Better training needed for emergency purchases, procurement chief says

Government officials need more training to respond effectively to sudden purchasing demands in emergency situations, an Office of Management and Budget official said Monday.

Shortcomings in contingency contracting capabilities surfaced during last summer's hurricane season, said Robert Burton, acting administrator of OMB's Office of Federal Procurement Policy, at a conference hosted by the Arlington, Va.-based Performance Institute. A lack of staff, particularly of managers and people experienced in handling emergencies, was a key problem at the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other agencies, he said.

FEMA had 36 contracting professionals last summer, and had a request pending to add 200 over the next five years. Moreover, "Our folks were not necessarily trained well in contingency contracting," he said. People had little knowledge of what contract vehicles were already in place at different agencies that could have been used to quickly buy supplies for areas affected by the hurricane.

Without that knowledge, duplicate procurements were made in some cases, and in others, supplies were delayed, Burton said.

He noted that the Chief Acquisition Officers Council, a group of procurement chiefs, has established a working group on contingency contracting that is developing an outline of best practices for agencies to follow, as well as directories of individuals with expertise in emergency procurement and of existing contracts that could be relevant to future emergencies.

While some lawmakers have called for more flexibility in federal acquisitions guidelines to respond to unanticipated events, knowledge of how to use the existing rules will be sufficient to meet agencies' contingency needs, Burton said. "The [Federal Acquisition Regulation] is extremely flexible," he said, "flexible to the point that FEMA was able to award three contracts with a ceiling of $500 million, verbally."

Burton also said interagency contracts and strategic sourcing, where agencies analyze purchasing habits and use that information to negotiate better deals, are priorities this year.

The Government Accountability Office last year identified interagency contracts as a high-risk area for fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement. Such contracting vehicles have proliferated across the executive branch, Burton said, with a minimum of data available on how they are used, what responsibilities the purchasing and ordering agencies each have and how contracting fees figure into agencies' budgets.

Perhaps more significantly, these interagency contracts escape much of the scrutiny of other contracting vehicles and are susceptible to being "out of scope," with information technology contracts, especially, used for a wide range of acquisitions unrelated to the purposes for which the funds were appropriated.

In strategic sourcing, Burton said his office will continue to move forward on initiatives begun over the past year, including shared sourcing of key commodities and better training for the acquisition workforce.

Burton said improving the Federal Procurement Data System also would be a major activity of the year, noting that gains from initiatives such as strategic sourcing could not be measured without high-quality, consistent benchmark data.