Agencies under pressure to mix and match public, private workers

In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, the intelligence community faced a sudden, daunting task: meeting the dramatic new national security challenges the nation faced with a workforce that had been downsized during the previous decade.

At the same time, thousands of Americans became interested in putting their talents to use serving their country in the intelligence field. But there wasn't enough time to hire and train them as federal employees. So intelligence agencies turned to private contractors with the experience and expertise to meet their pressing needs.

Now, more than eight years later, those agencies face a different problem-incorporating the tens of thousands of contract employees they continue to rely on into long-term workforce plans. The goal is to manage the entire intelligence workforce across both the public and private sectors as a single cohesive unit.

But achieving that objective involves multiple challenges. In fact, even understanding the magnitude of the task gives leaders headaches.

"Nobody had been counting [contractors], so even though we had surged, we had no idea how many" were involved in intelligence work, says Ron Sanders, chief human capital officer at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. "Frankly, just trying to count them, we encountered all types of difficulties in terms of taxonomy."

Aside from the challenge of defining just who is a contractor, intelligence community leaders face the difficult task of tracking the training and expertise of their contract employees. Such information is readily available for government employees, but often hidden behind proprietary walls at private contractors.

In 2006, under the direction of the newly created ODNI, the intelligence community embarked on a long-term workforce planning effort, which involved counting contract workers and setting requirements for their employers to release detailed personnel data to the government. Now, Sanders says, the goal is to develop long-term projections of contracting needs by fiscal 2011.

Similar efforts are under way across government. Many different agencies have seen a surge in contracting-whether due to national security crises, the logistical challenge of supporting wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, a lack of federal employees with the necessary skills and expertise, or a shift toward reliance on the private sector fueled by congressional efforts to restrict federal employment.

Now the Obama administration not only has pledged to insource jobs that private firms have been performing in recent years, but also has launched a thorough review of how agencies use contractors and incorporate them into long-term plans. The initiative has earned praise from both public sector advocates and contracting trade groups. "As you move from an arms-length relationship with contractors to one of partnership, you're relying on contractors to accomplish agency missions," says Allan Burman, president of consulting firm Jefferson Solutions and former head of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy. "It makes sense for you to look at your long-term planning, to look at all of the resources that might be available."

But, as the intelligence community's experience shows, before the government can decide what to do about its contracting workforce, it first must understand it. And that is a costly and difficult undertaking.

In the January issue of Government Executive, Alex M. Parker looks at the challenges managing a complicated federal workforce.

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