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Program and project managers working on major acquisitions soon will need a new certification, the Office of Management and Budget announced Thursday.

Under the new Federal Acquisition Certification for Program and Project Managers, those assigned to programs that are deemed major acquisitions must be certified at the highest of three designated levels -- entry, mid-level and senior.

"The establishment of a structured development plan will make sure things work better by ensuring that assigned managers have appropriate training and experience to help keep projects on schedule and within budget," said Paul Denett, chief of OMB's Office of Procurement Policy. The system is designed to make sure that key managers have acquisition skills like developing contract requirements and managing contractors, he said.

The certification system allows managers one year from the date of assignment to a major project to earn the appropriate credentials. Agency officials can waive the requirement for an additional year, and in unusual circumstances additional waiver time can be granted by an agency's chief acquisition officer. Managers will need to take at least 80 units of continuing education every two years to retain their certification level.

An entry level certification will correspond to roughly one year of recent experience in project management; mid-level competency will require at least two years of recent program or project management experience that allows the individual to manage projects of low to moderate risk with little or no supervision.

Those at the highest certification level will have at least four years of experience. OMB is recommending that interactive training sessions be developed to cover key interpersonal and management skills for senior managers, helping them to manage junior personnel and complicated projects.

The new certification process was developed by the Federal Acquisition Institute in consultation with 20 agencies, OMB said, and the institute will work with other acquisition and information technology groups to oversee it.

Individual agencies will be responsible for administering their own certification processes, and chief financial, technology and human capital officers will be able to provide input into certification decisions and requirements.

The certification will be required at agencies other than the Defense Department, which already has a comparable program, and intelligence organizations. Denett said his office would be working with agencies in the coming months to determine how many people will fall under the requirement, suggesting the number could be anywhere from 20,000 to 40,000.

COMMENTS

• Roy: It's Mr. Smith. And as I said, OPM gave authority to waive DAWIA so-called 'credentials' so as to allow potential selectees to earn same (by attending fundamental-level courses) within one-year post, repeat POST hiring. But the one agency careerist so-called 'managers' in DoD ignore this option and instead defacto require applicants to have already attended these remedial courses (at US taxpayer expense on US taxpayer funded time) before even applying. And as a result, these purported federal-wide and/or DEU recruitments end up with nearly 100% rates of inbreeding whereby only and merely current or prior DoD staffers are ever hired, hired by one agency careerist DoD 'managers' under the guise of fraudulent and sham "competitions." Michael J. Smith, M.P.A. Posted May 16, 2007 2:39 PM
• Smith: Of course OPM had something to do with it. You said so yourself in the following statement. "OPM gave DoD waivers..." OPM controlled it! OPM guided us! OPM were, are, and will remain our DoD hiring authority mentors. The main point we agree on is that DoD is a horrible place to compare for fair and equitable hiring practices and that may not change considering the nature of the DoD mission. OPM will continue to provide waivers for the sake of the DoD wild card "The mission". Donald Roy Posted May 14, 2007 3:08 PM
• Roy, OPM has nothing to do with the decades -long rampant levels of self-serving inbreeding within DoD. OPM gave DoD waivers for DAIWA. Did you not ever read these recruitments? They all cite that applicants can either currently posses DAWIA credentials or have the ability to possees them within 1 year post hiring. And what precisely are these so-called 'credentials' you ask? Its a mere certificate of completion of attending and not sleeping too much at fundamental-level budeting and procurement training courses at US taxpayer expense on US taxayer funded time with no real testing or other substantavie work required from those that are sent to 4 and 5-week (and some even ionger) mere training courses. Truly unbelieveable! Michael J. Smith, M.P.A. Posted May 9, 2007 1:48 PM