The acquisition workforce and its money

Contract spending has doubled since 2000, agencies are being asked to produce more reports for the sake of transparency, and oversight in general has gotten much tougher. Unfortunately, the size of the acquisition workforce hasn’t been growing to meet those demands, according to the Federal Acquisition Institute’s annual report on the state of the acquisition workforce.

In fact, the number of contracting officers shrank from a high of 31,794 in fiscal 1992 to a low of 26,608 in fiscal 2001.

Agencies have been trying to rebuild the workforce, but despite having added about 3,000 contracting officers since 2001, the 2008 total of 29,707 is still well below the number of contracting officers in 1992.

That’s the broad view. Now here’s a look at who those people are.

Source: Federal Acquisition Institute’s “FY 2008 Annual Report on the Federal Acquisition Workforce”