Oversight, workforce remain top concerns in acquisition survey

Acquisition professionals are being bludgeoned by overbearing and often unnecessary oversight that is being dictated by anecdotal mistakes by a handful of federal contractors, according to the results of a new survey released on Monday.

The fourth biennial Professional Services Council Procurement Policy Survey offered no grand revelations about the state of the federal acquisition environment but instead reinforced the concerns expressed in recent years by many in the contracting community.

Their complaints include an understaffed acquisition workforce buried under the weight of its mission requirements, an increasing number of one-size-fits-all contracting policies, and excessive government legislation that restricts creativity and focuses on back-end checking of the procurement process.

"There is always a pendulum swing for oversight," said Stan Soloway, president of the Professional Services Council, a contracting trade group, during an afternoon media briefing. "But … as of late it has affected their ability to execute the mission of the moment."

Twenty-eight high-ranking government acquisition leaders were interviewed for the survey, "Acquisition in Transition: Workforce, Oversight and Mission," which was conducted in the spring and summer in conjunction with Grant Thornton LLP.

More than nine in 10 respondents said oversight has increased in the past two years. But most argued that the oversight has been largely ineffective, focusing on knee-jerk mandates rather than addressing the community's systemic problems. "Recommendations are usually perfectly useless to a program manager who wants to do things," one respondent said. "They just point out things that are wrong, not how to fix them."

Another participant added, "Oversight is not a bad thing, but it can create a risk-averse culture."

Participants also expressed frustration with recent initiatives to limit the types of contract vehicles the acquisition community can deploy.

Sixty percent said new federal acquisition regulations that restrict the use of time and materials contracts would not improve procurement. Others said performance-based acquisition is not a panacea for solving all contracting problems.

"It sounds good in theory but in practice it breaks down because a lot of things are hard to measure," one participant said. "If you try to force it, it's like pushing water uphill."

There was no clear consensus on many of the major acquisition issues the new administration of President-elect Barack Obama is likely to face.

More than half the respondents said stricter personal conflict-of-interest guidelines -- post employment restrictions, for example -- would actually harm federal contracting and reduce the number of people interested in working for the government. Only about a third of respondents, however, argued against tightening organizational conflict-of-interest guidelines.

Fifty-four percent of respondents approve of the idea of publicly disclosing justifications for sole-source contracting, but only 28 percent think a database of contractor misconduct would improve contracting.

Forty percent of respondents want a new definition for "inherently governmental," although some believe that the changes should be focused on better managing roles and responsibilities of contractors.

"What is the right balance of feds to contractors?" asked one interviewee. "Thirty years ago you would have never seen a contractor in a contracting shop. Now, we couldn't do it without them. Maybe we have too many, but we really could not function."

The acquisition workforce remains the overwhelming concern, as has been the case in all four surveys conducted since 2002, with only 32 percent of interviewees saying the situation has improved in the past two years.

Respondents blamed not only the number of acquisition professionals but the "broken" federal hiring system, an inadequate training program and the lack of an overall strategic approach to human capital planning.

Two-thirds of survey participants also suggested that the definition of the acquisition workforce should be broadened to include project managers, contracting officer technical representatives and other related disciplines.

The solution is for acquisition leaders to view the workforce in a holistic manner that focuses on integrating acquisition into the agency's overall mission, said Diane Denholm, who led the project for Grant Thornton.

"Now more than ever, it is imperative that acquisition leaders have a seat at the table if the critical issues facing the federal government are to be addressed," she said.