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Senate passes DOD authorization bill, tackles acquisitions

By Jason Miller, GCN Staff

After almost a decade of cuts and stagnation, the Senate took the first step toward reinvigorating the Defense Department’s acquisition workforce.

In the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal 2006, lawmakers called for DOD officials to increase the number of acquisition employees by 15 percent by fiscal 2009. The bill also calls for a focus on hiring workers with skills in specific areas, such as writing performance-based statements of work, systems engineering and conducting public-private competitions under Office of Management and Budget Circular A-76.

The Senate passed its version of the bill 98-0 last night. The bill now heads to conference with the House so the legislative bodies can iron out their differences. The House version did not contain any of the same acquisition provisions. Both the Senate and House Armed Services committees passed their versions of the bill in May; the full House also passed its version in May.

Under the provision, the Defense secretary could realign the workforce to meet the top six skill gap priorities. The secretary also should assess how the agency recruits, retains, re-trains and provides professional development for acquisition professionals over a 10-year period beginning in 2006.

Congress cut DOD’s acquisition workforce in half during the 1990s, and retirements and private-sector opportunities have continued to shrink the agency’s contracting workforce.

Part of the reason for the Senate’s action is recurring acquisition problems in DOD that have sprung up over the past year, including the Air Force scandal involving Boeing Co. and Darlene Druyun and DOD’s aptitude for “parking” billions of dollars in the General Services Administration’s Federal Technology Service’s IT Fund and using it for non-IT purchases.

The Senate bill also would extend the share-in-savings program by two years until 2007 and gives employees bid protest rights to the Government Accountability Office under A-76. The share-in-saving provision expired in September after two years of inactivity because OMB never finalized the Federal Acquisition Regulation rule. And some members have been supportive of giving feds bid protest rights for more than a year.

In addition to increasing the number of acquisition professionals, the bill calls for DOD to move all purchasing for goods and services over $100,000 to Contract Support Acquisition Centers by Sept. 30, 2009. Each service would establish a center, and the director of the center would develop policies, procedures and guidelines for acquisition planning, solicitation and contract awards, requirements development and management, contracting tracking and oversight, performance evaluation and risk management.

More news on related topics: Acquisition / Contracts, Defense IT, IT Management, Procurement



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