retirements | The Contracting Education Academy

July 26, 2016 By AMK

OIG: GSA needs plan to address acquisition workforce demands

Although the General Services Administration (GSA) has human capital plans for its acquisition workforce, the agency’s Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) does not have a comprehensive human capital plan to address hiring, retention, and succession planning for its contract specialist workforce.

Without such a plan, FAS may be hiring contract specialists without assessing needs and hiring costs, considering turnover rates, and preparing for upcoming retirements.

Those are the findings of GSA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), in a report released on July 22, 2016.

The OIG recommends that the FAS Commissioner:

1. Develop and implement a comprehensive human capital plan that addresses the hiring, retention, and succession planning of FAS’s contract specialist workforce.

2. Evaluate and update the comprehensive human capital plan on an annual basis.

Specifically noted in the OIG’s report is the fact that “30 percent of [the FAS] contract specialist workforce [is} eligible to retire within the next 5 years.” The “human capital plan” that OIG calls for “should be designed to ensure FAS evaluates hiring costs across its regions, reduces turnover, and prepares for upcoming retirements for its contract specialist workforce.”

In responding to the audit report, FAS Commissioner Thomas Sharpe, Jr. states that FAS is “officially in compliance with the relevant acquisition workforce mandates.” However, based on a draft of the OIG’s report provided earlier, Sharpe notes that FAS “is already in the process of developing the content to feed the corrective action plan.”

November 12, 2013 By AMK

Air Force launches crowdsourcing-like approach to acquisition

The Air Force lost 35 veteran contracting officers over the last year with a combined 700 years of federal experience.

Instead of trying to replace them over time, the service is pooling its resources from across the world under a new installation contracting agency.

Air Force Maj. Gen. Wendy Masiello, the director of contracting at the service, said the virtual agency stood up Oct. 1 and will move to full operating capability over the next year.

Masiello, who spoke Wednesday at the Coalition for Government Procurement conference in Falls Church, Va., said the Air Force realized it wasn’t going to be able to replace the civilian experts who left easily or quickly, so it needed another approach to make up for the lost knowledge and abilities.

“It was born out of that whole idea of we can’t do it on our own. We’ve got to do it as a team, and how do we pull those teams together from major commands that are in Texas, Hawaii, Europe and Langley, Va.? How do we make them one team?” she said. “We started talking to each other and figured out this is how we will have to build this cohesive team and figure out how better to manage. Right now, we have organization stood up. The policies and procedures are pretty well defined in terms of authorities. But now for the next year as we move from initial operating capability to full operating capability we start fleshing out the details.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federalnewsradio.com/395/3494820/Air-Force-launches-crowdsourcing-like-approach-to-acquisition–

It’s a trend no healthy organization wants to see — a workforce that grows progressively older every year, with diminishing appeal for talented young people.

Although the General Services Administration (GSA) has human capital plans for its acquisition workforce, the agency’s Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) does not have a comprehensive human capital plan to address hiring, retention, and succession planning for its contract specialist workforce.

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