Is progress being made in bridging the gap between the contracting community and the program community? Is the Office of Management and Budget’s Mythbusters campaign having an impact on the government’s communications with industry? To explore those and other questions related to the federal acquisition workforce, the Procurement Round Table, a nonprofit organization of former senior leaders in federal acquisition, convened an informal discussion with executives from multiple agencies. In a previous column, we reported on challenges in the work environment. Here, we want to share some of the comments about the relationships between contracting officers and the program managers they support and between government and industry.
The people sitting at the intersection of the contracting world and the program world are the contracting officer’s representatives (CORs). They have the critical role of serving as liaison between contracting officers and contractors, which is central to good contract management.
However, the consensus among senior acquisition professionals was that not much progress has been made in elevating the importance of the COR’s role, or in ensuring that individuals who take it on are well trained. As one executive said, “People become CORs because somebody has to do it. No one is hired to be a COR. It is considered a collateral duty and [treated as] a nuisance.”
Keep reading this article at: http://fcw.com/articles/2012/11/05/comment-acquisition-communication-gaps.aspx.
