By Emelie Rutherford
Defense program offices recently reported having more contractors than in-house staff, according to an auditor’s assessment that comes as the Pentagon works through the early stages of a major initiative to insource acquisition jobs.
Defense acquisition programs’ “reliance on nongovernment personnel continues to increase in order to make up for shortfalls in government personnel and capabilities,” according to the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) annual Assessments of Selected Weapon Programs, released last week.
For the first time since the GAO started reported on defense program office staffing in 2008, most offices queried by the government auditors reported having more non- government than in-house staff. For the 50 programs that responded to the GAO, 51 percent of the entire program office workforce was contractors. That’s up from 48 percent in 2008, the report says.
Despite efforts by Congress and the Pentagon to ensure the acquisition workforce has the needed people, skills, and capacity, the GAO says programs have continued to struggle to find qualified candidates to fill authorized staff positions.
“As a result of staff shortfalls, program offices reported that program management and oversight has been degraded, contracting activities have been delayed, and program management costs have increased as contractors are used to fill the gap,” the GAO states.
Overall, it says, most of the defense program offices–86 percent of them–that submitted data to the GAO said they use support contractors to make up for shortfalls in government personnel and capabilities.
The greatest number of support contractors are in engineering and technical positions, according to the GAO. Still, such contractors’ participation has increased in all area, ranging from program management and contracting to business functions such as administrative support, the GAO found.
The report came out the same week the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) published draft guidelines expanding the definition of “inherently governmental functions” that government contractors cannot do.
The proposal, published in the March 31 Federal Register, calls for having the established statutory definition of “inherently governmental” in the 1998 Federal Activities Inventory Reform Act (FAIR Act) replace all existing definitions in regulation and policy. This move would repeal a 2003 revision to the law that “watered down” the definition, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group that approves of the proposal.
“The FAIR Act defines an activity as inherently governmental when it is so intimately related to the public interest as to mandate performance by Federal employees,” according to the OMB’s Office of Federal Procurement Policy. “Examples and tests would be provided to help agencies identify inherently governmental functions.”
The OMB’s proposal lists examples of “inherently governmental functions,” including the determination of agency policy and budget requests, selection of individuals for federal government employment, awarding and terminating prime contracts, and drafting of congressional correspondence.
OMB is collecting feedback on the proposed definition.
All these actions come as the White House is pushing to cut down on cost-plus and noncompetitive contracts, and the Pentagon is working to convert more than 10,000 contractor jobs to in-house positions through 2015.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates in April 2009 announced the insourcing initiative, which calls for hiring and insourcing a total of 20,000 acquisition professionals.