TOPICS
TOPICS
Defense develops tool to assess skills of acquisition workforce
The Defense Department has developed a competence modeling tool to help gauge the capabilities of its acquisition workforce and determine what areas need strengthening or realignment, according to a senior procurement official.
Shay Assad, director of Defense procurement and acquisition policy, mentioned the tool during a Senate Armed Services subcommittee hearing on interagency and service contracting. Speaking with reporters after the event, Assad said the model will be used to assess individuals' capabilities and training, and for a high-level view of service and departmental procurement capabilities.
Assad said his office has been working on the model for the past five months, in concert with the Defense Acquisition University. Development will be completed in March, he said.
Assad said the model will guide procurement professionals in doing self-assessments of their skills and training, and will help supervisors complete similar assessments. That information can help individual offices align skills to tasks.
The tool will also aggregate information so that commands and the entire department can analyze available skills. It will incorporate the department's target capabilities, showing how they compare with the existing skill set.
Assad said that in some cases, improvements might be achieved by moving people from an organization in which their skills are plentiful to a group where those talents are in greater need.
"No organization has done a competency model for 26,000 people," Assad said. He noted that the model is farther along than a similar project under way by the Office of Management and Budget's Office of Federal Procurement Policy. Deployment of the model across the full Defense contracting workforce is set to begin before June and be finished within a year.
During Wednesday's Senate hearing, other witnesses testified on the acquisition workforce-related recommendations of a panel convened under the 2004 Defense Authorization Act.
Marcia Madsen, who led that panel and is a partner at the law firm Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw LLP, described the state of the federal acquisition workforce as "troubled" by a 50 percent decline in personnel since the mid-1990s, even as federal procurement spending has increased dramatically and purchasing has expanded to encompass more complicated goods and services.
The panel has recommended that agencies develop strategic plans around their acquisition workforces as part of a governmentwide effort to address procurement skill gaps.
COMMENTS
- The increasing demands on contracting professionals are taking a toll on the workforce. We never have quite enough personnel to handle the additional workload, and we are constantly having more additional duties piled on us, such as spending hours working with DFAS to get our contractors paid. Even if the contracting workforce increased 20% to handle the workload, the decision to downsize and downgrade DFAS personnel before all contracts are under WAWF is causing a serious degradation of service to the contractors. Patricia Maxson Posted June 5, 2007 8:44 AM
- Unfortunately, most of the DAU courses which are required for workforce certification are simply regurgitations of regulations. Yes, it is important to know these, but they are no substitute for college level business courses or even basics such as statistics, business writing, or negotiating. In my work I see good contracting officers and others retiring and being replaced with inexperienced and poorly trained workers. The workload is increasing, with fewer of us handling it. Ron Posted June 4, 2007 8:14 PM
- I agree with JD--DoD acquisition (esp. of weapon systems) is incredibly complex. As one who has written course content, and then had to 'dumb it down' for online delivery, I watched 2 full days in-class (14 hours) turned into something that just scrapes the surface of a complex process. And that will be the extent of training on that topic. It's not nearly enough. DD Posted May 10, 2007 3:53 PM
