Army Corps competition for IT work strains staff

Information technology management at the Army Corps of Engineers is being stressed to the breaking point by staff shortages resulting from a stalled public-private job competition, according to senior Corps officials.

An early September meeting of senior IT leaders at the agency reflected concern that IT services are suffering from significant attrition at "virtually every Corps [information management] office," according to a summary of the meeting distributed by the agency's chief information officer, Wilbert Berrios. Some have lost as much as 35 percent of their workforce since the inception of a competitive sourcing process more than two years ago.

"We are one missed signal away from a train wreck," officials warned at the Sept. 6 meeting in Jekyll Island, Ga., according to the summary, with staffing levels only "one person deep in several critical areas."

The Corps launched a public-private competition for its IT management work in June 2004 under the guidelines of the Office of Management and Budget's then recently revised Circular A-76. At the time, the competition encompassed about 1,350 jobs at 45 locations around the country. In May 2006, a Corps official said that number had fallen to about 1,100 positions as the result of a hiring freeze during the competition.

The Corps ended the contest in June, deciding in favor of the in-house employee team with a Lockheed Martin subcontract. But implementation is on hold as an appeal by losing bidder Northrop Grumman Corp. is resolved in the Court of Federal Claims. Corps officials have said the judge may decide the case by the end of November.

Corps spokesman David Hewitt said Thursday that staffing remains at May levels, but the notes from the senior leadership meeting suggest that officials are scrambling to ensure that the remaining employees can meet immediate needs and keep an eye on longer-term issues until the appeal is resolved.

"The current trend for losing important technical capabilities is driving an urgent need for change in how we deliver services in the IM/IT area," the summary of the meeting said.

The account said Berrios already has taken steps to reorganize his staff to better address the problem, and described a series of measures that IT leaders would take over the next weeks and months.

To monitor staffing issues, officials were asked to develop a "skills inventory" for key functional areas and rate local readiness at red ("resources not available"), amber ("minimal resources available") or green ("abundant resources available"). This system would allow sites to adapt quickly if they lost critical skills by identifying another location from which to draw help, according to the document.

An official was put in charge of revisiting the Corps' plan for transition to the Defense Department's National Security Personnel System, which is intended to eventually replace the General Schedule with a flexible compensation scheme based on performance. Officials now plan to avoid transferring IT supervisors and nonbargaining unit employees to the new system when the first Army Corps employees switch over in fiscal 2007.

Guidelines also were to be published for the use of incentives such as temporary detail assignments, retention bonuses, voluntary retirement and severances, to help managers shape the workforce.

Additionally, the plan called for new channels of communication among staff and leadership, including the distribution of success stories about units sharing information and resources.

On the technology side, the meeting focused on how to "identify key technology initiatives designed to prevent infrastructure failure" and use available resources effectively. Officials pointed to at least eight mission-critical initiatives, including hardware and software upgrades, a database migration and security for an operations system.

They also noted 12 initiatives that must be completed over time but do not pose immediate infrastructure threats.

Addressing how existing contracts could help or hurt the Corps during the protest period, officials were instructed to ensure that contracts could be extended or terminated as needed, and to share information about agreements that could be used by multiple locations. They were also advised to revise fiscal 2007 budget documents to reflect costs associated with the public-private competition process.

The September meeting was led by Berrios. On Thursday, he declined to indicate what IT skill areas have been designated at a red or amber readiness level. "We're just waiting on the decision of the judge," he said.