NEWTOWN, Conn: The House Armed Services Committee markup of the FY10 Defense Authorization Act supports Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ efforts to bolster the DoD’s acquisition workforce, which has been spread thin by the staggering growth of the department’s weapons portfolio.
The Pentagon has come to rely on contractors to fill roles that were once the responsibility of government employees, including engineering, business, and management positions. This distribution of responsibility reveals one of the fundamental weaknesses in the DoD’s acquisition system. Indeed, former acquisition chief John Young told lawmakers last year that several programs that experienced cost and schedule problems cited a shortage of program office personnel as one of the contributing factors.
In recognition of this predicament, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has recommended increasing the size of the defense acquisition workforce by converting 11,000 contractors and hiring an additional 9,000 government acquisition personnel by 2015. The FY10 budget would fund 4,100 of those professionals.
The House markup fully funds Gates’ expansion plan, and in an effort to reduce the military’s reliance on outsourcing critical acquisition functions, includes the following directives:
- Requires the DoD to include contractor employee data for service contracts in annual budget documents;
- Expands the expedited hiring authority for the acquisition workforce provided by the committee in the FY09 NDAA;
- Directs the DoD to report on how it plans to achieve its insourcing (using civilian employees for new work or work that is currently being performed by contractors) goals;
- Eliminates the limits on the number of civilian personnel that can be hired for DoD acquisition work in order to accommodate increases in workload and accomplish work that is inherently governmental.
