Yahoo (the exclamation not website)!! Law maker says give us money, give us bonuses.

At last, someone on Capitol Hill is talking sense. Rep. Tom Davis, speaking before the Association of Government Accountants, told the group that trained, effective contracting professionals are very important to the whole procurement process.

In the article, he said,

You've got a lot of good [acquisition] people in government, but if you're not training them on an ongoing basis, you're losing out," Davis told the
auditors. "I would pay them, I would bonus them." [I added the italics]

He also blasted last congressional session's Clean Contracting Act (see my post here regarding Rep. Henry Waxman's current iteration of that legislation ) as creating too much oversight for the effort involved and potential savings.

On the subject of Government Purchase Cards (GPC), he said that efforts to restrict them are detrimental to the procurement process. He points to a:

misguided focus on the relatively small downside of abuse, rather than the large
administrative savings the cards generate

Read the whole article for more interesting details. Considering it is a group of accountants, that turned out to be a good meeting to have attended.

DHS procurement woes and opportunity for improvements- Part 2

The second article I saw about the challenges facing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) addressed improving the professionalism of their acquisition workforce. While this is an oft-used solution to procurement issues, perhaps in the case of DHS, it is an appropriate step.

Legislation has been introduced (DHS Procurement Improvement Act (H.R. 803)) to create specific curriculum and training programs, plus stregthens policies that will improve the quality of contracts. This bill, if approved will

require a new Council on Procurement Training, to be headed by the deputy chief procurement officer (CPO) at DHS, to advise and make policy recommendations to the CPO.

These steps may be important to DHS. In testimony before the the House Oversight and Government Reform hearing last week, the Comptroller General, David Walker, stated that the acquisition workforce of DHS has not changed much since the merger of all the agencies that created DHS following the attack on America, Sept 11, 2001.

Part of the challenge, he says is that

Of the 22 components that initially joined DHS from other agencies, only 7 came with their own procurement support. An eighth office, the Office of Procurement Operations, was created anew to provide support to a variety of DHS entities—but not until January 2004, almost a year after the department was created.

Add to this the fact that these 7 agencies have essentially the same people now as before the merger, he feels there needs to be a change.

Now, with this bill, getting a better-educated procurement workforce may make it easier to get world class procurement solutions and lessons-learned throughout the organization.

DoD Moves toward Procurement Competency

This GovExec article expresses interest in the Director of Defense Procurement's model to

help gauge the capabilities of its acquisition workforce and determine what areas need strengthening or realignment

The competency models are explained at the DPAP website. There should be a final compentency report early this year with the models to roll out Department-wide by June 2007. They will be used to assess the workforce, identify skill gaps and work to close those gaps.

Everyday, someone comes out with accusations about the poor job contracting has done, whether in Iraq or for some weapon system or another. The Defense contracting community has worked the hardest to put trained and effective professionals into the field. Its training scheme is now being used to train the rest of the contracting community as the Federal Acquisition Institute is now co-located with the Defense Acquisition University at Fort Belvoir, VA.

This competency model concept seems to me to be another tool to ensure we are as effective as we can be. Let's keep an open mind and be objective about it when it is announced.

Acquisition schools standardize coursework

Standardizing the curriculums of both the Federal Acquisition Institute (FAI) and Defense Acquisition University (DAU) are will result in a common level of training across the federal government. In the past, for non-DoD contracting officers to move to DoD jobs, they often had to go through more scrutiny. DoD contracting folks going to other agencies were welcomed with open arms.

Now, maybe there won't be an "us versus them" mentality when hiring federal contracting professionals.

More from the Acquisition Advisory Panel draft report

Two more articles provide more information about the SARA panel's decisions. First, the panel believes that by using commercial business practices, competition will increase. Here how the article puts it

...move away from time-and-materials contracts because they take too much effort to oversee. Instead, the panel favors performance-based acquisitions. But other significant recommendations include setting up a new General Services Administration schedule for professional services, redefining stand-alone commercial services, applying the three-bid minimum requirement for Defense Department services over the simplified acquisition threshold governmentwide, and amending the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) to improve transparency in government contracting.

The second article says the panel believes that the acquisition workforce doesn't know who it is and that they are not being sufficiently trained. In addition, they will conduct a study to see, among other things, whether there should be a government-wide version of DAU.

Of course, since DAU has an organic "systems acquisition" leaning (notice who their Defense AT&L Magazine is aimed at), they are missing helping those of us who spend the other 60% of federal procurement dollars!

From their writer's guidelines at the end of the magazine:

The purpose of Defense AT&L magazine is to instruct members of the DoD acquisition, technology & logistics (AT&L) workforce and defense industry on policies, trends, legislation, senior leadership changes, events, and current thinking affecting program management and defense systems acquisition [my italics], and to disseminate other information pertinent to the professional development and education of the DoD Acquisition Workforce.

Perhaps a services acquisition university might be a good thing. Let's see what they propose.

Army seeks digital coaches

Just thought this was a cool requirement- digital coaches. If they can pull this off, it might be something that can transfer thoughout the Army, including contracting.

OFPP to adopt GAO framework for acquisition

The OFPP chief is looking at ways to improve the way the federal government purchases goods and services. He plans to implement a year-old framework presented by GAO in September 2005.

During remarks delivered at an NCMA conference in the Beltway last week, he said, "“It is too easy to say that the number of procurement people has gone down and the money has gone up, ergo we need more people,” said Denett. “We have to find out if we have the right people."

But then, he continues and I hope he did not mean to start name calling when he says, "Do we have round people in square jobs? It is not one size fits all.”

There are a lot of round people in the procurement offices I have worked- including me.

Mr. Denett, are you talking to me???? I hope you aren't talking to me.

The new acquisition professional

The current Government Executive Magazine has a long article about the acquisition career field, showing how attractive what we do really is. When they put it online, I will link to it.

In the meantime, a couple of juicy quotes:

(From page 51) Federal contracting isn't the most tantalizing of career choices. It involves details, paperwork and lots of rules. Contracting officers...are among the most scrutinized of government professionals. Contracting's deadly reputation for being boring yet stressful undoubtedly is part of the reason that procurement people are so hard to recruit.

Really makes you want to sign up, doesn't it? Here's a great recruiting slogan (page 56),

There are a lot of people retiring, why don't you give it a shot?

On the plus side, there is a of discussion of appealing to 20- and 30-somethings and their need for "meaningful" work and on how government employers might make more attractive work environments, including,"giv(ing) workers what they want, whether its working from home or bringing their dogs to work...(page 56).

This is an interesting article. Look for it around the office or wait until it comes online (they usually put it online a week or so after it comes in the mail).

Pricing tool to make price decisions easier

The Defense Acquisition University (DAU) is starting to add quite a few new items to its repertoire. In addition to is courses and knowledge base information, it is adding tools that might prove helpful. Here is a tool that can be used to make pricing decisions for commercial, modified commercial and non-commercial products.