Contracting

The six initiatives were announced back in July with little fanfare, but today’s memo provides high level visibility and press that “review our approach to performance management, detail our strategies and key initiatives, and describe the early progress we have achieved.” 

The impetus for this event was the coalescing of the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act in 2015, the Program Management Improvement and Accountability Act of 2016, and guidance from the executive branch, which have combined to drive changes that will affect contractors as well as the federal government.

This week the General Services Administration (GSA) is hosting its 49th annual Interagency Resources Management Conference. An estimated 300 Chief Acquisition Officers, Chief Financial Officers, Chief Information Officers, Chief Human Capital Officers, Inspectors General, program managers and other senior executive leaders are attending. It is the most well known government-wide, government-only conference where leaders delve into emerging management issues and how they are being confronted.

In its first year, the Obama contracting and procurement reform agenda has been heavy on executive orders and memos to “rein in” contractors. These were largely in response to campaign commitments and led to a flurry of activity in agencies.

Over the past two decades, a series of trends have resulted in a chorus of voices in Congress, the media and the public concluding that the current federal contracting system is broken. Between 1989 and 2000, Congress mandated deep cuts in the Defense acquisition workforce. During the 1990s, the federal government shifted its contracting approach from one focused on buying supplies to one buying services, using new flexible contracting vehicles. Beginning in 2000, federal contracting increased from $220 billion to over $530 billion in 2008, with no increase in contracting staff.

The IBM Center for The Business of Government hosted a forum in November 2009 to examine the Obama Administration’s themes for a high-performing government and to frame a public management research agenda.

Participants included nearly 50 of the nation’s top public management researchers, scholars, and distinguished practitioners.  The forum was an effort to help bridge the gap between research and practice, and to collectively develop a research agenda that would help government executives move things forward.

The Recovery Transparency and Accountability Board posted its second set of updates onto its Recovery.Gov website last week. The new data covered Recovery Act spending in the last quarter of 2009 (October – December).

Most of the news media focused on the size of the budget and which agencies gained or lost. However, the budget also included an overview of the Obama Administration’s management initiatives, as well.

The overall emphasis of these initiatives is on achieving defined mission-oriented results. It de-emphasizes (but still addresses) improvements to mission-support functions and the reporting of performance information.