Acquisition Reform

Members of Congress have raised concern that the acquisition workforce in federal agencies--personnel responsible for billions of dollars of government procurement expenditures each year--may lack the training needed to do their jobs. This report discusses whether (1) the General Services Administration (GSA) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) have assurances that their acquisition workforces met federal training requirements and whether contracting officers at one GSA and one VA field location met each agency's training requirements; (2) the Office of Federal Procurement Policy had sought to ensure that civilian agencies collected and maintained standardized acquisition workforce information, as required by the 1996 Clinger-Cohen Act; and (3) GSA and VA were taking steps to comply with the funding requirements of the Clinger-Cohen Act.

GAO noted that: (1) both GSA and VA have efforts under way to train their acquisition workforces; (2) however, neither had assurance that all members of their acquisition workforces had received core training and continuing education, as required by OFPP's policy; (3) neither agency had complete readily accessible information on the overall extent to which their acquisition workforces had received required training; (4) contrary to OFPP's policy, neither GSA nor VA had established core training requirements for some segments of their acquisition workforces--contracting officer representatives and contracting officer technical representatives who do not have authority to award contracts; (5) by reviewing agency training records and obtaining documentation directly from GSA's Greater Southwest Regional Office and VA's medical center in Dallas, GAO determined that 99 percent of GSA and 72 percent of VA contracting officers at these two locations met core training requirements that GSA and VA had established for such personnel; (6) however, only about half of GSA's and VA's contracting officers in these locations who were to have continuing education requirements completed by December 1999 had met those requirements by the due date; (7) to help explain why some officers had not completed the required training, agency officials cited conflicts in scheduling the training and a lack of awareness of training requirements; (8) OFPP has not yet ensured that civilian departments and agencies were collecting and maintaining standardized information, including training data, on their acquisition workforces, as required by Clinger-Cohen; (9) in September 1997, OFPP tasked the Federal Acquisition Institute to work with departments and agencies and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to develop a governmentwide management information system, including specifications for the data elements to be captured, to assist departments and agencies in collecting and maintaining standardized data; (10) system development was significantly delayed because the Institute and OPM had not reached agreement on final system requirements and specifications; (11) neither GSA nor VA identified all the funds it planned to use for acquisition workforce training in its congressional budget justification documents as required by Clinger-Cohen; (12) Clinger-Cohen provides that agencies may not obligate funds specifically appropriated for acquisition workforce education and training under the act for any other purpose; and (13) appropriations acts GAO reviewed for GSA and VA did not specify a funding level for acquisition workforce education and training.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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