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.