Desperately seeking money

Money is an inescapable setback for the government as it attempts to attract more people to the acquisition workforce. It’s tough to live on a small salary, especially in the Washington metro area, where 21 percent of contracting specialists work.

The government is limited in what it can pay the workforce, and employees are looking for better pay and seem willing to move to for it.

The largest portion of new hires from outside of government entered as contract specialists making between $30,000 and $39,999, while government employees changing jobs into the contract specialist field had a salary between $40,000 and $49,999. Salaries for contract specialists who moved to a different agency ranged between $60,000 and $89,999. The people who are most content with their salaries stayed put, making between $70,000 and $99,999.

CONTRACTING SERIES HIRES DURING FISCAL 2008 BY SALARY LEVEL

 Maybe some people on the lowest rung of salaries found something different to do, while the highest paid people may have retired — 13 percent of contracting specialists were eligible to retire last year.

LOSSES IN THE CONTRACTING SERIES BY SALARY LEVEL IN FISCAL 2008

Source: The Federal Acquisition Institute’s Fiscal 2008 Annual Report on the Federal Acquisition Workforce

Posted on Aug 21, 2009 at 3:14 PM0 comments

Do award fees encourage better work from contractors?

Does the award-fee system work?

An FCW reader who works in the Defense Department said it definitely does not produce better work from contractors.

“The contractors have a contract that they agreed to,” the reader wrote, adding that award fees are just another expense. “The bottom line is that the contractor is there to get all the $$$$ they can from the contract, anyway they can.”

Moreover, it appears to the reader “that a substantial percentage of [contractors] don’t produce as required anyway.”

This debate has reached as high as the deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, as the Obama administration tries to fix contracting and avoid wasteful spending.

The administration seems to have its view of award fees, as it questions the theory. It is, however, not stamping out the incentives fully and immediately. Senators also have chimed in with their thoughts. At an Aug. 3 hearing on the subject, Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) called the award fees "extra profit" and "bonuses" and compared them to bonuses in the financial sector, which have caused a furor in recent months. The Government Accountability Office has found problems in how agencies apply the awards and give the money away to undeserving companies.

The usefulness of award fees should be an interesting debate as OMB wants more data but acquisition officials are wondering how they’re going to reasonably analyze the tons of varying information, even as the acquisition workforce has enough work to do.

So the question again is: If an agency gives a contractor the chance to get more money by meeting certain criteria and preset goals, does an agency see better work from the contractor?

Posted on Aug 07, 2009 at 2:38 PM3 comments

Support duties get bad wrap on TV

While my wife watched Lifetime’s TV series Army Wives recently, a comment caught my attention.

A rogue Army officer was offered a job in logistics after being called reckless and a liar. It shows that support duties, like logistics and acquisition, have to overcome a lot of prejudice on prime-time television.

On the show, Lt. Col. Connor was outed for lying to Lt. Col. Joan Burton, who is one of the Army wives, and for relying on a spy in Burton’s command to get an edge in a strategic exercise.

“You demonstrated recklessness and bad judgment on the battlefield,” Brig. Gen. Michael Holden told Connor, who stood silently at attention during his reprimand. Holden added that the lieutenant colonel’s reliance on the spy was “cowardly” and went against the spirit of the war games.

But Connor had a lifeline. Gen. Rutledge likes him, so his punishment wasn’t as severe as it could be. There’s a desk job in the Pentagon in the Army logistics office waiting for him.

Holden told Connor that he needed to reconsider his life in the Army. A personal inventory could help him decided if he has the makings of a strong Army leader. But while the he’s taking the inventory, Army logistics will fit the reckless Connor just right.

“I’d encourage you to take it,” Holden said.

Military logistics and the closely related acquisition field have a lot to overcome when television portrays it as worthy of a lying, reckless officer.

The subtle assumption is that he won’t raise much of a ruckus — despite his lying and recklessness — if he’s in logistics because nothing much happens there. If you’re willing to lie, you’re not fit for the field, but still good enough for back-office work.

Real government officials in acquisition and logistics would strongly disagree with that portrayal, and they’re trying to convince the public it’s not that way. Acquisition is essential for military success.

Shay Assad, a Defense Department procurement official and a principal advisor to the under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, has been talking up the acquisition field as the government tries to fill its ranks.

Assad recently said, “Essential to improving acquisition outcomes is a robust, highly skilled, ethical and professional workforce.”

This fiscal year, DOD is spending more than $83 million on recruiting interns for acquisition jobs, and $5.7 million to recognize the good work of acquisition employees.

The government is also trying to recruit new employees by touting the acquisition field as exciting and rewarding as you play an important role in supporting the warfighter. That sale faces a challenge.

Any stigma can lick a good dogma.

Posted on Aug 06, 2009 at 2:27 PM0 comments

The key to acquisition requirements: Healthy tension and a good referee

When it comes to defining programming requirements, conflict avoidance is definitely to be avoided.

That, anyway, was the perspective of one acquisition expert testifying at a recent hearing on acquisition issues.

The conventional wisdom is that program managers and acquisition officials should get together to hammer requirements. However, Lawrence Farrell, president of the National Defense Industrial Association and a retired lieutenant general at the Air Force, doesn't buy it.

He advises the Defense Department to put the warfighters in charge of defining requirements, since they know better than anyone what it takes to get the job done.

The acquisition officials should have their say, too, but they don't run the show, so any differences will have to be hashed out. That is certain to create tension, but that is not a bad thing, Farrell says. 

"There has to be a healthy tension between the acquisition professionals on the one hand and the operators who are stating the requirements on the other," he said at the hearing. "And there needs to be somebody at the top refereeing that process. The way we’ve seen it work the best is when the Air Force used to have the chief referee between the head acquisition guy and the head operator who’s stating the requirements."

He said this approach works if the acquisition guy gives the "referee" a realistic picture of the project based on the requirements: Will it mean a total redesign of the project? Will it add years to the timeline? And how much more will it cost? The referee then has to decide if that's what the agency needs and give the proposal a thumbs up or thumbs down, Farrell said.

“That’s got to be a fun job,” said Rep. Rob Andrews (D-N.J.), chairman of the House Armed Services’ Defense Acquisition Reform Panel.

What do you think? Is there a healthy tension between the managers and the acquisition officials now? Would this tension help the process?

Posted on Jul 22, 2009 at 2:27 PM0 comments