Davis: Acquisition Reforms Need to Go Further

A key House lawmaker is planning to introduce legislation that would require the government to use private-sector practices to improve the way agencies purchase information technology services.Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., chairman of the House Government Reform technology and procurement subcommittee, at a May 22 hearing said that procurement reforms in the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994 and the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996 haven't gone far enough in streamlining acquisition practices.Staffers in Davis' office said the congressman is expected to introduce the Services Acquisition Reform Act in early June."I believe the subcommittee needs to determine what can and should be done legislatively to promote greater utilization of commercial best practices, increased cross-agency acquisitions along with enhanced cross-agency information sharing, share-in-savings contracting and acquisition work-force training," Davis said at the hearing.Davis said that in fiscal 1990, the government spent $70 billion on service contracts. That number has grown to over $87 billion in fiscal 2000 and represents a 24 percent increase in the past 10 years. Contracting for IT services has grown from $3.7 billion in fiscal 1990 to $13.4 billion in fiscal 2000, and is expected to continue rising, he said.The Virginia lawmaker said federal agencies should increase the use of share-in-savings contracts for information technology. Under these contracts, part or all of the compensation paid to a contractor is based on the amount of money the new system saves the government.The Education Department, for example, has just entered into a share-in-savings contract for IT modernization that could revolutionize how it does business, Davis said. "I believe this type of contracting, which is frequently used in the private sector, holds great benefits for government," he said.Davis also wants to review cooperative purchasing by agencies using the General Services Administration schedules for IT products and services. Under cooperative purchasing, agencies pool their buying power to get lower prices.David Cooper, director of acquisition and sourcing for the General Accounting Office, agreed with Davis, saying that the acquisition work force needs more training."The government's long-standing difficulties with managing service contracts have not changed, and it is clear that agencies are not doing all they can to ensure they are acquiring services that meet their needs in a cost-effective manner," Cooper said."The increasing significance of contracting for services has prompted ? and rightfully so ? a renewed emphasis by Congress and the executive agencies to resolve long-standing problems with service contracts," he said.As the government seeks to improve its acquisition services, it faces a related challenge of addressing human capital issues. "One cannot be done without the other," Cooper said.Michael Mutek, senior vice president with Raytheon Technical Services Co. and testifying on behalf of the Professional Services Council, urged the panel to make work force training and education a top priority. The council is a trade association that represents the professional and technical services industry. The council proposed that government pay for training of the federal acquisition work force by using 5 percent to 10 percent of the administrative fees collected through governmentwide, multiple-award contracts and purchases from GSA schedules. Under this plan, funds would be forwarded to the Federal Acquisition Institute that, under congressional charge, would use the money to contract with world-class trainers. David Oliver, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, told the panel the Defense Department has implemented initiatives to better train its acquisition work force and make its acquisition process more inventive.The department has been improving its training processes for the last decade with the Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act of 1990. That established a professional development framework and imposed certification requirements on the acquisition work force, Oliver said. The Defense Department needs to train more than 135,000 members of its acquisition work force, including contract specialists, program managers, engineers, logisticians and others, he said. The Defense Department, he said, spends approximately $100 million annually on acquisition certification training. "While about two-thirds of the dollars are currently spent on formal classroom training courses, we are rapidly moving to a distance learning environment with about a third of our courses online," Oliver said. The department, which requires each member of the acquisition work force to receive a minimum of 80 hours of continuous learning every two years, also is providing a Web-based directory of learning opportunities of all kinds, Oliver said. And the formal training offered through the Defense Acquisition University will now emphasize business and commercial practice training as well as acquiring training through commercial sources, he said. The importance of the department's performance-based service acquisition strategy was re-emphasized in April 2000 when the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics directed that 50 percent of contracts for services be performance-based by 2005. The military services and agencies are implementing this guidance and have submitted their plans to accomplish this requirement, Oliver said.