Acquisition work force reform will require steady commitment.

• Author: Farrell, Jr., Lawrence P.
• Position: PRESIDENT'S PERSPECTIVE

Earlier this year, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced a program to improve the capacity and capability of the Pentagon's acquisition work force by converting 10,000 contractor positions to government jobs, as well as hiring 10,000 more public servants by 2015.

The budget request for fiscal year 2010 would fund 4,100 new positions. Officials said that the department's goal is to restore the organic work force to its 1998 level of approximately 147,000 personnel.

This is a complex task with no easy fix. And it is not just a question of "in-sourcing" work. The major issue is that there are too few government acquisition personnel with critical skills such as systems engineering, program management, contract oversight, cost estimating and others. Recently documented substandard performance of major defense acquisition programs in cost and schedule is a reflection of these inadequacies.

Success will require clear policy and a long-term commitment.

Bolstering the current acquisition corps is especially daunting when one considers that 50 percent of these workers will be eligible to retire in the next five years. Addressing this problem will require advanced recruitment processes, increased training and improved retention policies. Revised policies should include allowing pay-for-performance incentives, career progression/promotion based on learning and contributions, and competitive pay with private industry to attract the "best and brightest."

To begin, several steps are in order.

The first one is to inventory the current work force's skills and deficiencies. The next step would be to determine which functions should or should not be performed by industry contractors and which functions should stay in the public sector. Government and industry are both ill-served by the current failure to accurately define and apply the scope of the functions that are "inherently governmental." This ambiguity makes it even more difficult to define specifically which jobs should be outsourced. The Federal Acquisition Regulations defines "inherently governmental," but that definition is inconsistently applied.

Last year, Congress mandated that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) develop a single government-wide definition and criteria for the identification of critical positions that the government should fill. That process is ongoing. Further, President Obama has directed OMB to accomplish this mandate by Sept. 30.

Another key issue is the need to...