Army increases ranks of contracting personnel, but gaps remain

The Army has made some progress beefing up its acquisition workforce, but still has a ways to go to accomplish the goals outlined by a special panel that reviewed the department's contracting practices, officials told lawmakers during a hearing on Wednesday.

The Army plans to increase its contracting workforce by 131 military employees and 347 civilian workers in fiscal 2009, according to Edward Harrington, deputy assistant secretary for procurement, and Jeffrey Parsons, executive director of Army Contracting Command. A significant and deliberate increase in the workforce will be necessary over the next three years to meet the Army's needs, Parsons and Harrington told the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. The service anticipates it will need 617 military and 1,635 civilian acquisition employees during that time.

In 2007, the Commission on Army Acquisition and Program Management, led by Jacques Gansler, former undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, reviewed four key areas of reform: contracting personnel; organization and responsibility; training and tools; and legislative, regulatory and policy assistance. After conducting more than 100 interviews over two months, the panel of military acquisition experts recommended a series of reforms throughout the Defense Department. Among the most daunting recommendations made by the panel called for increasing the Army's contracting workforce by 400 military personnel and 1,000 civilians, a hike of about 25 percent.

The problem is particularly acute at the senior levels, where the Army is scrambling to fill newly established positions with qualified, high-ranking officials, said witnesses at the hearing. "The circumstances, which permitted the cadre of senior officers skilled in both contracting and operational arts to wither away, will require years of persistent effort to fix," said Air Force Maj. Gen. Darryl Scott, deputy commander of the Task Force to Support Business and Stability Operations in Iraq.

Rep. Vic Snyder, D-Ark., said the significant reduction in acquisition personnel during the past decade collided with a 500 percent increase in contract transactions, creating "undesirable outcomes" including waste, fraud and abuse on contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"It can take a long time to put those pieces back together; it's a lot easier to reduce your cadre of trained people than it is to build them back up again when you've let them go," Snyder said.

As the Army and the Pentagon work to fill personnel gaps, Defense agencies also are trying to better understand how widespread those gaps are, and how to close them. Shay Assad, director of Defense procurement, acquisition policy and strategic sourcing, told the subcommittee that Defense agencies and the military services have been asked to conduct a total force assessment of their contingency contracting officers and contracting officer representatives.

"This assessment will ensure that the department plans and budgets for an adequate force of trained [contracting personnel] that are ready to deploy to effectively support the warfighter," Assad said.

The assessment also will include the development of a "thorough, thoughtful plan" to provide a sufficient number of contracting officers and representative to oversee contractor performance during a contingency operation.

The key, Assad said, is to integrate operational commanders into the planning of contract operations. Military commanders are managing an integrated force including 148,000 contractors in Iraq and 71,000 in Afghanistan, he noted.

"Commanders on the ground have a better understanding today than five years ago of power and importance of that force," Assad said. "As we have seen, contractors are and will continue to be a major part of the battlefield landscape."

The urgency with which Congress and Defense has responded to the Gansler commission report indicates the staggering amount of money being spent on contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the high-profile waste, fraud and abuse that has occurred in both war zones. Parsons said the military's ability to be better prepared next time will depend largely on how much attention these issues receive during peace time.

"My fear is that if the world becomes a calmer place and there is a drawdown on the number of deployments we're making, there may be a sense that we can eliminate some of the stuff we're trying to build up here," Parsons said. "We need to keep that laser focus on that to make sure the capability we're developing and building up, we don't lose 10 years from now."