The Acquisition Workforce: It takes longer to build than to destroy

The downsizing of the acquisition workforce started with the "Reinventing Government" that was Vice President Al Gore's baby during the Clinton administration. It was thought that streamlining the bureaucracy and regulations and increasing the use of technology would make government more efficient and cost-effective.

There was merit to those perceptions and goals but as so often happens with government programs, what may be a good idea in small- or medium-sized doses becomes something else again when programs or regulations or downsizing are expanded and expanded again, whether through momentum or because of ideology or politics.

So now Secretary of Defense Gates wants to expand the defense acquisition workforce (see article below) very quickly to regain(?) control of acquisition and make it more cost-effective — something that downsizing and privatizing that very same workforce was supposed to bring. The problem is that what was dismantled over the past 14 years can not be easily rebuilt, even if DoD plans to hire thousands of acquisition people with all kinds of backgrounds from the contractor workforce.

Thousands who are currently employed in the government will start retiring in the next few years taking decades of priceless expertise and experience. Many (I won't hazard a guess at this point) will not move to the government from the contractor community if it means significant cuts in salary and benefits. And thousands who will presumably be hired at entry-level positions will not be worth very much until they have 5-10 years of experience under their belts. (I will leave the possibility that many will leave after a few years of wrestling with FARs and DFARs and increasing Congressional oversight for greener or less stressful/more rewarding fields.

But, having said my gloom and doom, the government has to start somewhere — and at least Secretary Gates has recognized the magnitude of DoD's self-inflicted problem and is trying to do something about it. But stay tuned.


Acquisition Overseer Challenge Looms

By John M. Doyle/Washington

Aviation Week & Space Technology
August 24, 2009

Fed up with Pentagon resources being drained by the spiraling costs of weapons systems, Defense Secretary Robert Gates is aiming to bring 20,000 acquisition overseers into the government workforce. But finding enough employees equipped with the skills to manage multibillion-dollar procurement programs could be a monumental headache.

As part of a broader effort to reshape the U.S. defense budget starting in Fiscal 2010, Gates plans to increase the size of the acquisition force by shifting 11,000 contractor employees to the government payroll and hiring an additional 9,000 government acquisition professionals by 2015, starting with 4,100 in the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. Among the skills being sought: systems engineers, logistics specialists, contracting officers and project managers.

But the kind of expertise needed to oversee complicated defense acquisition programs is not easy to come by, or cheap. Defense industry analysts and former government officials warn that if the acquisition workforce surge is not properly handled it could lead to even more costs and less efficiency.

"Twenty thousand people with one year of experience is not the same as 2,000 people with 10 years of experience," says former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine, who recently chaired a Business Executives for National Security (BENS) task force on acquisition reform.
The government will not be hiring engineers and business managers straight out of college. "It takes 5 to 10 years to become an experienced acquisition officer — not 5 to 10 weeks," notes Jacques Gansler, who served as undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics in the Clinton administration from November 1997 until January 2001. "For this kind of work, experience does matter."

Cord Sterling, vice president for legislative affairs at the Aerospace Industries Assn. (AIA), echoes Gansler's warning. "The workforce needs to be grown, not acquired," he says. While AIA supports building up the Pentagon's acquisition workforce, he worries that the hiring surge will have unintended consequences if it is not carefully thought out and executed.

Sterling, Gansler and others are concerned that a rush to fill quotas could touch off competition among the armed services and lead to less-experienced civilian experts being hired.

"You can't assume the economy is going to give you a better cadre of prospective employees lined up outside the door," says Jerry Cox, a former Senate staff acquisition specialist now working as a policy analyst at the Forerunner Foundation. "Good economy or bad, I don't think it makes a difference."

There are also worries about a brain drain from the private sector if the government boosts pay incentives high enough to woo aerospace and defense workers from their current employers. Industry veterans say they've heard accounts of programs losing experienced acquisition personnel to another project in the same service. And they are concerned that pushing the services to hire a set number of staff could cause them to bring on inexperienced workers or pay inflated salaries. "The scary part is if it becomes a quota game, because that's not really going to improve the system," Gansler says.

He adds that when government employees filled those jobs before the Pentagon's acquisition workforce was downsized in the 1990s, "we still had overruns."

And as the Defense Dept. moves to bulk up its acquisition workforce, it will also have to replace a huge wave of personnel who are nearing retirement. Filling their positions will not be easy, as acquisition is not viewed as a good career path for bright, ambitious military officers or civilian executives. Gansler notes that in 1990 the Defense Contract Management Agency, which oversees contracts after they have been awarded, had four general officers in charge of 25,000 people. Now there are 10,000 people — and no generals.

Gates is certainly aware of the challenge. "Reforming How We Buy" is a key theme of the Pentagon's Fiscal 2010 budget request and "Insourcing and Acquisition Workforce" is one of the seven budget priorities.

Gates's additions are part of a broader plan by the Obama administration to restore the federal acquisition workforce to its Fiscal 1998 level of 147,000 personnel by 2015. As a first step, the Defense Dept. intends to turn 2,500 contractor jobs into federal civilian positions. In essence, contractors will be asked to do the same work, but as federal employees, or leave.

James McAleese, a defense analyst in Arlington, Va., calculates that the amount of money the Pentagon is seeking to hire new workers is about $55,000 per employee in annual salary. That may not be high enough to attract the kind of experience Gates wants to effect "a fundamental overhaul" of procurement, acquisition and contracting.

Another question mark is how this administration's new ethics and conflict-of-interest rules will affect incoming Pentagon personnel. There are concerns that seasoned officials will be excluded because of past military or contractor experience. The BENS report says the current federal hiring regulations on disclosure, divestment and potential conflict-of-interest "remain nearly insurmountable obstacles (AW&ST July 27, p. 52). The White House had to grant a waiver to Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary William Lynn before his Senate confirmation in order for him to be considered because of his work as head of Raytheon's Washington liaison office.

As they consider such challenges, Defense Dept. officials might want to review the experiences of the U.S. Coast Guard, whose similar transition is now into its second year. Pummeled by Congress for delays and cost overruns in its estimated $26-billion, 20-year Deepwater fleet recapitalization program, Coast Guard leadership took back Deepwater management in April 2007 from a Lockheed Martin-Northrop Grumman team.

The Coast Guard — which is a part of the Homeland Security Dept. — had to scramble to find or train program managers. As of April, the service had funding available for 855 military and civilian acquisition positions but had filled only 717, according to congressional auditors at the Government Accountability Office (GAO). "New people don't sprout up, you have to train them," says Rear Adm. Ronald Rabago, who heads acquisition at the Coast Guard. He says the agency now has 497 civilian and 346 military acquisition personnel.

The GAO's Stephen Caldwell told a Senate subcommittee last month that "things have turned around to a large extent" at the Coast Guard. Rabago cites the service's "Blueprint for Acquisition Reform," developed with input from the GAO, the Homeland Security Dept. and the Defense Acquisition University, as key to the change.

"We've hired a number of people from other agencies. Some were from the Defense Dept.," Rabago says. Using the blueprint, the Coast Guard took responsibility as lead system integrator for all acquisition, identifying resource needs and setting timelines.

"But it's been a slow process," he says.

With Joseph C. Anselmo and Michael Bruno in Bethesda, Md.

A Cybersecurity Wiki for All?

My first reaction to reading the following article was, "What took them so long?" Then I remembered how many revisions the original proposal most probably went through and how many people undoubtedly had to sign off on this before they reached the "planning" stage. See below for my further comments.

DHS plans wiki for agencies, cybersecurity centers to coordinate efforts

By Ben Bain, Government Computer News, August 17, 2009

The Homeland Security Department plans to develop a “cyber ops wiki” that agencies can use to improve collaboration on cybersecurity efforts, according to a notice from the department.

The wiki will be used by DHS’ National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) and the six other federal cybersecurity centers as a collaboration tool and a way to develop improved situational awareness, communication and information sharing, DHS said in a notice published on Aug. 11 on the Federal Business Opportunities Web site.

Amy Kudwa, a DHS spokeswoman, said "NCSC is engaging industry expertise to develop a Web 2.0/3.0-enabled collaboration platform — this is an important piece of the larger NCSC vision of meaningful collaboration across government."

DHS' NCSC was established during the George W. Bush administration to coordinate cybersecurity efforts across the government. Phil Reitinger, DHS' deputy undersecretary of the department’s National Protection and Programs Directorate now leads the center.

"The 'cyber ops wiki' ... will provide a capability for near-real-time information sharing and collaboration on cyber security incidents, as well as be a repository of technical information," Kudwa said. She added that DHS envisions that when completed the wiki "will leverage the individual strengths and technical competencies" of the government's cybersecurity centers run by defense, civilian, intelligence and law enforcement departments and agencies.

DHS said in the notice it intends to negotiate and award a sole-source contract with an company named WiiKnoInc based in Austin, Texas, to work on the project.

Mark says:

This is a welcome and necessary first step... but only an initial and probably baby step forward.

Why am I so grudging in my praise — and it is praise?

First of all, who will be allowed to participate in this wiki and what will they be allowed to write or share on it? Will it be transparent to government contractors and their employees? Will private industry, i.e., non-government businesses, have any access to it to either use it or contribute to it? Will government employees in their respective organizations and agencies be encouraged to contribute to this wiki? Or will some managers, organizations, or agencies discourage explicitly or implicitly their employees from participating on the grounds of "need to know" or other "security" reasons or simply because of any number of bureaucratic reasons?

It might help if there were a "Cybersecurity Czar" reporting directly to the President who made this a priority. Oh, wait... I forgot. We're seven months into this administration's term and a cybersecurity czar (whether reporting or not reporting directly to the President) has still not been appointed... and everything is a priority — which means nothing is a priority.

But Do the Taliban Follow the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FARs)?

When the "mainstream media" (MSM) goes belly-up you won't be seeing coverage like the article below anymore. Jean MacKenzie didn't parachute into Afghanistan for a quickie guided tour in a helicopter or an armored SUV. She's the program director for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting in Afghanistan, a position she's held for four years and which has taken her to the farthest corners of the country. She has also created a network of Afghan reporters who can gather news and information from all over Afghanistan, lending an all-important local perspective to coverage of the conflict there.

The Taliban in Afghanistan appear to have created a symbiotic relationship with the Western aid donors, principally the United States. Even as we're killing them we're also paying them off.

That raises two questions: Can the Taliban maintain a balance so they don't kill the goose that keeps on giving but still remain militarily and politically viable? Will the West — and principally the United States — continue financing the Taliban (which keeps them viable) while continuing to try and eliminate them and simultaneously build a viable Afghan country?

The British learned the hard way back in the 19th century that the best way to exert influence in Afghanistan was to pay off tribal leaders. Perhaps we might try a pilot project or two in places where the Taliban hold sway? It might end up being more cost effective.

On the other hand, I somehow can't see the Taliban contractors following the U.S. Federal Acquisition Regulations (FARs) and submitting bids to requests for proposals (RFPs). On the other hand, the following paragraph from the article suggests that it wouldn't be completely out of the question.

A shadowy office in Kabul houses the Taliban contracts officer, who examines proposals and negotiates with organizational hierarchies for a percentage. He will not speak to, or even meet with, a journalist, but sources who have spoken with him and who have seen documents say that the process is quite professional.

Stranger things have happened in Afghanistan. And at least it would have the potential for establishing some governance and transparency in one area of corruption in Afghanistan. Religious fervor and fanaticism never stopped the Taliban from engaging in corruption and bribery when they were in power and it's obvious that they have even more incentives to engage in it when they're out of power.

Mark


Funding the Afghan Taliban
Who is financing America's enemies? You don't want to know.

By Jean MacKenzie, GlobalPost, August 7, 2009

KABUL — It is the open secret no one wants to talk about, the unwelcome truth that most prefer to hide. In Afghanistan, one of the richest sources of Taliban funding is the foreign assistance coming into the country.

Virtually every major project includes a healthy cut for the insurgents. Call it protection money, call it extortion, or, as the Taliban themselves prefer to term it, “spoils of war,” the fact remains that international donors, primarily the United States, are to a large extent financing their own enemy.

“Everyone knows this is going on,” said one U.S. Embassy official, speaking privately.

It is almost impossible to determine how much the insurgents are spending, making it difficult to pinpoint the sources of the funds.

Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef, former Taliban minister to Pakistan, was perhaps more than a bit disingenuous when he told GlobalPost that the militants were operating mostly on air.

“The Taliban does not have many expenses,” he said, smiling slightly. “They are barefoot and hungry, with no roof over their heads and a stone for their pillow.” As for weapons, he just shrugged. “Afghanistan is full of guns,” he said. “We have enough guns for years.”

The reality is quite different, of course. The militants recruit local fighters by paying for their services. They move about in their traditional 4x4s, they have to feed their troops, pay for transportation and medical treatment for the wounded, and, of course, they have to buy rockets, grenades and their beloved Kalashnikovs.

Up until quite recently, most experts thought that drug money accounted for the bulk of Taliban funding. But even here opinion was divided on actual amounts. Some reports gauged the total annual income at about $100 million, while others placed the figure as high as $300 million — still a small fraction of the $4 billion poppy industry.

Now administration officials have launched a search for Taliban sponsors. Richard Holbrooke, U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told a press conference in Islamabad last month that drugs accounted for less of a share of Taliban coffers than was previously thought.

“In the past there was a kind of feeling that the money all came from drugs in Afghanistan,” said Holbrooke, according to media reports. “That is simply not true.”

The new feeling is that less than half of the Taliban’s war chest comes from poppy, with a variety of sources, including private contributions from Persian Gulf states, accounting for much of the rest. Holbrooke told reporters that he would add a member of the Treasury Department to his staff to pursue the question of Taliban funding.

But perhaps U.S. officials need look no further than their own backyard.

Anecdotal evidence is mounting that the Taliban are taking a hefty portion of assistance money coming into Afghanistan from the outside.

This goes beyond mere protection money or extortion of “taxes” at the local level — very high-level negotiations take place between the Taliban and major contractors, according to sources close to the process.

A shadowy office in Kabul houses the Taliban contracts officer, who examines proposals and negotiates with organizational hierarchies for a percentage. He will not speak to, or even meet with, a journalist, but sources who have spoken with him and who have seen documents say that the process is quite professional.

The manager of an Afghan firm with lucrative construction contracts with the U.S. government builds in a minimum of 20 percent for the Taliban in his cost estimates. The manager, who will not speak openly, has told friends privately that he makes in the neighborhood of $1 million per month. Out of this, $200,000 is siphoned off for the insurgents.

If negotiations fall through, the project will come to harm — road workers may be attacked or killed, bridges may be blown up, engineers may be assassinated.

The degree of cooperation and coordination between the Taliban and aid workers is surprising, and would most likely make funders extremely uncomfortable.

One Afghan contractor, speaking privately, told friends of one project he was overseeing in the volatile south. The province cannot be mentioned, nor the particular project.

“I was building a bridge,” he said, one evening over drinks. “The local Taliban commander called and said ‘don’t build a bridge there, we’ll have to blow it up.’ I asked him to let me finish the bridge, collect the money — then they could blow it up whenever they wanted. We agreed, and I completed my project.”

In the south, no contract can be implemented without the Taliban taking a cut, sometimes at various steps along the way.

One contractor in the southern province of Helmand was negotiating with a local supplier for a large shipment of pipes. The pipes had to be brought in from Pakistan, so the supplier tacked on about 30 percent extra for the Taliban, to ensure that the pipes reached Lashkar Gah safely.

Once the pipes were given over to the contractor, he had to negotiate with the Taliban again to get the pipes out to the project site. This was added to the transportation costs.

“We assume that our people are paying off the Taliban,” said the foreign contractor in charge of the project.

In Farah province, local officials report that the Taliban are taking up to 40 percent of the money coming in for the National Solidarity Program, one of the country’s most successful community reconstruction projects, which has dispensed hundreds of millions of dollars throughout the country over the past six years.

Many Afghans see little wrong in the militants getting their fair share of foreign assistance.

“This is international money," said one young Kabul resident. “They are not taking it from the people, they are taking it from their enemy.”

But in areas under Taliban control, the insurgents are extorting funds from the people as well. In war-ravaged Helmand, where much of the province has been under Taliban control for the past two years, residents grumble about the tariffs.

“It’s a disaster,” said a 50-year-old resident of Marja district. “We have to give them two kilos of poppy paste per jerib during the harvest; then we have to give them ushr (an Islamic tax, amounting to one-tenth of the harvest) from our wheat. Then they insisted on zakat (an Islamic tithe). Now they have come up with something else: 12,000 Pakistani rupee (approximately $150) per household. And they won’t take even one rupee less.”

It all adds up, of course. But all things are relative: if the Taliban are able to raise and spend say $1 billion per year — the outside limit of what anyone has been able to predict — that accounts for what the United States is now spending on 10 days of the war to defeat them.

The Inspector General (Not Danny Kaye)

Federal government inspector general reports often make for interesting reading (well, at least to me), not only for what they say but what they don't say. Consider a recent inspector general report at the Department of Homeland Security, as reported by Federal Computer Week:

DHS officials skirted procurement ethics rules, IG says
Actions created 'appearance of impropriety'

By Alice Lipowicz, Federal Computer Week, July 29, 2009

Staff members and officials at the Homeland Security Department’s Science and Technology Directorate engaged in improper actions in four procurements in 2007 but stopped short of violating any ethics rules, according to a new report from DHS Inspector General Richard Skinner.

In one case, a senior official there started a procurement based on a concept marketed by one of his business acquaintances interested in bidding on the work — and the official even named the project after the acquaintance, the report said.

In another case, two senior officials met “unwittingly” with a representative of a company that had submitted a proposal to an open Broad Agency Announcement, and during the meeting, the representatives presented information related to their proposal, according to the report released July 28. However, the company received no competitive advantage because it was dropped from the competition for other reasons, Skinner wrote.

The federal executives involved did not violate any ethical rules, the IG said. However, the actions did create an appearance of impropriety, the report concluded.

“Circumstances surrounding four procurements created an appearance that staff members intentionally directed funding to specific acquaintances, though further review indicated that S&T staff did not violate conflict of interest or other ethical rules,” the report said.

In several cases, it appeared that executives were favoring industry executives with whom they were familiar, but when the problems were detected, the federal agency modified procedures to maintain the integrity of the procurements, the IG said.

“These situations indicate the need for better understanding of or regard for procurement standards,” Skinner wrote. “The rules for communicating during the procurement process were established to prevent competitors from gaining an unfair advantage and ensure that the government reaps the benefits of competition. S&T should train its staff in competitive procurement and ethical rules, and S&T management must model and enforce those rules.”

Skinner did not name individuals or companies in the report.

The directorate's top official said he generally agreed with the findings and with the recommendations for improvement. “I believe the draft report fairly describes the facts within the scope of the review…. I agree with the recommendations,” Bradley Buswell, acting undersecretary for science and technology, wrote in response to the IG.

Mark says:

The first and third sentences in the third-to-last paragraph in the article, which I have bolded, point to deeper, entrenched problems in government procurement that are not going to be easily or quickly ameliorated and would probably be exacerbated by additional rules and regulations. Moreover, regarding the IG’s statement that "S&T should train its staff in competitive procurement and ethical rules, and S&T management must model and enforce those rules," I would ask (or rather S&T management should ask):

• Which staff?
• Who is going to train the staff?
• How are they going to train the staff?
• How is management going to “model and enforce those rules”?
• Who is going to pay for the training, modeling, and enforcement – and how?

One paragraph on page 7 of the IG’s report jumped out at me, particularly the third and fourth sentences (which I have bolded):

S&T does not have contracting authority. To award its R&D funds, S&T relies on contracting officers from another DHS Division, the Office of Procurement Operations (OPO), within the Management Directorate. The OPO contracting officers have the authority to obligate government funds, and the responsibility to ensure that procurement decisions comply with federal contracting regulations. They may assist S&T project managers in planning their procurements, and they may overrule their procurement-related decisions. Historically, OPO was unable to provide S&T with enough contracting officers, which slowed procurement activities. In response, S&T staff members frequently used other agencies’ procurement services and contracting officers to award its projects. Currently, OPO has 27 contracting officers and specialists to support S&T, but seeks a staff of 35.

If I easily believed in conspiracy theories, I could say that this was a nice setup to:

• On the one hand, get in trouble good people just trying to get the job done, and/or…
• On the other hand, provide not-so-good people opportunities for unethical or illegal activities.
  

Once again, I have to point out that we shouldn’t attribute to malice or conspiracy theories what can be credited to or adequately explained by ignorance, stupidity, incompetence, or just not paying attention. The episode is a case in point.

Information Sharing in the U.S. Government?

Here's further evidence that the more things change the more they remain the same:

"Agencies fail to make information sharing a priority," by Jill R. Aitoro, NextGov, 30 July 2009

The Obama administration needs to restructure how interagency information-sharing initiatives are funded and implemented to encourage compliance by agencies that currently place a higher priority on their own missions, government and industry experts told House lawmakers Thursday.

"Differing missions, overlapping turf conflicts, resource constraints, bureaucratic inertia and agency tunnel vision still exist and impede information sharing," said Ambassador Thomas McNamara, program manager of the Information Sharing Environment, a post within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. ISE was created by Congress in 2004 to facilitate the sharing of terrorism information across all levels of government and the private sector.

To read the rest of the article (highly recommended), go to: http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20090730_6847.php

Mark says:

Why am I not surprised? Maybe because I’ve been writing and talking about this for at least the past few years — and so have many others. So let’s round up the usual suspects — again.

There are two things that could have some positive impacts. (I’m too realistic — or perhaps too cynical — to suggest that they could be “solutions.”) First, start creating and enforcing some rewards and punishments for agencies and managers to become advocates/champions/enforcers of interagency information sharing. Call it “behavior modification.” Turn those agency managers and directors into Borg: “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.”

And second, remember the government’s Golden Rule: “Them that has the gold makes the rules.” Which relates back to my first suggestion. One of the best incentives — or rewards — is money. Don’t throw money at the problem, which will only end up with agencies buying expensive systems that they won’t use correctly — if they use them at all. Instead, increase budgets to agencies that actually do information sharing, so they can show other agencies not only how it’s done but how it benefits them, and pay bonuses to managers who actually do something to further information sharing at their agencies. (Metrics to be developed later.) Decrease budgets of agencies that don’t get with the program. (I realize I’m painting with broad strokes here but we’ve been talking and complaining and wringing our collective hands — well, maybe some of us — for years and not that much has been accomplished for all the huffing and puffing. Let’s try something different, for a change.)

In his testimony to the Homeland Security Committee's panel on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment, Ambassador McNamara stated, “Differing missions, overlapping turf conflicts, resource constraints, bureaucratic inertia and agency tunnel vision still exist and impede information sharing... We are appealing to agencies to do what is in the common good, but [they] have their own missions and objectives."

It seems to me that Ambassador McNamara is also painting a pretty fair description of Congress and its committees, so why shouldn't executive branch agencies resemble the branch of government that pays the bills?

Note that the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, otherwise known as the 9/11 Commission, urged Congress back in 2004 to create a single point of oversight for national security — otherwise all other national security reforms would suffer. When the commission’s final report was published in July 2004 there were 88 Congressional committees and subcommittees that claimed oversight of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). There are now 108 Congressional committees and subcommittees that claim oversight of DHS. That’s an 18.5% increase — not decrease — over the past five years in the number of committees and subcommittees claiming oversight. And as the 9/11 commission predicted, other national security reforms have suffered — especially all those related to interagency information sharing.

Anyone want to bet that by the time we're observing the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks (give or take a year or two) we'll have another commission calling for the creation of a single point of oversight — and it will be déjà vu all over again?