Big Buyers

Chief acquisition officers and procurement executives are fighting for staff, allying with program managers and struggling to define themselves.

The chief acquisition officer title turns two later this year, making it one of the youngest executive posts in the federal government.

Those who hold the title are struggling to define the position, attract people to it, beef up the ranks of the workforce it leads and improve the way government purchases. They are partnering with program managers, retooling training for the acquisition corps, automating and streamlining procurement, even as many of them hold other C-title posts simultaneously.

"I have always said I'd rather do this than make a million dollars selling mayonnaise," says Greg Rothwell, the Homeland Security Department's chief acquisition officer. "I just absolutely love doing this." According to CAOs, the work is challenging, there's upward mobility, the salary is decent and the skills acquired are highly marketable, both across the government and in the private sector. Acquisition chiefs also say there is a desperate need for more workers-and it's only projected to grow, as members of the federal procurement workforce continue to retire. "What a great time to be in a place where all the bosses are leaving," says Rothwell, a 33-year veteran of the field. "You think: Wow, there's nowhere to go but up."

But the job vacancies that leave an open playing field for the ambitious would-be procurement professional present a significant challenge to Rothwell and his colleagues. The acquisition chiefs must scramble for enough employees to properly award, support and oversee growing numbers of federal contracts, just as the world of contracting is infused with new techniques and governmentwide initiatives. In pursuit of more staffers, CAOs must counter a number of negatives. One is that the work itself is uninspiring. "The overwhelming majority of procurement work is rather dull and repetitive . . . there are large, exciting, complex and challenging acquisitions, but they are relatively few and far between," says Vernon Edwards, a Portland, Ore.-based consultant who trains government agencies and contractors. CAOs must convince prospective employees that acquisition work, which rarely is discussed in high school or college career counseling sessions and comes up in the news largely in relation to ethics scandals or wasted taxpayer dollars, is both interesting and critical. "We don't do a real good job of marketing ourselves and just how exciting this job is," says David Shea, the Agriculture Department's chief of procurement policy.

The 2003 Services Acquisition Reform Act, written by Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., requires the heads of 17 agencies to name political appointees as chief acquisition officers. A spokesman for Davis says the purpose of creating the position was to ensure that a high-level manager is in charge of the acquisition process. The law specifies that the acquisition chief's primary duty must be acquisition management-a requirement selectively interpreted by agencies. The acquisition chiefs at several agencies, including the Education and Agriculture departments, serve other top agency roles as well. At Education, Jack Martin is both the chief financial officer and the chief acquisition officer. At Agriculture, Michael Harrison serves as chief human capital officer as well as acquisition chief. The Government Accountability Office reported earlier this year that while each of the agencies required to appoint an acquisition chief has done so, "many of the CAOs also have other responsibilities and may not have management of acquisition as their primary duty as required by [law]."

David Safavian, head of the Office of Management and Budget's Office of Federal Procurement Policy, wants to put an end to this double-hatting. "As departments and agencies experience turnover, we will engage with them on a case-by-case basis to argue for a separate CAO rather than someone who also has nonprocurement responsibilities," he says. A spokesman for Davis says the congressman plans to discuss with OMB the problem of acquisition chiefs fulfilling multiple roles. Some CAOs, however, say balancing several roles is efficient. "It's optimal to have one pivot point who has oversight over each of these functions," Harrison says. He adds that in the private sector, he would be called a chief administrative officer, which would encompass both of his current roles.

Performance Boosters

CAOs have found that working in tandem with program managers improves contract management and the results of procurements, especially for services. Enlisting program managers also encourages them to use performance-based agreements and embrace other innovative tools. Bruce Carnes, the Energy Department's associate deputy secretary who also serves as CAO, has noticed a strong correlation between the training of program people and proper administration of performance-based contracts. The department, which spends about 90 percent of its budget on contracting, has been cited by GAO for improper use of performance incentives and failure to validate performance data provided by contractors. The better acquisition education noncontracting staff members receive, the fewer such problems occur, he says.

That's "absolutely true," says Debra Sonderman, procurement executive at the Interior Department. "Program folks have to prepare statements of work," she says. For performance-based contracts, that means "rethinking requirements in terms of what you want to achieve out of a contract. It's a different way of thinking about it." At the Veterans Affairs Department, a quarter of the contracts eligible to be performance-based actually are-well short of the department's 40 percent goal. "We honestly believe the achievement of that goal is going to be through more training," says Ford Heard, the department's acting deputy assistant secretary for acquisition and materiel management. "And it's not just training the contracting officers. It's program managers as well, because they play a heavy role in this."

Chief acquisition officers are pursuing other innovations. "It used to be that if the [Federal Acquisition Regulation] doesn't say you can do it, you can't do it. Now it's gone more to, if the FAR doesn't prohibit it, then you can do it. You can be more creative now," says Ronald Flom, the Office of Personnel Management's senior procurement executive. At a June conference, Safavian explicitly told acquisition personnel to push the limits of what's allowed. "If something is close to the line, document it, but don't shy away," he said.

Some acquisition officers have applied that license to OMB's directives. In May, OMB told chief acquisition officers to initiate strategic sourcing plans, including the selection of three commodities to target for more efficient purchasing. Strategic sourcing leverages the government's buying power by negotiating better prices for bulk buys. Some agencies, including Agriculture, Homeland Security and Interior, already have implemented the technique to hold down costs for commodities such as office supplies and computers, but others are wondering how to apply the new requirement.

Glenn Perry, director of contracts and acquisitions management at the Education Department, wants to shift the focus away from commodities, which his department buys in limited amounts. Education already has applied strategic sourcing principles to desktop computers, laptops and phones. Now Perry plans to look at services, such as those associated with information technology, to meet the OMB's requirement. He hopes that if he's able to quantify his approach, it will satisfy OMB. Safavian says he's willing to consider services, although strategic sourcing is easier to apply to commodities.

As they develop their strategic sourcing plans, several acquisition chiefs are taking steps to allay concerns that, because the technique usually consolidates purchases, it will hurt small businesses. Agriculture holds regular sessions for small businesses as well as monthly meetings called First Tuesdays, where small business owners and industry associations can express their concerns. Health and Human Services conducts monthly outreach sessions. Sonderman says she's working on an office supply initiative that will direct more business to blind and severely disabled people. "We're worried about small businesses getting left out of strategic sourcing," she says, adding that she's taking steps to continue to award contracts to small local businesses near national parks and wildlife refuges.

To some extent, meeting the Small Business Administration's government-wide goal of awarding 23 percent of contracts to small business has become increasingly difficult as contracts have become larger in size. "The work has grown because programs have grown, and funding has grown, and we've grown as an agency, so our requirements have gotten larger and many of those small businesses are now large businesses," says Perry. He says Education, which awarded only 8 percent of its prime contracts to small businesses last year, is reshaping its contract requirements in an effort to make more of those awards.

At the same time, acquisition chiefs are transforming their systems from paper and pencil into centralized online operations. Harrison says that within the next six months, Agriculture will begin using a fully automated acquisition system that will enable different parts of the department to coordinate purchases and will link to its financial data. "This system will put us on par with what I've seen in the corporate world," says Harrison, who spent most of his career in the private sector. Health and Human Services also is moving to a single automated system for tracking acquisitions. With a standard buying process, people will be able to move from office to office without having to relearn everything, says Catherine Tyrell, HHS' chief acquisition officer.

Education is going a step further by using technology to collect information about contractor performance and link it to budget data. The connection should help the department judge whether money going to contractors is helping Education achieve its mission to promote educational excellence, since Education spends one and a half times more money on contractors than it does on employees. "Our contractor base may think they're just providing support to internal operations without making the leap to how they contribute to performance results," says Perry.

Building Better Buyers

Recent policy changes should help acquisition officers push innovation by encouraging them to collaborate with one another and by making it easier for procurement professionals to move among organizations. An April 15 OFPP Policy Letter (05-01), for instance, calls for a closer alignment between acquisition workforce training requirements at Defense and civilian agencies. That will "ensure that our federal acquisition workforce has common core training and will promote workforce mobility," Safavian wrote in a Federal Register announcement. The idea is to prompt both "horizontal and vertical movement," says Emily Murphy, the General Services Administration's chief acquisition officer. "I would love it if every acquisition professional wanted to stay in their job forever, but moving around adds to the excitement in people's careers," Murphy says.

Budget limitations affect CAOs' efforts to boost recruiting and training. The 2003 SARA legislation establishes an acquisition workforce training fund within GSA, to be managed by the Federal Acquisition Institute. Civilian agencies would deposit in the fund 5 percent of the fees they collect under certain governmentwide contracts. The money would be used to support acquisition workforce training across civilian agencies. But the inter-agency fund "supplements, but does not replace, existing agency training budgets, and agencies should continue to budget separately for the training and education of their acquisition workforce," according to OFPP's April policy letter. This leaves CAOs responsible for finding the money to train their agency's acquisition workforce, which is larger because it now includes program managers.

That revised definition has the potential to throw funding plans off balance at some agencies. VA, for example, traditionally has used a revolving fund called the "supply fund" to finance acquisition training. But "with the OFPP policy letter . . . the acquisition workforce is bigger than just the 1102 job classification for contract specialists and that means more money," Heard says. VA might need to seek new funding sources, including appropriations, to "augment our current budget," he adds. The department also might consider "increased use of distance learning and online training initiatives."

To help standardize training for civilian and Defense acquisition employees, OMB and GSA announced in March that they were moving the Federal Acquisition Institute, which trains civilian staff. Now at GSA headquarters in Washington, the institute will move to Fort Belvoir, Va., near the Defense Acquisition University, which runs procurement courses primarily for Defense employees. The two have begun integrating curricula. GSA is on the last leg of a three-stage effort to analyze skills gaps in the acquisition workforce and to create career paths to fill them.

CAOs also would like to boost in-house training capabilities and tailor courses to mission-related needs. Opportunities for continuing education keep employees happy, they say. Homeland Security relies mostly on shared courses available at the Federal Acquisition Institute and Defense Acquisition University, but would like to create its own training academy, Rothwell says. In-house training lets groups of employees "hear the same message at the same time," he says. "You can also put one of your policy people in the class so when the instructor is saying the FAR says do things a certain way, the policy person can say: 'Well, that is correct, but at Homeland Security we've decided for national security reasons we're going to do it this way.' "

For the past several years, NASA has run its own procurement intern program, which allows interns to rotate among centers and lets managers see prospective employees. The program is a "cost-effective and successful" way of meeting NASA's needs, says Tom Luedtke, the deputy chief acquisition officer. The Air Force relies on mentoring programs and Web sites that enable younger workers to learn from experienced acquisition professionals.

Safavian's April letter asks the Federal Acquisition Institute and OPM to develop standard certification programs for acquisition professionals at civilian agencies-a change that is likely to generate more movement across agencies. Now, certification levels are inconsistent, says OPM's Flom. "Some [agencies] have four levels [of certification], some have three, some have none," he says. As a result, it's harder for employees to transfer from one agency to another.

Drawing New Blood

But as they work to standardize training programs and certification levels, and to create a more mobile workforce, CAOs find themselves competing with one another to attract and retain employees. What's worse, there isn't enough new blood in the pipeline. "You tend to see the same people over and over again," says Corey Rindner, the State Department's procurement executive. "I would say there aren't enough young people coming into the profession." With agencies like the Homeland Security Department ramping up hiring efforts, State will have to compete, he says.

Enticing benefits can help draw applicants, according to the CAOs. A. Jo Baylor, chief procurement officer at the Housing and Urban Development Department, says she would like to be able to offer salaries commensurate with the private sector. "I would love to talk with OPM about designating another pay band for procurement," she says.

Meanwhile, HUD offers awards when possible, and fosters a work environment where events like birthdays don't go unnoticed. Bureaus within Interior attempt to attract young people by providing such incentives as repayment of student loans, Sonderman says. And Tom Sharpe, director of Treasury's procurement office, is looking into telecommuting as a way to recruit and retain employees. "It's something I'm personally very comfortable with," he says.

For many CAOs, their agency's mission is their strongest selling point. State's main draw is its overseas work, Rindner says. Baylor says her employees get a sense of satisfaction from the people they help: "It's really fun to look at our mission and the fact that here you are helping this family to occupy a home that they've always wanted to occupy." Heard makes supporting veterans sound equally compelling. "I think it's something people can put their hands around," he says. "I could tell you personally that's the reason why I've stayed within this organization for 25 years."

"This is a department that touches everybody's lives," says Health and Human Services' Tyrell. "If you put out a contract for the National Cancer Institute [within HHS' National Institutes of Health], you know you're playing a role in hopefully curing cancer."