CAREER CORNER
U S A A S C P E R S P E C T I V E F ROM THE DI R ECTOR , U. S . A RMY ACQUI S ITION SUP PORT CENTE R WHY SECTION 852? D
uring the 1990s and the early 2000s, the acquisition community was spe- cifically targeted for reductions. Some members of Congress said that “there
Craig A. Spisak
were too many buyers and too many shoppers” in the acquisition community. DOD, through previ- ous National Defense Authorization Acts (NDAAs), had specific targets for reduction in acquisition organizations and the acquisition workforce itself. These occurred without a commensurate reduction in workload.
Director, U.S. Army Acquisition Support Center
target of increasing new acquisition hires by 10,000 by FY15. The Army’s new-hire target was set at 1,885, with 1,650 of the positions reserved for the contracting career field.
If you look at these changes in concert with opera- tions in theater, DOD has received a lot more
Over the years, the pendulum started to swing back. The number of acquisition workforce personnel decreased while workload and total obligation authority increased (See Figure 1). In 2007, the Gansler Commission Report on the state of Army acquisition high- lighted several areas that were broken in Army contracting. So as we’ve grown, we have specifically targeted some of those chal- lenges in the contracting arena. We’ve tried to lay out a plan for achieving workforce growth. We have taken a very strategic look at skill set gaps in the Army Acquisition, Logistics, and Tech- nology Workforce and set priorities for those gaps, in a targeted approach to acquisition workforce growth and development.
Congress recognized this trend and included the Defense Acqui- sition Workforce Fund in Section 852 of the NDAA for FY08, which allowed DOD to recruit, hire, and train the acquisition workforce. On April 6, 2009, the Secretary of Defense announced the Defense Acquisition Workforce Growth Initiative, with a
Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) dollars, which has substantially increased the Army AL&T workload. We’ve had to ramp up dramatically to meet the OCO requirement and our workforce’s increasing responsibilities. Programs and OCO dollars have increased for those reasons, and the Secretary of Defense targets for workforce growth have had to increase. From my perspective, the Acquisition Workforce Growth Initiative was woefully overdue and critically needed to resolve the imbalance between the challenging workload and the number of people in the workforce.
The Army’s goal is not only to increase the workforce, but also to bring in the right kinds of people, with the right types of skills to perform the functions that are necessary. In a Senate hearing April 5, Director of Acquisition Career Management LTG Wil- liam N. Phillips answered questions on the quality of interns that the Army was recruiting into the acquisition workforce.
“We are actually looking at folks coming out of colleges and uni- versities that have skills that are necessary to bring them in and train them in cost analysis and areas such as that. … Matter of
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Army AL&T Magazine
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