Acquisition workforce inches up in fiscal 2007

The size of the federal acquisition workforce continues to rise despite widespread concern over employment gaps and impending retirement waves, according to an annual report from the Federal Acquisition Institute.

The report, released by the Office of Management and Budget Monday, shows an increase of about 4.4 percent in federal employees performing contracting-related functions from fiscal 2006 to fiscal 2007 -- from 58,818 to 61,434. The fiscal 2006 report, however, listed the total number of employees in acquisition-related fields at 59,997 for that year, but the fiscal 2007 report did not include the GS-1103 and GS-1104 job series which accounts for the discrepancy.

The FAI report, prepared annually since 1977, includes demographics on five job classifications: general business and industry (GS-1101), contracting (GS-1102), purchasing (GS-1105), procurement clerical and assistance (GS-1106), and industrial specialist (GS-1150). FAI is part of OMB's Office of Federal Procurement Policy.

For the first time, the report also included preliminary information on program and project managers and contracting officer technical representatives. By requiring agencies to collect and report data on these job categories, FAI will be able to analyze them in subsequent annual reports.

"If we have the right numbers and talent for the contracting officers, we have to have their colleagues -- the program managers, the COTRs that are the eyes and ears of the contracting officer after the contract is awarded [and] we need to make sure we have strength in those," said Paul A. Denett, OFPP administrator.

Denett said he was pleased that departments have been able to keep their acquisition personnel numbers up despite retirement and turnover, crediting agencies for developing proactive initiatives such as intern programs to recruit talented people into the contracting workforce.

"There's a bit of a misnomer with people saying 'My God, we've had these huge cuts in the contracting officers … at the same time we've had significant increases in spending'," Denett said. "We've definitely had the significant increases in spending, but we've also had increases in the workforce."

While the number of contracting-related employees has been increasing slightly in recent years, spending has exploded. Paul Light, a professor at New York University's Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service who specializes in federal employee issues, said the acquisition workforce remains much smaller than it was in the early 1990s while contracting has increased dramatically. He said he is particularly concerned about the amount of large bundled contracts, which are difficult to oversee.

"Good news is the workforce is growing; the bad news is the workforce is not growing fast enough to keep pace with massive increases in contract dollars," Light said.

Denett said OMB still is working with the Office of Personnel Management and other agencies to determine how many acquisition employees are required. "I believe we need to increase hiring even more, and we're working to find out what that right number is," he said.

The report does not detail information on the number of contractors performing acquisition support roles. Denett said the government does not track the actual number of contractors; it awards contracts for services based on value, but does not monitor how many people the company uses to perform it.

Retirement does remain a concern for the acquisition workforce, with 51 percent of all contracting and related personnel eligible for retirement during the next 10 years. The report states that 47 percent plan to retire within that time frame.

FAI Director Karen Pica said this report, as well as the competencies report released in October 2007, provides agencies with the information to plan for the future.

"We feel we're starting to have a robust picture in terms of some of the data that's available for agencies to do some human capital planning," Pica said.