s an area that needs more guidance, he said.

Similarly, a panel of former Defense Department acquisition officials told senators last week that knowledgeable and experienced acquisition employees are the solution to improving programs and controlling costs.

Fixed-price contracts have a role in federal contracting, but contracting officers need a wider range of options, several government acquisition executives said. Officials should not discourage the acquisition community from using other appropriate contracts that might suit specific needs.

Still, experts say departments’ contracting officers must support the White House’s changes if agencies expect better contracting decisions and savings. Michael Sullivan, director of acquisition and sourcing management at the Government Accountability Office, said memos and legislation might not achieve the goals unless departments transform the overall acquisition culture.

Ray Bjorklund, a military officer and Defense Department acquisition official from 1971 to 1998 and now senior vice president and chief knowledge officer at FedSources, said Obama is aggressively pushing agencies to choose the right type of contracts.

Angela Styles, OFPP administrator from 2001 to 2003 and now partner at Crowell and Moring’s Government Contracts Group, said Obama might have hampered his efforts by over-generalizing the motives of contractors. The president will need good contractors to drive the initiative forward, cooperation that he might be less likely to get if they feel offended that he appeared to characterize all contractors as mercenary and untrustworthy.

“If you make one false turn as a contractor, you will be brought to your knees by the full power of the U.S. government," Styles said. "It is not a great place to be. The vast majority of government contractors understand that what they do is for the taxpayer and to make the federal government work better.”

Bringing the work home

Obama said he wants to limit the outsourcing of federal work, whereas the Bush administration sought to increase it. The question, as always, turns on the definition of inherently governmental work, which is work that only federal employees can properly do.

The fiscal 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Act already passed by the House would require a clarification of those functions. The Senate had not passed the bill as of March 6, but Obama has made limiting outsourcing a priority to pursue regardless of the bill's fate. The legislation would make it easier for agencies to pull work back into the agencies and away from contractors.

And so it appears that Obama, with the vocal support of Democrats in Congress in addition to Republicans such as Sen. John McCain of Arizona, is fundamentally changing the relationship between the public and private sectors. And it would also appear that the tide is in his favor. Several members of Congress made statements of support for Obama, and many of his proposed reforms are already incorporated in the current Defense Authorization Act, which President Bush signed last year.

“We must put an end to no-bid contracts and dishonorable procurement practices that are often the root cause of waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars,” said Rep. Edolphus Towns, (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Read the story: FCW.com News - Obama wants contracting overhaul

IG: Job competition saps staff

DOD auditor’s report sends clear signal on what the acquisition workforce needs

A team of Defense Department auditors, through a series of surveys at military bases, has determined several foundational acquisition workforce issues that experts say must be priorities for President-elect Barack Obama’s administration.

Officials told auditors from the DOD Inspector General’s Office that competitive sourcing — a process intended to improve efficiency by having federal employees contend with private sector firms for work — saps their employees’ attention from their jobs and leaves offices with insufficient contracting support.

Because competition pulls employees from their regular duties to rigorously gather and analyze data, managers are reluctant to take part in the process. Advocates of competitive sourcing argue that government organizations usually win the competitions and become more efficient in the process.

When the private sector wins, agencies usually lose their experienced workers, according to the IG report released Jan. 5.

More importantly, an Army Contracting Agency official told auditors that the agency faces constant turnover of contracting officers during competitions. Agency leaders worry about getting and keeping competent contracting officers — especially as purchases become more complex — but the practice intended to compel efficiency can drive away talented ones.

OMB’s influence

The IG auditors conducted the review at the request of members of Congress who want to ensure that the Office of Management and Budget has not been influencing DOD’s decisions on whether to conduct a public/private competition. The competitions are possible only for jobs that are not inherently governmental function, which only federal employees can do.

Military officers and the officials in charge of overseeing the competitions told the auditors they felt no pressure from OMB, according to the DOD IG report titled “Office of Management and Budget Influence Over DOD Public-Private Competitions.” The fiscal 2008 National Defense Authorization Act required the report.

The auditors concluded that early in 2008, the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) had put pressure on the Army to conduct the competitions, but the pressure waned by the end of the year. Meanwhile, officials at the Army Materiel Command and Army Installation Management Command said the chain of command pushed them more than OSD or OMB did, according to the report. The two major commands announced their competitions because of pressure to reach a goal that the Army already set.

Wayne Arny, deputy undersecretary of Defense for installations and environment, told the auditors that DOD independently determines its competitive sourcing program.

During the normal program and budget review process, the service branches create plans for public/private competitions.

The defense agencies are expected to carry out those plans, he said.



Arny added that competitive sourcing is an important management tool, and he encourages agencies to continue to use it as much as possible.

“Competitive sourcing consistently results in greater government efficiency and cost-savings to the taxpayer,” he wrote in a March 2008 memo. DOD saved more than $7 billion from competitions completed between fiscal 2000 and 2007, Arny said. The number could top $10 billion after the competitions started in 2008 are finished, he wrote.

A controversial initiative

Competitive sourcing is the second initiative on the Bush administration’s President’s Management Agenda. Administration officials believe the competitions decrease costs and trim a department’s operations.

Setting up the competitions can determine if it’s better to keep the work with federal employees or outsource it to contractors, officials say.

In the last Executive Branch Management Scorecard issued by OMB, released last week, only the Smithsonian Institution improved. Twenty-two of the 24 graded agencies received the top score or an average grade. The Energy Department and National Science Foundation again earned the lowest rating.

The sourcing initiative has never had widespread support: Congress steadily imposes limits on it. Army and Air Force officials said the congressional restrictions on competitive sourcing change every year, making it difficult to keep up with the laws and regulations while in the process of hosting the competition, according to the IG’s report.

Numerous laws have restricted the use of competitive sourcing, effectively stopping the practice. The fiscal 2008 National Defense Authorization Act restricted OMB and the defense secretary from influencing DOD regarding competitive sourcing, and it also required the IG review.

The competitive sourcing initiative is now called commercial services management and includes business process re-engineering along with the competitions.

Some experts have questioned whether the initiative would survive during the Obama administration, but the president-elect is looking for areas where he can cut costs and save money.

“Change and reform can’t just be election-year slogans,” Obama said. “They must become fundamental principles of government.”

Challenges for Obama

Competitive sourcing is only one issue that awaits Obama’s pick for the administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, experts say.

“The need for an acquisition workforce that can navigate the government’s contracting process, translate it for government buyers and private-sector contractors, and ensure the taxpayers get what they pay for has never been greater,” said Diane Denholm, a principal at Grant Thornton.

She recommended that the new administrator work with agencies to find ways to fill gaps with available resources. The administrator also should work with chief acquisition officers to learn what skills employees need, then maintain those skills with regular training.

A survey conducted by the Professional Services Council and Grant Thornton, which was released in December, showed the acquisition workforce’s continued concerns about recruiting, training and retaining the right people.

Stan Soloway, the council’s president, said the survey provided no surprises or raised new issues but showed lingering concerns that need a resolution.

The council and Grant Thornton said the Obama administration should view its procurement policy initiatives through the lens of strategic human capital planning.

“The future workforce needs to have the capability to provide innovative risk-based approaches to assist the agencies [as they] acquire products and services in a way that maximizes performance and minimizes costs,” said Denholm, who was involved in analyzing the survey’s results.

The need for a larger, better trained workforce is obvious, said Trey Hodgkins, vice president of federal government programs for the Information Technology Association of America.

“It’s a broader set of skills that we need to attract and retain,” he said. However, the broken hiring system is a major hindrance to bringing people in.

The system is another challenge awaiting the OFPP administrator, who will have to work with other agency officials to solve that problem.

A simple request

Many people in government acquisition consider success to be hiring the right people and training them well. Denholm said the survey respondents described success in terms of day-to-day operations rather than the rare award of a major contract.

According to many respondents, the workforce might be unprepared for the changing environment.

Acquisition is becoming more complex, and the volume of procurements has put new demands on contracting officers. Several interviewees stressed the need for better training in areas of business, analytical and management skills, the survey states.

“The current acquisition workforce doesn’t have sophisticated business judgment,” an oversight official said in the survey. “They are good at following the rules, but when the rules lead you to an illogical conclusion, you need judgment. Acquisition is more of an art than a science."

Read the story: FCW.com News - IG: Job competition saps staff

Field surveys landscape as chief

Several years after an adventurous ski trip, Lesley Field still wonders which one of her friends led them to the Mer de Glace (“Sea of Ice”), a glacier in the French Alps at an altitude of nearly 8,000 feet, without a map or a guide.

“I don’t think I fully realized what we’d done until we got to the bottom,” said Field, who comes from a family of daring skiers. “But honestly, it was probably the best skiing experience I’ve ever had.”

The Sea of Ice is nearly 700 feet deep and more than 4 miles long. “It was wide open,” she said.

In her first interview since she took over as acting administrator at the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, Field used skiing metaphors to describe her role.

While skiing, “you can see the topography, you can see the people, you can see where you’re going,” she said. “You see very far out into the future.”

Field has recently had to refocus her long-range view of procurement policy. In mid-July, she was studying the acquisition workforce and strategic sourcing as one of several OFPP policy analysts. Little more than a month later, she was whisked to the top of the governmentwide policy office to replace Deputy Administrator Robert Burton, who retired in July. When Administrator Paul Denett left Sept. 2, Field was appointed to the acting role.

She had arrived at OFPP on assignment from the Transportation Department in 2000. Kenneth Oscar, the office’s acting administrator at the time, said Field arrived with enthusiasm and a desire to see the big picture.

To help frame that picture, Field has dealt with federal procurement from several angles. She began her career with a summer internship at the National Academy of Sciences, where she worked in its contracting and grants office. In 1990, she entered a yearlong internship at DOT. Her managers noticed the procurement experience on her résumé and guided her toward acquisition.

Listen to Field discuss the acquisition field as a career.

Field worked at DOT for 10 years, rising from a contract specialist to a contracting officer to a management analyst to a procurement policy analyst. She also took assignments at the Federal Aviation Administration and Coast Guard before landing at OFPP.

Field has worked in acquisition for 18 years. From the time she was an intern, she enjoyed seeing how acquisitions she was involved in led to real benefits for agencies, she said. DOT officials allowed her and other interns to see the results of their work, so after she worked on a contract for sign-language interpreters, she was able to watch those interpreters help people in need. She has long been an advocate for requiring agencies to buy information technology that is accessible for people with disabilities.

And while on detail at FAA, she visited an air traffic control center in Leesburg, Va., and listened to controllers and pilots talk as they guided aircraft from one sector to another.

“I don’t think I ever realized there’s a giant highway” in the sky, she said.

Through those experiences, she began to understand the connection between the papers she was signing as a contracting officer and the daily work of agencies, Field said.

“It made all the difference in the world in someone’s ability to do their job,” she said.

Based on her experiences in taking temporary assignments at other agencies, Field said she is convinced that such rotations are important to keeping the acquisition workforce engaged. People can grow tired of a job, and rotating employees among agencies can keep them motivated, she said.

“We are in a very good position to offer that where we can,” she said. “Retention becomes just as important as recruitment and development.”

Listen to Field discuss job rotations.

“She’s passionate about improving the acquisition workforce,” said Burton, who’s now a partner at the law firm Venable.

Because of her varied assignments, Field was able to develop in-depth knowledge of how departments run their operations and incorporate that knowledge into governmentwide policy.

“When I got here, I realized you can really take the operational experience and really start to discover why the policy role is so interesting,” she said.

OFPP’s long-range view of procurement requires its analysts to connect the dots between agencies, considering what each of them does and how. OFPP finds best practices wherever they might be and spreads the word about them throughout agencies.

“We have a very unique position here in the world,” she said.

OFPP also has to deal with competing interests and agendas, Burton said. The administrator has to interact effectively with numerous groups that have their own priorities, including Congress and industry advocacy organizations.

“The art of negotiation becomes essential in that position,” he said.

Field said she recognizes those difficulties and likens them to skiing, where some terrain is easier to cross than other stretches. But the skier must traverse it all to reach the destination.

Oscar and Burton agreed that Field has a way with people that will ultimately help her as OFPP’s acting and deputy administrator.

Oscar has seen Field’s ability to draw people with contradictory views and ideas into a unified group. “She was able to get things done,” he said.

She needs to use that ingenuity to her advantage, he added. To leave her mark on OFPP, she must push forward her agenda, goals and objectives, and not merely fill the position of acting administrator, Oscar said.

“She’s got to act like she’s ‘it,’ go as if she’s the administrator,” he said. Even in an acting capacity, Field could be in charge for as long as a year.

Burton agreed, saying Field must be aggressive in her leadership. He was OFPP’s acting administrator twice and said the office deals with nonpartisan issues, so having the political backing of the presidential administration is less important than it is for other agency leaders.

Read the story: FCW.com News - Field surveys landscape as chief

Senate: DHS must sort workforce mix

The next administration has plenty of major challenges ahead, and one of them is figuring out how to manage an acquisition workforce in which government employees are intermingled with contractors.

Read the story: FCW.com News - Senate: DHS must sort workforce mix

What acquisition employees want

Experienced midcareer acquisition employees have become very important to their organizations and valuable to agencies with worked piled on empty desks. As a result, agencies in need are wooing knowledgeable acquisition employees from other agencies. But for agencies intent on keeping those personnel, officials have suggestions that may stop precious employees from answering the calls.

Read the story: FCW.com News - What acquisition employees want

DHS' blended workforce worries senators

Members of a Senate committee are concerned that the Homeland Security Department continues to rely on contractors, instead of growing the expertise it needs internally, according to a new report.

The Senate Appropriations Committee said in a report accompanying a spending bill the panel approved June 19 that its members were concerned that contractors are performing work that is more appropriate for federal employees or contractors are doing work that comes close to inherently governmental functions.

Read the story: FCW.com News - DHS' blended workforce worries senators

DHS seeks new workforce formula

The Homeland Security Department has increased the number of contracting officers since 2004, but officials are trying to decide the department's optimal staffing level.

Read the story: FCW.com News - DHS seeks new workforce formula

Officials seek information on departing employees

Officials don’t have any clear evidence of why government acquisition employees leave the contracting community or where they go afterward. However, they will seek that information.

The Federal Acquisition Institute has been trying to learn where agencies' employees go when they switch jobs. Officials are sorting out the information gathered, and they expect to have preliminary results in a new section of the institute's annual workforce report that's due in late spring, said FAI Director Karen Pica.

Read the story: FCW.com News - Officials seek information on departing employees

Sen. Kerry: SBA must protect whistleblowers

When Small Business Administration officials pried into the e-mail inbox of an employee supplying anonymous testimony to the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, the committee chairman said the result could have a chilling effect on oversight.

Employees can’t be guaranteed confidentiality when managers arbitrarily look into employee’s e-mail messages, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) wrote in a letter, which he sent today to SBA Administrator Steve Preston.

The letter is based on a report from SBA’s inspector general that was released in October. The IG found that a manager in the Office of Disaster Assistance retrieved e-mail messages from an employee who was a confidential source for the IG and Kerry’s committee.

Read the story: FCW.com News - Sen. Kerry: SBA must protect whistleblowers

Army: Bolstering acquisition workforce could take 10 years

Building up the Army’s acquisition workforce into an adequately staffed, experienced labor force will likely take as long as 10 years, a top Army officer told a Senate panel Dec. 6.

The Commission on Army Acquisition and Program Management in Expeditionary Operations stated in a report released Nov. 1 that the Army should add 1,400 employees to balance the dramatic increase in defense spending since the 2001 terrorist attacks against the 25 percent of the acquisition workforce cut in the 1990s.

Lt. Gen. Ross Thompson, military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, said it would take about three years to fill 400 positions with military contracting officers and 1,000 jobs with civilian contracting officers.

But getting contracting officers training, certification and essential hands-on experience will require the most time, he told the Senate Armed Service Committee’s Readiness and Management Support Subcommittee.

Read the rest of the story: FCW.com News - Army: Bolstering acquisition workforce could take 10 years