By Emelie Rutherford
As lawmakers keep a close eye on Defense Department plans to hire and insource 20,000 acquisition professionals, the Pentagon said it has taken multiple steps to ensure the new employees have the appropriate skills and experience.
The Pentagon’s effort to fill long-standing shortfalls in its acquisition workforce has already begun, with 2,000 new hires brought on board as of Sept. 30. Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced the massive hiring effort in April.
Defense Acquisition University (DAU) President Frank Anderson said the hiring has been and continues to be “very successful.” He pointed to steps–including expanding training, increasing experience requirements, and enhancing workforce planning–taken to ensure the new acquisition workers have the needed skills.
“We expanded training in contracting, pricing, program management, and logistics,” Anderson said in a written response to questions from Defense Daily. “We have increased experience requirements in systems engineering financial management and cost estimating to ensure greater emphasis is placed on quality of experience.”
The military services have lead responsibility for leadership training and workforce development, and have created “world-class programs, especially their professional military education,” Anderson said. And DAU over the past four years, he said, has significantly expanded its portfolio of executive and leadership courses taught at the mid- and senior- grade levels for both civilians and military.
“These leadership courses provide an opportunity for the acquisition workforce to develop their leadership abilities,” he said. “This will enable acquisition leaders to respond more effectively within an increasingly complex acquisition environment.”
The Pentagon, under its Defense Acquisition Workforce Growth, intends to bring on board approximately 10,000 new hires and 10,000 insourced positions, converted from contractor jobs, through 2015.
For fiscal year 2010, which began Oct. 1, the Pentagon plans to bring on board 2,500 insourced positions and 1,580 new hires, according to Anderson. Those 4,080 positions include: 981 contracting; 939 engineering; 879 program-management; 353 financial-management and cost-estimating; 323 logistics; 181 production, quality, and manufacturing; 127 auditing; 106 test-and-evaluation; and 106 information-technology personnel.
The downsizing of Pentagon acquisition organizations in the 1990s has left the workforce strained and under increased “risk of not successfully achieving desired acquisition outcomes,” Anderson said.
The current insourcing effort, he said, “will create a better balance between our government workforce and contractor support personnel and ensure that critical and inherently governmental functions are performed by government employees.”
Congress is keeping a close eye on this massive hiring effort.
House Armed Services Committee (HASC) Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) said he wants acquisition-reform legislation his panel will craft next year to address ensuring the thousands of new acquisition workers are up to par.
“What worries me (is) you go out and you hire some acquisition types and a lot of them will not be skilled in the work for a number of years, they are going to have to learn on the job,” Skelton told Defense Daily. When crafting the forthcoming acquisition bill, the HASC will look at developing “a stronger workforce” into “a professional cadre,” he said (Defense Daily, Nov. 3).