The Air Force did not evaluate, nor establish clear or concise goals, for a two-year old pilot program that was supposed to give it flexibility to hire civilian acquisition personnel rather than hiring additional contractors, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released Monday.
In its report, Defense Acquisition Workforce: The Air Force Needs to Evaluate Changes in Funding for Civilians Engaged in Space Acquisition (GAO-13-638), GAO said the pilot program moved funding for Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) acquisition civilian personnel from its one-year operations and maintenance (O&M) appropriation to its two-year research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E) appropriation on the idea that it’s easier to move O&M money than RDT&E funds.
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| AFSMC was used in an Air Force pilot program that was to give the service flexibility to hire civilian personnel rather than additional contractors, GAO said. Photo: Air Force. |
But because the Air Force didn’t set any goals for this pilot program, GAO said it doesn’t know if the results of the program have produced positive or negative results, despite wanting to expand the program to other areas of the service.
GAO said before fiscal year 1988, Air Force acquisition civilian personnel were funded through RDT&E appropriations. But in FY ’88, the funding was moved to the Air Force’s O&M appropriation to “add stability” to the annual funding cycle and resolve reprogramming issues, among others. Air Force officials, according to GAO, said RDT&E funding is generally considered less flexible than O&M funding because of different requirements for realigning the funding.
But GAO said around 2008, the Air Force began considering requesting congressional permission to move civilian acquisition personnel back to RDT&E funding to help improve acquisition issues. By the time the FY ’12 budget process rolled around, the Air Force wanted Congress to approve this pilot program, which moved funding of approximately $187 million for 1,559 acquisition civilian personnel positions at SMC to a new program element in its RDT&E appropriation.
Air Force officials gave various reasons, among others, for the about-face on the civilian acquisition funding source:
* Stablizing the acquisition workforce funding across the planning, programming, budgeting and execution system by decreasing general Air Force and congressional reductions to funding for acquisition civilian personnel;
* Identifying the acquisition civilian personnel funding by placing it in a single program element; and
* Allowing for funding flexibility so that RDT&E funding could be used to hire additional civilian personnel, if an urgent need arose, rather than hiring additional contractors
Further, because the Air Force has not made plans to evaluate the outcome of the pilot program, GAO said it remains unclear if the potential impacts cited by service officials during the office’s review can be characterized as advantages or disadvantages. GAO said despite the Air Force identifying a goal to decrease general Air Force and congressional reductions to acquisition civilian personnel funding, service officials did not develop a plan to evaluate whether moving this funding to its RDT&E appropriation achieved this goal.
GAO concluded, in light of its findings, Air Force brass should take the following four actions:
* Develop objectives that link to the goals of the pilot program;
* Develop processes and procedures for approving, reporting and monitoring the pilot program;
* Develop and implement a data collection and analysis plan for evaluating pilot performance; and
* Communicate the evaluation results to stakeholders.
GAO said the Defense Department concurred with its recommendations and said the Air Force would evaluate the pilot program.