A commission report by the Professional Services Council’s (PSC) Leadership Commission, its first ever issued, today calls on the government and industry to join forces in pursuing fundamental changes to turn the current fiscal and human capital crises into significant opportunities.
The report, entitled “From Crisis to Opportunity: Creating a New Era of Government Efficiency, Innovation and Performance,” identifies critical challenges facing the government. It also makes recommendations that include new approaches to workforce development, incentivizing innovation, developing smart business and acquisition strategies, and enhancing collaboration within government and between government and its industry partners.
“Fiscal austerity, workforce demographic and skills imbalances, and a continued, dramatic pace of technology change mandate new thinking rather than just ‘nibbling around the edges’ or continuing to invest money in ‘solutions’ and strategies that have simply not worked to the extent they need to,” said Ellen Glover, executive vice president of ICF International and co-chair of the Commission. She went on to call the report a “call to action.”
Other major recommendations include significantly expanding acquisition and technology workforce cross-training and rotational development, creating a new, pre-award services acquisition taxonomy to help drive business and acquisition strategies, as well as creating a new technology management career field for government.
“This report needs to be read and interpreted as a whole,” said Robin Lineberger, principal in the Aerospace and Defense practice of Deloitte LLP and co-chair of the Commission. “The challenges facing government, and those of us in industry, are multi-faceted and should be dealt with as such.”
The rest of the recommendations are as follows:
- Restructuring acquisition and technology workforce development and training around a “corporate university” model, to include new online education tools and techniques focused on critical thinking and business acumen, rather than the traditional “brick and mortar” and rules-based approach used in much of government today
- Expanding the authority of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy beyond the contracting function it has today to explicitly charge it with development and management of the entire civilian agency acquisition workforce
- Conducting “360 degree” evaluations of acquisition award outcomes
In addition, based on Commission direction, PSC committed to:
- Convening a joint industry-government panel to develop proposed reforms to the bid protest process;
- Developing a free, basic, online course on the keys to success in acquiring services capabilities; and
- Developing a template to be used as an addendum to contract proposals through which bidders would identify and objectively monetize the specific innovations they are proposing.
For the full report and list of commissioners, click here.
