With collaboration between agencies and contractors at a “low ebb,” government should centralize services acquisition-related human capital planning to confront a retirement-wave brain drain and align itself with industry trends, a key contractor group recommends.
Current budget constraints, curbs on contracts and congressional hostility toward the federal workforce have combined to create a climate in which “anti-contractor rhetoric has become at least as common a political tool as public employee bashing,” a leadership commission convened by the Professional Services Council wrote in a report released Monday.
“This lack of collaboration and communications has a palpable impact on program outcomes and quality as well as on innovation,” said the report, produced by industry executives and chaired by Robin Lineberger of Deloitte Consulting and Ellen Glover of ICF International Inc. The authors noted that government is concerned that company proposals “lack originality and innovation,” while industry feels “compelled to propose only within the lines they believe the customer is willing to consider.”
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