Contractor association pushes for stimulus ‘tiger teams’

The Professional Services Council, a major contractor association, is calling for the creation of "tiger teams" to review existing capabilities and develop quick response plans to implement provisions of the massive economic stimulus package.

PSC President Stan Soloway and Executive Vice President Alan Chvotkin said on Tuesday that such teams would unite representatives from program management, financial, legal, acquisition, human resources and audit offices, as well as industry officials and inspectors general, to determine how each agency can best meet the stimulus mandates.

"It's designed to be a short-term, rapid response kind of approach integrating all the different challenges," Soloway said. "The stimulus is a massive … [addition to] an already stressed government infrastructure in terms of skills and capability [required]."

With some exceptions, agencies are struggling to break out of the traditional, compartmentalized mentality to implement the act, according to Soloway.

"The contracting folks are looking at what contract vehicles they have and the program folks are looking where their programs are and the legal folks are over there," he said. "In a tiger team environment they would all be coming together."

From the industry standpoint, the greatest tensions in the stimulus are getting money out the door quickly and avoiding the mistakes of Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina contracting efforts. Soloway said these contingency operations demonstrated that the focus must be on establishing strong processes before spending begins and on oversight by inspectors general and auditors during and after contract awards.

Writing clear requirements and goals would greatly increase the likelihood of success for the contractor and the government, but it would take time. By creating teams to assess capability gaps, agencies would be better able to address shortfalls for this short-term effort, according to PSC. Since a massive hiring initiative is too difficult and too slow for the stimulus, Chvotkin said agencies must work together to share capabilities.

"It is the holistic view of the workforce capabilities, not simply the stovepipe view within each bureau or subagency or Cabinet agency, that [the Office of Management and Budget] and the president ought to be looking at," Chvotkin said. "The core, the foundation of the contingency contracting corps, had it been in existence, would have been a perfect starting point for implementing this kind of stimulus package."

The contingency contracting corps, which was established in the 2009 National Defense Authorization Act but has yet to be implemented, would give OMB the authority to draw on talented acquisition and program management officials across government to respond to an emergency. PSC has long advocated such an approach.

Without a pre-established emergency acquisition team, agencies must identify their needs and assess how to fill them with the right mix of civil servants and contractors, on their own and quickly. They also must ensure procedures and controls for managing contractors are sufficient.