Lost Institutional Memory: Good or Bad?

Today, there is a looming crisis in the federal acquisition arena that overshadows specific actions to reform the system: Roughly half the federal acquisition community is eligible to retire from government service within the next eight years. This gives rise to two threatening scenarios. First, an already burdened contracting and procurement system will find itself further shorthanded. With the outflow of experienced professionals, Congress is worried that there will not be enough people to handle the program management, contracting and procurement needs of government.

Second, the federal acquisition professionals who will be left behind lack the experience of those who have departed. Congress has expressed concern that a substantial portion of government’s institutional memory will be lost in the next few years. As a consequence, we will face a situation where we have fewer acquisition professionals serving government, and these people will have lower skills levels than the old guard.

Congress recently received testimony from three key acquisition management institutional players: the Federal Acquisition Institute (FAI), the Defense Acquisition University (DAU), and the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP). Leaders of these government organizations were asked what they were doing to stem the flow of experienced acquisition professionals. The response: We are instituting inducements to keep experienced professionals from bailing out, we are strengthening training of existing professionals, and we are actively recruiting fresh blood to fill the ranks.

These are good answers to Congress’ question. However, it is not clear that Congress asked the right question. In view of the fact that the acquisition process has struggled over the past several decades, do we really want to take extraordinary efforts to retain the institutional memory associated with a problem-filled acquisition process?

A better question that Congress should raise is: With the exodus of the current acquisition workforce, what are the DAU, FAI and OFPP doing to change the mindset of acquisition professionals so that we have a new generation of professionals who understand that effective acquisition management requires good business sense and goes beyond the mindless implementation of the Federal Acquisition Regulations?