Senators say smaller acquisition staffs led to IT project failures

Lawmakers attending President Barack Obama's fiscal responsibility summit on Monday blamed a shrinking acquisition workforce and lax contract oversight for the federal government's troubles managing large information technology procurements.

"If you look across the federal government, there are problems in IT contracts no matter where you look," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, during the summit's closing session. "My favorite pet peeve is we don't have enough skilled contracting officers. We've had an enormous increase in the volume of contracts at a time when the acquisition work force has actually declined by 22 percent."

During a breakout session on procurement, she noted that from 2001 to 2008, the value of all contracts let by the federal government increased 141 percent to a total of $532 billion, while the procurement workforce fell by 22 percent during the same period. The decline in the acquisition staffs has led to insufficient competition on contracts, vague definitions of requirements and poor management.

"It all comes down to an insufficient number of procurement officials," Collins said. Because 50 percent of the federal acquisition workforce is eligible for retirement by 2012, the contracting problems are likely to worsen.

She suggested that new legislation to increase the oversight of IT investments, similar to the bill introduced last August by Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del, is necessary. The bill would require agencies to report to Congress when IT projects are behind schedule or over budget, and would create a strike force within the Office of Management and Budget to help managers with struggling programs.

A shrinking acquisition workforce is only part of the problem, according to Larry Allen, president of the Coalition for Government Procurement. Procurement officials are encouraged only to award new contracts, not to manage existing contracts properly or to ensure contracts are performing as expected. "There's no incentive to manage that contract after it's awarded," he said. "Clearly that needs to change."

The emphasis on awarding new contracts is one reason the federal government has seen a proliferation of multiple award contract vehicles in recent years, many of which are duplicative and divert resources and personnel from managing existing contracts, Allen said.

In addition, agencies should rely less on in-house acquisition staffs in favor of hiring the procurement professionals at agencies such as the General Services Administration, according to Warren Suss, president of Suss Consulting. "There has been a tendency for every agency to want to be in the driver's seat for their own acquisitions, but they're going to have to give up a degree of that control to get more professionalism into the system," he said.

But a shift to improve contract management is "a heretical statement to make inside the contracting core," Allen said. "Managing contracts, especially ones awarded by others, is seen as less than ideal work."