Summary
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is one of the largest procurement spending agencies in the federal government. In fiscal year 2007, DHS obligated about $12 billion for a wide range of goods and services to meet complex mission needs. Like other federal agencies, DHS has faced challenges in building and sustaining a capable workforce to support its acquisitions. GAO was asked to identify and assess DHS's efforts to build and sustain an effective acquisition workforce and determine the extent to which DHS has planned strategically for the acquisition workforce. To conduct the work, GAO collected and reviewed data and interviewed officials from the Office of the Chief Procurement Officer (CPO), DHS's nine procurement offices, and nine program offices, and reviewed in detail workforce information and data for acquisition support contracts from selected offices.
DHS has undertaken several initiatives, mostly focused on contract specialists, to begin addressing acquisition workforce challenges. Initiatives related to recruiting, hiring, and training have made progress. In January 2008, CPO implemented a contract specialist intern program, and 49 contract specialists were hired through this initiative as of September 2008. In addition, CPO developed DHS-specific training for program managers through a training program begun in spring 2008. However, most initiatives related to defining and identifying the acquisition workforce and assessing workforce needs have not yet produced results and in some cases are progressing more slowly than originally projected. CPO is considering expanding some of its recruiting and hiring initiatives to address identified shortages in acquisition-related positions other than contract specialists, but has not determined how it will implement such an expansion. Moreover, DHS generally lacks documented performance goals and implementation steps--such as actions to be taken, needed resources, and milestones--for its current initiatives. Without developing this foundation, DHS will not be in a position to effectively monitor and evaluate implementation of these initiatives. DHS has not developed a comprehensive strategic acquisition workforce plan to direct its future acquisition workforce efforts and generally lacks several elements key to developing such a plan: a coordinated planning process; a comprehensive acquisition workforce definition; and sufficient data on workforce size and skills, including the use of acquisition support contractors. DHS has not set an overall direction for acquisition workforce planning or fully involved key stakeholders, such as the Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer and component procurement and program offices. However, DHS has recently taken steps that may help to include program office stakeholders in workforce planning. The department's narrow acquisition workforce definition, which includes only a portion of the employees performing acquisition-related functions, further limits the scope of planning. While DHS recognizes the importance of expanding the definition, it has not yet established an interim definition that identifies which positions should be included. DHS also lacks sufficient data to fully assess its acquisition workforce needs, including gaps in the numbers of employees needed or the skills of those employees. Understanding such workforce gaps is key to developing effective strategies to address current and future workforce needs. Further, prior GAO work has found that agencies should develop workforce strategies that include contractors; however, DHS has limited insight into the numbers of contractors supporting its acquisition function or the types of tasks performed. While GAO has previously reported that strategic acquisition workforce planning is not an easy task and can take several years to accomplish, government agencies will not be in a sound position to ensure they have capable acquisition workforces without this planning.
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.
Director:
Team:
Phone:
John P. Hutton
Government Accountability Office: Acquisition and Sourcing Management
(202) 512-7773
Recommendations for Executive Action
Recommendation: To improve DHS's ability to effectively manage its current initiatives and plan strategically for its acquisition workforce, the Under Secretary for Management should establish an interim working definition of the acquisition workforce that more accurately reflects the employees performing acquisition-related functions to guide current efforts, while continuing to formally add career fields to the definition.
Agency Affected: Department of Homeland Security
Status: Open
Comments: DHS concurred with this recommendation, and stated in its agency comments that the department had developed an interim definition that included contract specialists, program managers, and contracting officer's technical representatives. However, GAO noted that it was necessary to expand this definition further in order to guide acquisition workforce planning efforts. DHS has not yet developed an expanded interim definition, but has undertaken planning efforts related to adding three career fields to its formal acquisition workforce definition. These planning efforts are ongoing, and DHS plans to add its first additional career field to its formal definition in the fall of 2009.
Recommendation: To improve DHS's ability to effectively manage its current initiatives and plan strategically for its acquisition workforce, the Under Secretary for Management should determine whether the department's current initiatives related to recruiting and hiring are appropriate for acquisition-related career fields other than contract specialists and, if so, develop plans to implement the initiatives within the broader acquisition workforce.
Agency Affected: Department of Homeland Security
Status: Open
Comments: DHS concurred with this recommendation and stated that the department planned to expand its Acquisition Professional Career Program (APCP) to include career fields other than contract specialists. As of June 2009, DHS expects that its Fall 2009 APCP class will include participants in program management; business, cost estimating, and financial management; and other acquisition career fields. DHS also plans to expand its centralized recruiting program to additional career fields and has recently hired a recruitment coordinator to carry out this expansion. DHS is still in the process of considering the appropriateness of expanding the use of human capital flexibilities to other career fields.
Recommendation: To improve DHS's ability to effectively manage its current initiatives and plan strategically for its acquisition workforce, the Under Secretary for Management should develop a comprehensive implementation plan to execute the existing DHS acquisition workforce initiatives. The implementation plan should include elements such as performance goals, time frames, implementation actions and related milestones, and resource requirements.
Agency Affected: Department of Homeland Security
Status: Open
Comments: DHS concurred with this recommendation and stated in the department's agency comments that the Acquisition Workforce Branch had developed a plan that addressed its current initiatives. However, GAO noted that the department's plan did not include several key elements, such as implementation actions, milestones, or resource requirements. As of June 2009, according to a representative from the Office of the Chief Procurement Officer, DHS was continuing to work towards developing a comprehensive plan, but had not yet issued any additional planning documents.
Recommendation: To improve DHS's ability to effectively manage its current initiatives and plan strategically for its acquisition workforce, the Under Secretary for Management should direct CHCO and CPO to establish a joint process for coordinating future acquisition workforce planning efforts with the components for the purpose of informing departmentwide planning efforts.
Agency Affected: Department of Homeland Security
Status: Open
Comments: DHS concurred with this recommendation, but did not provide specific details in its agency comments on how it planned to implement a process for the Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer and the Office of the Chief Procurement Officer to coordinate future acquisition workforce planning efforts with the components. According to a representative from the Office of the Chief Procurement Officer, the two offices continue to work together on specific acquisition workforce initiatives, but have not yet developed any new processes to coordinate future workforce planning efforts with the components.
Recommendation: To improve DHS's ability to effectively manage its current initiatives and plan strategically for its acquisition workforce, the Under Secretary for Management should improve the collection and maintenance of data on the acquisition workforce by: (1) assessing what additional data on current acquisition workforce members, such as attrition data, would help inform workforce planning efforts and then developing a strategy to collect that information; (2) expanding the collection of acquisition workforce data from the appropriate component point of contact to include all positions that DHS determines to be acquisition-related; (3) collecting data on the use of acquisition support contractors to inform the strategic acquisition workforce planning process; and (4) conducting an assessment of options for creating systems to maintain comprehensive acquisition workforce data and selecting the appropriate system.
Agency Affected: Department of Homeland Security
Status: Open
Comments: DHS concurred with this recommendation and provided information in its agency comments about existing data collection efforts. However, GAO stated that DHS needed to take additional steps to address this recommendation. DHS has generally not yet obtained additional data on its acquisition workforce, but has efforts underway towards this end. For example, the Office of the Chief Procurement Officer is working to obtain data from an Office of Personnel Management system that would provide additional information about the existing acquisition workforce, and is also taking steps to collect data about acquisition support contractors through a broader initiative related to service contracting.
