Acquisition schools to share more curriculum

The Federal Acquisition Institute is phasing in more new courses to bring its offerings in line with those of the Defense Acquisition University.

FAI has already adopted DAU’s curriculum for Level I Federal Acquisition Certification in Contracting. Now FAI will begin to add DAU's Level II curriculum to its own, Linda Ott, an FAI program analyst, said today.

The institutions have chosen to standardize their training so the acquisition workforce across all of the government will have a consistent understanding of contracting, she said. The change also makes certified acquisition personnel more mobile because they can move from the civilian to the defense side of government more easily, or vice versa, Ott said.

However, the transition to the new Level II curriculum will take some time. FAI plans to offer both the old and the new courses in fiscal 2008, and to drop the older courses in fiscal 2009, Ott said, speaking to an audience of vendors at the General Services Administration's headquarters.

Level II courses include training in business decisions, legal considerations and cost analysis.

Meanwhile, both organizations are also developing online training for some of their courses, said Debbie Bartlett, performance learning director at DAU.

"The real driving factor for putting courses online is access to learning resources," Bartlett said.