Just now, formerfed said:

I think the Administration is looking for feedback, suggestions, and new ideas. Despite issuing an EO initially to get things going, it appears they are looking for a process that continuously evolves and improves. They know industry has lots of constructive thoughts and are open to adopting those that are beneficial. They also don’t want to keep things that don’t help as well as evidenced by the four year sunset provision.

I have been asked for suggestions and I have made some, but I never volunteered any. I just spent about an hour talking with someone in the Pentagon who is working on acquisition reform. Among other things I said that acquisition reform through regulatory reform is hopeless, a fool's errand.

That's not to say that elimination of some rules would not be helpful. But the only way to real acquisition reform is through workforce reform.

If I were in charge of acquisition workforce reform, CO selection, appointment, and advancement would be intensely competitive. The CO job would be vey different than it is today, more attractive, and higher-paying. There would be many fewer CO appointments, and appointment would require demonstrated mastery of concepts, principles, processes, procedures, methods, and techniques. Most contract specialists would be purchasing agents, and I would bring back procurement clerks.

Education and training would be challenging and intense. Those who fail would be told to seek other employment.

1 hour ago, Vern Edwards said:

If I were in charge of acquisition workforce reform, CO selection, appointment, and advancement would be intensely competitive. The CO job would be vey different than it is today, more attractive, and higher-paying. There would be many fewer CO appointments, and appointment would require demonstrated mastery of concepts, principles, processes, procedures, methods, and techniques. Most contract specialists would be purchasing agents, and I would bring back procurement clerks.

Education and training would be challenging and intense. Those who fail would be told to seek other employment.

This sparked lots of thoughts from me.

When I started out in the government, this type arrangement existed both in my duty station as an intern and the first regular duty station. It was very effective and contracting officers were greatly respected for their knowledge and experience. Obtaining a warrant was very different and involved written application and grueling interviews by a board of senior officials. Very few warrants were granted. But the arrangement worked well.

An interesting study would involve seeing how many orders versus formal contracts are done by 1102 contract specialists. I think the result might shock some. Between higher SAT thresholds, orders placed under GSA Schedule contracts, and all the orders under GWACS and IDIQ contracts, that will comprise a good bit of contracting workload. I just saw Navy anticipates over $5 billion of orders in their Seaport contract pool this year alone.

OPM will need to change their Position Classification Standards for something like this to happen. Much weight for higher grades in the 1102 series is based on supervisory duties. But I know from personal experience, one can’t be the best possible contracting officer when a large portion of your time and efforts goes to supervisory duties. On the reverse side, the standards for a purchasing agent need revised to reflect what goes on with placing orders today versus decades ago where a GS-07 or 09 often tops out.

On a similar note, the traditional procurement clerk duties largely have changed. But a typical 1102 performs much non contracting work related to automation. None of this envisioned in formal job functions by anyone.

A comprehensive examination of all this is needed.

27 minutes ago, formerfed said:

On the reverse side, the standards for a purchasing agent need revised to reflect what goes on with placing orders today versus decades ago where a GS-07 or 09 often tops out.

Just as aside. I found this in the last couple of days when doing research regarding threads in Forum. I am always intrigued about how long some topics have been discussed but never resolved. 8 years or more for 1105's and even AI!

Reflections from NCMA World Congress

Reflections from Chicago at the end of day one at NCMA World Congress 2017 AI or Bring back GS 1105s? The consensus was that Contracting Officers and 1102s, Contract Specialists, spend too much time c

31 minutes ago, C Culham said:

Just as aside. I found this in the last couple of days when doing research regarding threads in Forum. I am always intrigued about how long some topics have been discussed but never resolved. 8 years or more for 1105's and even AI!

So true. The purchasing agent issue is even more complicated now. So many orders of all types are based on tradeoff selection rather than just price and are significant in terms of value and complexity. Purchasing agent job descriptions and position standards assume orders are for low dollar value and non-complex commodities.

1 hour ago, formerfed said:

An interesting study would involve seeing how many orders versus formal contracts are done by 1102 contract specialists.

I can answer that question. For civilian agencies, Orders are the vast majority, but as you suggest, this distinction is no longer as important as it once was. What once were C contracts are now orders. We have so many GVT-wide contract vehicles - GSA lists 381 of them. Thousands of internal-use-only IDIQs and BPAs. The need to make 'C' contracts is increasingly rare - FAR 15 is the last resort.

Consider 75FCMC23F0133 Current Sources of Income and Employment Verification Services. It provides a critical service that is public-facing, complex and high-stakes. Many millions of Americans applying for federal benefits every year rely on it. If it broke it would make the news. It obligates a bit under $100MM per year. Ceiling is $2B over 5 years, First RFI went out more than year before the RFQ was issued. The largest action its agency awarded that year. Evaluation was long and complicated. It is a FAR 16.505 order. It's not on sam.gov.

6 hours ago, Vern Edwards said:

The CO job would be vey different than it is today, more attractive, and higher-paying.

The SEC has about 40 people in the contracting occupational series whose base pay is more than $200,000. All 20 contracting personnel at the Federal Reserve makes more than $180,000. At least 18 at the FDIC make over $250,000. How are things going in these agencies who clearly aren't bound by normal GS pay scale constraints? These are tiny offices, I grant you, but they would be an interesting study in what happens when 1102 salaries are much higher.