The Professional Services Council’s 2013 Leadership Commission today issued a report calling on the government and industry to join forces in pursuing fundamental changes to turn the current fiscal and human capital crises into significant opportunities.
“From Crisis to Opportunity: Creating a New Era of Government Efficiency, Innovation and Performance” identifies critical challenges facing the government and makes actionable recommendations about 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.
The Commission’s findings and key recommendations were reinforced through a series of discussions with government and industry leaders from the technology, acquisition and human capital communities.
Among the Commission’s major recommendations are:
- Creating a new technology management career field for government;
- 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;
- Creating a new, pre-award services acquisition taxonomy to help drive business and acquisition strategies;
- Conducting “360 degree” evaluations of acquisition award outcomes; and
- Significantly expanding acquisition and technology workforce cross-training and rotational development.
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.
