PSC: Professional Services Council
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News
August 5, 2009
Overburdened, Understaffed, Narrowly Defined Acquisition Workforce is
Primary Cause in Contracting Problems, PSC Says
Washington, D.C.— Professional Services Council Executive Vice President of Federal Affairs and Operations Dee Lee will testify that workforce challenges, and a naively narrow definition of that workforce, are key causes of contracting challenges at a hearing today of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs' Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and the District of Columbia.
During the hearing, titled “Strengthening the Federal Acquisition Workforce: Government-wide Leadership and Initiative,” Ms. Lee will outline PSC’s assessment of government-wide efforts to appropriately staff, train, and retain a high quality federal acquisition workforce. Ms. Lee will also discuss what improvements can be implemented to address current gaps in the acquisition workforce.
“Many policymakers, Members of Congress, and the media make the mistake of defining the acquisition workforce too narrowly, accounting only for contracting and procurement employees. A more accurate description of the workforce includes all the requisite skills and functions that make up the total acquisition team—from those who help define the government’s needs to those who award the contract to those who administer and oversee the contractor’s performance,” Lee said.
PSC has been a longtime advocate of bolstering the federal acquisition workforce and believes that an overburdened, understaffed workforce is often an underlying factor in problems that arise during the acquisition life-cycle. Providing the acquisition workforce with valuable resources and building their capacity will go a long way towards eliminating unnecessary errors.
“The keys to ensuring proper oversight, accountability, and effectiveness of federal acquisition lie in thoughtful policies that strike the right balance among planning, resources and compliance. Those policies must be based on sound data and thoughtful debate, rather than on anecdotes or headlines, and should focus on actions that will improve performance rather than simply adding layers of after-the-fact oversight,” Lee said.
Full text of Lee’s testimony is available online.
PSC is the national trade association of the government professional and technical services industry. PSC’s more than 330 member companies represent small, medium, and large businesses that provide federal agencies with services of all kinds, including information technology, engineering, logistics, facilities management, operations and maintenance, consulting, international development, scientific, social, environmental services, and more. Together, the association’s members employ hundreds of thousands of Americans in all 50 states.
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For more information, contact Carrie Lake at the Professional Services Council at 703-875-8059 or lake@pscouncil.org.
