ACQUISITION 

WORKFORCE

DOT Lacks Data, 

Oversight, and 

Strategic Focus 

Needed to Address 

Significant Workforce 

Challenges

Report to Congressional Committees

January 2013

GAO-13-117

United States Government Accountability Office

GAO
United States Government Accountability Office

Highlights of GAO-13-117, a report to

congressional committees

January 2013 

ACQUISITION WORKFORCE 

DOT Lacks Data, Oversight, and Strategic Focus 

Needed to Address Significant Workforce Challenges

Why GAO Did This Study

With $5.6 billion in procurement 

spending in fiscal year 2011, DOT 

relies on its acquisition workforce—

including contracting and program 

management staff—to negotiate and 

administer contracts and manage 

large-scale acquisition programs. 

Having sufficient numbers of 

adequately trained acquisition 

professionals is critical to ensuring

maximum value and benefit to the 

department.

In a fiscal year 2012 Senate 

appropriations bill report, GAO was 

directed to assess (1) DOT’s efforts to 

identify acquisition workforce needs, 

and (2) the Office of the Secretary of 

Transportation’s role in providing 

oversight and support for acquisition 

workforce planning and management. 

GAO reviewed DOT’s acquisition 

workforce plans for 2010, 2011, and 

2012 along with supporting 

documentation, and interviewed 

agency officials on how the data were 

collected and used. The primary focus 

was on five OAs that accounted for 92 

percent of DOT procurement spending 

in fiscal year 2011.

What GAO Recommends

GAO recommends that the Secretary 

of Transportation take steps to improve 

DOT’s ability to address workforce 

needs, such as improving internal 

controls for acquisition workforce data 

and providing guidance to ensure that 

the OAs collect and report workforce 

data consistently. DOT acknowledged 

past data and coordination challenges 

and generally concurred with our 

recommendations. DOT also stated it 

now has the management framework 

needed to effectively monitor and 

develop the acquisition workforce.

What GAO Found

The Department of Transportation (DOT) lacks sufficient and reliable data to fully 

identify its acquisition workforce needs and assess progress in addressing 

shortfalls over time. Over the last 3 years, the Office of the Senior Procurement 

Executive—the office within the Office of the Secretary of Transportation 

responsible for department-wide acquisition workforce management—has 

submitted acquisition workforce plans that reported progress in increasing the 

size of the workforce and the number of personnel certified to meet education, 

training, and experience requirements. However, GAO identified data limitations 

due to a lack of internal controls to maintain, compare, and reconcile the data

compiled from DOT’s 11 operating administrations (OA), and determined that the 

department-level data were not sufficient to assess progress over time. For 

example, DOT did not maintain the data it used to prepare the 2010 and 2011 

plans and in some cases the data were also not available from the OAs. By 

contrast, GAO obtained the data DOT used to prepare the 2012 plan, compared 

it with data from the OAs, and interviewed OA officials about the sources and 

methods they used to report the data. GAO found inconsistencies in how the

OAs reported their data that affect the reliability of the department’s aggregate 

data, but determined that the OA-level data were sufficiently reliable to make 

observations about staffing challenges and certification shortfalls at the individual 

OAs. Specifically, GAO found that 4 of the 11 OAs would need to replace 50 

percent or more of their contract specialists by the end of fiscal year 2013 to 

meet staffing targets. In addition, some OAs reported low certification rates for 

program/project managers and contracting officer’s representatives, which 

increases the risk of DOT programs not receiving appropriate oversight. 

DOT lacks the strategic focus and oversight needed to ensure that the 

department can meet its acquisition workforce goals. Federal policy requires 

agencies to conduct strategic planning to identify short- and long-term needs and 

plans to address them. The Office of the Senior Procurement Executive relies on 

the OAs to conduct acquisition workforce planning, but has not provided 

oversight or support to help ensure that they collect and maintain consistent data 

or use it to develop strategies to address workforce goals. Officials from the 

Senior Procurement Executive’s office stated that they do not monitor the OAs’ 

acquisition workforce data throughout the year and that their capacity to direct 

planning efforts is limited in part because they do not have the staff needed to 

perform oversight. Instead, officials stated that the office provides a focal point for 

coordination among the OAs, approves certifications, and provides information 

on training opportunities. According to leading practices identified in prior GAO 

work, agencies should link workforce goals to budget formulation to ensure that 

requests are adequate to implement workforce strategies. The Office of the 

Senior Procurement Executive has taken steps to align workforce plans with its 

strategic goals and budget, but given the challenges with maintaining reliable 

data, lacks a sound baseline for assessing progress or for making a business 

case for directing resources or management attention to OAs that may face the 

greatest workforce risks. Until DOT addresses these issues, the department 

faces substantial risk that the workforce will not have the capacity or skills 

needed to effectively manage the department’s acquisitions. 

View GAO-13-117. For more information, 

contact Belva Martin at (202) 512-4841 or 

martinb@gao.gov.
Page i GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

Letter 1 

Background 4

DOT Lacks Sufficient and Reliable Data to Fully Identify and 

Address Workforce Needs 9

DOT Lacks the Strategic Focus and Oversight Needed for Effective 

Workforce Planning and Management 18

Conclusions 25

Recommendations for Executive Action 26

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation 26

Appendix I Objectives, Scope, and Methodology 28

Appendix II Comments from the Department of Transportation 31

Appendix III GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments 35

Tables

Table 1: Key Roles and Responsibilities for DOT Acquisition 

Workforce Planning and Management 7

Table 2: Department of Transportation Fiscal Year 2011 

Procurement Spending by Operating Administration 8

Table 3: Estimated Number of Contract Specialists Needed to Meet 

Fiscal Year 2013 Staffing Targets 13

Table 4: Number of Contracting Officer’s Representatives and 

Percent Certified in Fiscal Year 2011 17

Contents 
Page ii GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

Abbreviations

DOT Department of Transportation

FAA Federal Aviation Administration

OA Operating Administration

OFPP Office of Federal Procurement Policy

FAITAS Federal Acquisition Institute Training Application System

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Page 1 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

United States Government Accountability Office

Washington, DC 20548

January 23, 2013

The Honorable Chairman 

The Honorable Ranking Member

Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, 

 and Related Agencies

Committee on Appropriations

United States Senate

The Honorable Tom Latham

Chairman

The Honorable Ranking Member

Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, 

 and Related Agencies

Committee on Appropriations

House of Representatives

GAO and others have long recognized that the size and capabilities of the 

government’s acquisition workforce is a strategic priority. In our 2011 high 

risk series update, we reported that the shortage of trained acquisition 

personnel impedes the capacity and capability of agencies, and puts the 

federal government at risk for significant overcharges and wasteful 

spending of the hundreds of billions of contract dollars it spends for goods 

and services each year.1 In fiscal year 2011, the Department of 

Transportation’s (DOT) acquisition workforce negotiated and 

administered more than $5 billion in contracts to procure a range of 

products and services and managed large-scale acquisition programs to 

build and maintain the national transportation system. However, DOT’s 

Inspector General reported that the department has not made sufficient 

progress in implementing strategies and goals to increase the capability 

of the acquisition workforce and found that gaps in acquisition workforce 

hiring and development have contributed to poor contract administration 

and substantial cost overruns on critical programs, such as those related 

 

1

GAO, High Risk Series: An Update, GAO-11-278 (Washington, D.C.: February 2011).

 
 

Page 2 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

to the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Next Generation Air 

Transportation System.2

In response to a Senate report mandate, we assessed: (1) the efforts of 

the Office of the Secretary of Transportation and DOT’s operating 

administrations (OA) to identify acquisition workforce needs, and (2) the 

Office of the Secretary’s role in providing oversight and support for 

acquisition workforce planning and management.3 For the purposes of 

this report, we focused on the Office of the Senior Procurement 

Executive, the office within the Office of the Secretary with primary 

responsibility for acquisition workforce planning and management.

We used the following methods to conduct our review:

• To assess the efforts of the Office of the Senior Procurement 

Executive and DOT’s OAs to identify acquisition workforce staffing 

and training needs, we reviewed DOT’s acquisition workforce plans 

for 2010, 2011, and 2012 and interviewed officials from the Office of 

the Senior Procurement Executive and the Office of Human 

Resources to discuss how the plans were compiled. Officials from the 

Office of the Senior Procurement Executive were not able to provide 

the OA-level data used to prepare the 2010 and 2011 plans because 

this information was not retained after the plans were submitted. As a 

result of this and other limitations, we concluded that the aggregate 

data presented in DOT’s acquisition workforce plans were not a 

sufficient or reliable basis to identify changes over time in the size of 

the workforce or the number personnel certified to meet federal 

requirements for education, training, and experience. We obtained the 

OA-level data that the Office of the Senior Procurement Executive 

used to compile the 2012 plan and assessed reliability by comparing it 

with data we obtained from the OAs. We also interviewed officials 

from the five OAs with the highest procurement spending in fiscal year 

2011, based on data from the Federal Procurement Data System-

 

2

Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General, Top Management Challenges 

for Fiscal Year 2012, Report Number PT-2012-006, November 15, 2011; Department of 

Transportation Office of Inspector General, FAA Policies and Plans are Insufficient to 

Ensure an Adequate and Effective Acquisition Workforce, Report Number ZA-2011-148, 

August 2011.

3

S. Rep. No. 112-83, at 9 (2011), accompanying Transportation and Housing and Urban 

Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill, 2012.
 

Page 3 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

Next Generation, to discuss the sources and methods used to track 

data on the acquisition workforce. Our review primarily focused on 

these five OAs because they accounted for 92 percent of the 

department’s procurement activity. The data we reviewed included 

information on the size and certification rates of the acquisition 

workforce, as well as hiring targets, and estimated attrition through 

fiscal year 2013. We found inconsistencies in how the OAs reported 

their data that would affect the reliability of the department’s 

aggregate data, but determined that the OA-level data used to 

prepare DOT’s 2012 plan were sufficiently reliable to make qualitative 

observations about staffing and certification challenges at the 

individual OAs.

• To determine the extent to which the Office of the Senior Procurement 

Executive has provided oversight and support for acquisition 

workforce planning and management, we reviewed relevant federal 

policy and guidance, as well as DOT policy, guidance, and acquisition 

workforce plans for 2010, 2011, and 2012. We interviewed officials 

from the Office of the Senior Procurement Executive and the Office of 

Human Resources to obtain their views on their roles and 

responsibilities. We also reviewed budget and strategic planning 

documents from the Office of the Secretary and the Office of the 

Senior Procurement Executive. In addition, we interviewed officials 

from the five OAs with the greatest amount of procurement spending 

in fiscal year 2011 to obtain their views about the level of support and 

oversight from the Office of the Senior Procurement Executive. Based 

on this review, we identified the Senior Procurement Executive 

responsibilities to support and oversee acquisition workforce planning 

and management and determined the extent to which these functions 

are performed. We compared these actions to leading practices for 

workforce planning identified by GAO and others.4 See appendix I for 

more information about our scope and methodology.

We conducted this performance audit from March 2012 to January 2013 

in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. 

Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain 

 

4

GAO, Human Capital: Key Principles for Effective Strategic Workforce Planning, 

GAO-04-39 (Washington, D.C.: Dec. 11, 2003); Workforce Planning: Interior, EPA, and 

the Forest Service Should Strengthen Linkages to Their Strategic Plans and Improve 

Evaluation, GAO-10-413 (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 31, 2010); and Personnel Management 

in Agencies, 5 C.F.R. Part 250.
 

Page 4 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our 

findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that 

the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and 

conclusions based on our audit objectives.

Congress has recognized the need for a professional acquisition 

workforce by establishing education, training, and experience 

requirements for entry into and advancement in the acquisition career 

fields for federal agencies.5 A number of governmental organizations play 

critical roles in assisting agencies in building and sustaining their 

acquisition workforces. Among these agencies, the Office of Management 

and Budget’s Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) provides 

government-wide guidance on acquisition workforce issues, and for 

civilian agencies the Federal Acquisition Institute promotes the 

development of the civilian acquisition workforce as well as an information 

management system—the Federal Acquisition Institute Training 

Application System—to collect and analyze acquisition workforce data.6

In 2005, OFPP issued guidance to civilian agencies on developing and 

managing the acquisition workforce and directed agency Chief Acquisition 

Officers—responsible for monitoring and evaluating agency acquisition 

functions—to carry out specific acquisition workforce actions.7 These 

actions include appointing an Acquisition Career Manager and developing 

and maintaining an acquisition career management program to provide 

coordinated input to the Chief Acquisition Officer and Chief Human 

Capital Officer regarding short- and long-term agency needs, propose an 

annual budget for acquisition workforce development, and maintain 

 

5

Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act (DAWIA) (10 U.S.C. §§ 1741-46) and 

the Office of Federal Procurement Policy Act, as amended (41 U.S.C. § 1703). 

6

In 2011, the Federal Acquisition Institute Training Application System replaced the 

Acquisition Career Management System (ACMIS) as the government-wide repository for 

acquisition workforce data. In July 2011, the U.S. General Services Administration Office 

of Inspector General reported that ACMIS did not provide useful management information 

and exhibited poor data reliability and system functionality. U.S. General Services 

Administration, Office of Inspector General, Review of the Federal Acquisition Career 

Management Information System, Report Number A090023/O/A/F11006, July 20, 2011. 

7

OFPP Policy Letter 05-01, Developing and Managing the Acquisition Workforce (Apr. 15, 

2005), which applies to all executive agencies, except those subject to the Defense

Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act, which provides requirements for the Department 

of Defense acquisition workforce.

Background 
 

Page 5 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

consistent agency-wide data on those serving in the acquisition 

workforce. The guidance also identifies positions that are to be included 

at a minimum in the definition of the workforce so they can be trained and 

developed using common standards and directed the Federal Acquisition 

Institute to develop certification programs to generally serve as one 

means to demonstrate that an employee meets the core education, 

training, and experience requirements for a variety of acquisition-related 

disciplines. The Federal Acquisition Institute established certification 

programs for contracting in 2006 and for contracting officer’s 

representatives and program and project managers in 2007.8

In 2009, OFPP issued the Acquisition Workforce Development Strategic 

Plan for Civilian Agencies for Fiscal Years 2010-2014 to further guide 

agency planning efforts. The plan establishes an annual workforce 

planning process to be managed by OFPP as well as a 5-year action plan 

to improve workforce development efforts and the workforce management 

infrastructure. Agencies are required to develop annual acquisition 

workforce human capital plans that identify strategies and goals for 

increasing the capacity and capability of the acquisition workforce for the 

period ending in fiscal year 2014.9 According to OFPP, successful 

workforce planning and implementation should involve significant and 

meaningful collaboration among agency leaders. Specifically, Chief 

Acquisition Officers are to work with their Chief Human Capital Officers, 

Acquisition Career Managers, and Chief Financial Officers to plan for 

growth in the capacity and capability of the acquisition workforce. In 2011, 

OFPP also issued a memorandum highlighting hiring flexibilities such as 

the availability of direct hire authority and the Student Career Experience 

Program.

 

8

Office of Management and Budget Memorandum, The Federal Acquisition Certification in 

Contracting Program (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 20, 2006); Office of Federal Procurement 

Policy Memorandum, The Federal Acquisition Certification for Contracting Officer 

Technical Representatives (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 26, 2007); Office of Federal 

Procurement Policy Memorandum, The Federal Acquisition Certification for Program and 

Project Managers (Washington, D.C., Apr. 25, 2007). Office of Federal Procurement 

Policy Memorandum, Revisions to the Federal Acquisition Certification for Contracting 

Officer’s Representatives (Sept. 6, 2011), effective January 1, 2012, revised and replaced 

the former 2007 OFPP Memorandum for contracting officer technical representatives.

9

Specifically, the requirement is for civilian agencies covered by the Chief Financial 

Officer’s Act of 1990, Pub. L. No. 101-576, codified at 31 U.S.C. § 901, which includes the 

Department of Transportation. 
 

Page 6 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

At DOT, the Senior Procurement Executive, within the Office of the 

Secretary, provides oversight of DOT acquisition policy and is delegated

many of the Chief Acquisition Officer responsibilities. Specifically, the 

Senior Procurement Executive has primary responsibility for acquisition 

workforce management, issues related to strategic acquisition policy, and 

implementation of acquisition workforce policies. DOT relies on 

collaboration between the Senior Procurement Executive and the 

department’s OAs to manage DOT’s acquisition workforce. For example, 

DOT policy directs the Senior Procurement Executive to appoint an 

Acquisition Career Manager to manage the acquisition workforce, identify 

workforce development strategies, and coordinate with OA 

representatives to ensure that the OAs maintain accurate and consistent 

data on the acquisition workforce. FAA is exempt from the federal 

acquisition system—the various statutes and regulations that govern

federal procurement practices by federal government agencies—and has 

its own acquisition management system, which includes its own 

acquisition workforce plan and acquisition workforce career development 

program.10 Table 1 provides the roles and responsibilities of key 

acquisition workforce management positions outside of FAA.

 

10FAA sought statutory exemption from various statutes that govern federal procurement 

practices and personnel management, maintaining that these requirements contributed to 

some of its cost, schedule, and performance problems in the 1980s and early 1990s. 

Congress enacted legislation in 1995 that exempted FAA from key federal procurement 

statutes and the Federal Acquisition Regulation and directed FAA to develop a new 

acquisition management system. FAA issued its new acquisition process—the Acquisition 

Management System—in 1996.
 

Page 7 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

Table 1: Key Roles and Responsibilities for DOT Acquisition Workforce Planning 

and Management

Senior Procurement Executive

• Develop and maintain an acquisition career management program

• Appoint an Acquisition Career Manager

• Define the members of the DOT acquisition workforce

• Ensure to the maximum extent practicable that acquisition workforce policies and 

procedures are uniform in their implementation throughout DOT

Acquisition Career Manager

• Manage the acquisition workforce, including identifying training requirements and 

other workforce development strategies

• Administer the agency’s certification program

• Provide coordinated input to the Senior Procurement Executive and Chief Human 

Capital Officer regarding short- and long-term human capital strategic planning

• Coordinate with OA representatives to ensure that they maintain accurate and 

consistent department-wide data on those serving in DOT’s acquisition workforce in 

Federal Acquisition Institute’s information management system

Operating Administration Chief Acquisition Officer

• Ensure the acquisition workforce has the necessary competencies, training, and 

certifications

• Identify a training budget for the acquisition workforce

Source: DOT.

Note: DOT’s Acquisition Career Development Policy does not apply to FAA.

DOT has multiple missions—primarily focusing on transportation mobility 

and safety—that are carried out by its OAs. In fiscal year 2011, 5 of 

DOT’s 11 OAs with procurement spending accounted for 92 percent of 

the department’s $5.6 billion in procurements. See table 2 for fiscal year 

2011 procurement spending by the 11 OAs.
 

Page 8 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

Table 2: Department of Transportation Fiscal Year 2011 Procurement Spending by Operating Administration

DOT operating administration

Procurement

spending (in millions)

Percent of total

procurement spending 

Federal Aviation Administration $3,535 63%

Federal Highway Administration 626 11

Office of the Secretary of Transportation 445 a 8 

Maritime Administration 365 6 

Federal Transit Administration 206 4 

Research and Innovative Technology Administration 176 3 

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration 118 2 

Federal Railroad Administration 67 1 

Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration 45 0.8

Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration 35 0.6

Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation 16 0.3

Total $5,635 100%

Source: Federal Procurement Data System-Next Generation.

a

In May 2011, the DOT Inspector General identified a number of 

weaknesses in the Office of the Secretary’s acquisition function.11 Among 

the factors contributing to weaknesses, the Inspector General identified 

an organizational structure that does not support the acquisition function, 

and long-standing vacancies in key leadership positions, including the 

Senior Procurement Executive and Acquisition Career Manager. 

According to the Inspector General, the acquisition structure created an 

additional layer of management review and restricted direct 

communication from the Senior Procurement Executive to DOT’s leaders, 

limiting the ability to promote acquisition as a strategic contributor to 

DOT’s success. In December 2011, DOT changed the organizational 

structure so that the Senior Procurement Executive now has a direct line 

of reporting to the department’s Chief Acquisition Officer on strategic 

acquisition workforce management and other strategic issues, thereby 

According to DOT officials, Office of the Secretary procurements typically include contracts such as 

those for building security and facilities. The office also procures on behalf of DOT customers 

including the Office of the Inspector General and the Research and Innovative Technology 

Administration.

 

11Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General, Weaknesses in the Office of 

the Secretary’s Acquisition Function Limit Its Capacity to Support DOT’s Mission, Report 

Number ZA-2011-119, May 2011.
 

Page 9 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

elevating the procurement executive’s ability to raise issues to a more 

strategic level within the department.

DOT’s Senior Procurement Executive, responsible for acquisition 

workforce planning and management, collects workforce data for federal 

reporting purposes, but has not maintained sufficient and reliable data 

needed to fully understand the department’s workforce needs or to 

identify progress in addressing gaps in staffing and certification rates over 

time. According to OFPP requirements, agencies are to collect, maintain, 

and utilize data on the acquisition workforce to ensure effective 

management. Federal internal control standards also call for managers to 

collect and maintain data to assess performance over time to ensure 

effectiveness and efficiency of operations and compliance with applicable 

laws and regulations.12 DOT submitted acquisition workforce plans to 

OFPP in 2010, 2011, and 2012 that reported progress in increasing 

department-wide acquisition workforce staff levels and certification rates, 

but did not maintain the supporting data in 2010 and 2011, and lacked 

internal controls to ensure the quality of the data. We also identified data 

discrepancies about the size of the acquisition workforce reported to 

OFPP. As a result, we concluded that the aggregate data presented in 

DOT’s acquisition workforce plans were not a sufficient or reliable basis 

upon which to draw conclusions or identify changes in staffing and 

certification rates over time. By contrast, we obtained the data DOT used 

to prepare the 2012 plan, compared it with data from the OAs, and 

interviewed OA officials about the sources and methods they used to 

report the data. We found inconsistencies in how the OAs reported their 

data that would affect the reliability of the department’s aggregate data, 

but determined that the OA-level data were sufficiently reliable to make 

observations about staffing and certification rates at the individual OAs.

Based on our analysis of this data, we found that four OAs would 

potentially need to replace from 50 percent to over 80 percent of their 

contract specialists by the end of fiscal year 2013 to meet staffing targets. 

In addition, some OAs have low certification rates particularly for 

program/project managers and contracting officer’s representatives, 

which increases the risk that DOT acquisition programs are not being 

 

12GAO, Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government, GAO/AIMD-00-21.3.1

(Washington, D.C.: November 1999).

DOT Lacks Sufficient 

and Reliable Data to 

Fully Identify and 

Address Workforce 

Needs 
 

Page 10 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

effectively managed and that contractors are not receiving appropriate 

oversight.

According to OFPP requirements, agencies are to collect, maintain, and 

utilize information to ensure effective management of the acquisition 

workforce. In accordance with OFPP’s Acquisition Workforce 

Development Strategic Plan for Civilian Agencies for Fiscal Years 2010-

2014, DOT submitted annual acquisition workforce plans in 2010, 2011, 

and 2012. To do so, the Acquisition Career Manager distributed an OFPP 

data request template to the OAs and aggregated the OA-level data 

received into a single department-wide plan. Each of DOT’s plans has 

included data on the size of the acquisition workforce, estimated attrition, 

and targets for future staffing levels. 

Based on the workforce plans DOT submitted to OFPP, DOT reported 

increases in the size of the acquisition workforce and certification rates for 

all acquisition workforce segments reported—contract specialists, 

contracting officers, program/project managers, and contracting officer’s 

representatives—from fiscal year 2009 to 2011.13 However, the Office of 

the Senior Procurement Executive did not retain the underlying data it 

used to prepare the 2010 and 2011 plans and in some cases, the data 

were also not available from the OAs. As a result, we were unable to 

independently verify the accuracy and completeness of the departmentwide data. Moreover, we found inconsistencies in the data DOT reported 

to OFPP. For example, DOT’s 2010 plan presents conflicting data on the 

size of the acquisition workforce, ranging from almost 600 to over 3,000 

staff. According to DOT officials, one table was developed by acquisition 

officials and the other by human resources officials. As a result of these 

discrepancies and other limitations, we concluded that the aggregate data 

presented in DOT’s acquisition workforce plans were unreliable and DOT 

should not use the information to draw conclusions or identify changes in 

staffing and certification levels over time.

 

13The Office of Personnel Management identifies those federal employees in the General 

Schedule Contracting series (GS-1102) as contract specialists. Contracting officers are 

federal employees with the authority to bind the government by signing a contract. Federal 

Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 2.101. This authority is delegated to them through “warrants” 

issued by the head of their contracting activity. For the purposes of its Acquisition Human 

Capital Plans, DOT tracks “contract specialists” and “contracting officers outside of the 

1102 contracting series” separately. For the purposes of this report, we refer to 

“contracting officers outside of the 1102 contracting series” as contracting officers.

DOT Lacks Sufficient and 

Reliable Data to Assess 

Progress over Time
 

Page 11 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

For DOT’s 2012 plan, we compared data we received from the Office of 

the Senior Procurement Executive and the OAs and interviewed OA 

officials about the methods and sources they used to collect the data. We 

found that the OAs were not consistent in how they reported their 

workforce data due in part to a lack of internal controls to ensure that the 

OAs are collecting and maintaining reliable and consistent data to inform 

acquisition workforce planning and management. Internal controls 

generally should be designed to assure that ongoing monitoring occurs in 

the course of normal operations to include comparisons, reconciliations, 

and other management actions that ensure information quality over time. 

While these inconsistencies affect the reliability of the department’s 

aggregate data, we determined that the OA-level data used to prepare 

DOT’s 2012 plan were sufficiently reliable to make qualitative 

observations about the staffing challenges and certification shortfalls that 

the individual OAs face.

Officials from the Office of the Senior Procurement Executive stated that 

they do not have data reliability checks in place and did not provide 

guidance to ensure that the OAs are collecting and maintaining reliable 

and consistent data to inform acquisition workforce planning and 

management. In the absence of guidance to ensure consistency in the 

information collected, OAs took different approaches to reporting the 

number of personnel in the acquisition workforce. For example, some 

OAs cited challenges with tracking the number of contracting officer’s 

representatives in the workforce or did not track them altogether. In 

contrast with contract specialists, who are associated with a job series 

that can be tracked in personnel systems, contracting officer’s 

representatives are not designated by a specific job series and their 

duties are sometimes performed as a collateral duty on a part-time basis. 

OA officials also explained that the number of employees performing 

contracting officer’s representative duties changes constantly as contracts 

begin and end, requiring that lists be revalidated on a continual basis for 

accuracy. Officials from the Office of the Secretary and the Federal 

Railroad Administration reported that they had not tracked the number of 

contracting officer’s representatives in the past. The Office of the 

Secretary was not able to provide us with the number of contracting 

officer’s representatives in the workforce for fiscal years 2009, 2010, and 

2011 and the Federal Railroad Administration provided estimates.
 

Page 12 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

Based on our analysis of the data collected from the OAs to prepare the 

2012 Acquisition Human Capital Plan, we found that some OAs face 

significant acquisition workforce staffing challenges and certification 

shortfalls. We also found that the OAs did not use a consistent or welldocumented approach to estimate attrition which could result in an underor overstatement of the gap they would need to fill to achieve their staffing 

targets, and that staffing challenges may be understated because some 

OAs constrained their workforce estimates to reflect budget realities.

We found that the OAs face significant challenges in maintaining 

sufficient numbers of contract specialists who perform a range of 

acquisition services, such as market research, preparation of statements 

of work, and the development and management of acquisition plans. 

Based on our analysis of DOT data, we found that four OAs would 

potentially need to replace from 50 percent to over 80 percent of their 

contract specialists by the end of fiscal year 2013 to manage estimated 

attrition and achieve their staffing targets as shown in table 3. The data in 

the table reflect estimated attrition and staffing targets for fiscal years 

2012 and 2013 that DOT reported to OFPP in April 2012 and do not take 

into account actual hiring and attrition, or changes to estimates.

Some Operating 

Administrations Face 

Significant Acquisition

Workforce Staffing 

Challenges and 

Certification Shortfalls

Staffing Challenges 
 

Page 13 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

Table 3: Estimated Number of Contract Specialists Needed to Meet Fiscal Year 2013 Staffing Targets

Operating administration

Contract 

specialists

for FY 2011

Estimated attrition, targets, and gaps

Combined 

attrition 

FY 2012

and FY 2013 

FY 2013 

staffing target

Potential 

gap to fill

to achieve

FY 2013

staffing target

Potential 

gap as

% of FY 2011

staffing level

Federal Aviation Administration 284 100 337 153 54%

Federal Highway Administration 55 6 61 12 22

Office of the Secretary of Transportation 11 4 16 9 82

Maritime Administration 29 6 31 8 28

Federal Transit Administration 13 4 14 5 38

Research and Innovative Technology 

Administration 24 6 30 12 50

National Highway Traffic Safety 

Administration 11 0 15 4 36

Federal Railroad Administration 8 2 8 2 25

Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration 15 0 16 1 7 

Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety 

Administration 10 5 12 7 70

Saint Lawrence Seaway Development 

Corporation 3 0 3 0 0%

Source: GAO analysis of DOT data.

We also found that the OAs did not use a consistent or well-documented 

approach to estimate attrition which could result in an under- or 

overstatement of the gap they would need to fill to achieve their staffing 

targets. For example, seven OAs estimated that fiscal year 2012 and 

2013 attrition would be lower than the attrition reported for fiscal year 

2011. To illustrate, the Federal Highway Administration lost seven 

contract specialists in 2011, or 13 percent, but estimated future attrition at 

5 percent a year. Similarly, the National Highway Traffic Safety 

Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration 

reported fiscal year 2011 attrition rates of 36 and 16 percent respectively, 

but estimated no attrition for fiscal year 2012 and 2013. In contrast, FAA 

estimated future attrition at 15 percent which is consistent with what it 

reported for fiscal year 2011. While there may be good reasons for 

estimating attrition based on information other than historical attrition, the 

Office of the Senior Procurement Executive did not provide guidance to 

ensure that each OA used a reasonable approach.
 

Page 14 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

Given the high demand for contract specialists across the federal 

government, staffing increases combined with attrition creates a potential 

gap that may be challenging for some OAs to address. For example, 

some OAs plan to hire entry-level staff, which will require investment in 

training and development to achieve certification requirements. As an 

added concern, one OA official stated that the September 2012 expiration 

of direct hire authority for acquisition positions will increase the amount of 

time it will take to hire a contract specialist from a few weeks to a few 

months. This authority allowed agencies who could demonstrate a 

shortage of highly qualified candidates for certain acquisition positions to 

streamline the application process to hire candidates directly and more 

quickly.14

FAA also identified staffing challenges for other segments of its 

acquisition workforce including program/project management and 

research and engineering. According to FAA’s 2011 acquisition workforce 

plan, challenges with these segments are driven by the predicted growth 

in requirements combined with expected retirements and the difficulty in 

hiring qualified candidates. For example, FAA reported that 39 percent of 

its program/project managers are eligible to retire by 2015, and identified 

the need to develop new in-house program managers. Further, officials 

reported that entry-level hiring alone is not sufficient due to program

complexity and the need for individuals with years of experience. 

According to FAA, these acquisition professionals must demonstrate 

considerable leadership, possess the expertise to manage the 

development of complex, large-scale air traffic systems, and bring diverse 

stakeholders together. FAA officials also noted the ability to backfill 

employees lost to attrition is uncertain and that budget constraints have 

forced FAA to limit what hiring authority is available to the most critical 

positions. Officials noted that while acquisition positions are deemed 

critical, so too are air traffic controllers and other mission-critical and 

safety-related positions. If FAA cannot attain appropriate numbers of 

personnel for the workforce, it plans to prioritize and shift workload and 

staffing to best meet priority needs, increase the workload for existing 

staff where possible, or supplement the workforce by using contractors.

 

14National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004, Pub. L. No. 108-136 § 1413, 

as amended by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, Pub. L. No. 

110-181 § 853.
 

Page 15 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

In addition, staffing challenges faced by DOT may be understated 

because some OAs constrained or revised their workforce estimates to 

reflect budget realities and did not fully take into account the people 

needed to do the work. For example, a Maritime Administration official 

explained that they originally estimated the need to increase the number 

of program/project managers from 6 in fiscal year 2011 to 36 by the end 

of fiscal year 2013, but later adjusted the estimate to 12 due to 

anticipated resource constraints. Similarly, an official from the Pipeline 

and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration stated that they projected 

the need to increase the number of contract specialists from 10 in fiscal 

year 2011 to 12 in fiscal years 2012 and 2013, but later revised their 

projected need to 10 because the request for additional staff was not 

approved. FAA officials also told us that managers validate the previous 

years’ projections and adjust the estimates as they come closer to 

executing the plan to factor in what the budget will accommodate. Despite 

constrained budgets, OAs could benefit from having an informed 

understanding of the number of acquisition workforce personnel needed 

to fulfill their missions. For example, the Department of Defense requires 

the calculation of both unconstrained and constrained requirements, both 

of which should be used to prioritize decisions.

Across the department, some OAs have not ensured that the acquisition 

workforce is in compliance with federal certification standards. According 

to OFPP, the quality and effectiveness of the federal acquisition process 

depends on the development of a capable and competent workforce and 

the Federal Acquisition Institute has developed certification standards 

which include a combination of education, training, and experience 

requirements. In accordance with these requirements, DOT has 

developed career guidance for contracting professionals, program/project 

managers, and contracting officer’s representatives which outlines the 

general training and experience requirements for each profession. FAA 

also has career guidance and certification standards for these three 

professions, as well as integrated logistics support. In addition, FAA has 

developed competency models for systems engineering and test and 

evaluation professionals to serve as the basis for workforce development, 

and plans to develop certification standards for all of its acquisition 

disciplines in the future.

Certification for Contract Specialists

DOT reported that 91 percent of its 463 contract specialists were certified 

in fiscal year 2011. Based on our analysis of DOT data, eight OAs 

reported contract specialist certification rates of 95 percent or greater 

Certification Shortfalls
 

Page 16 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

while several others reported much lower rates. For example, the Federal 

Transit Administration reported that 65 percent, or 8 of its 13 contract 

specialist were certified. The National Highway Traffic Safety 

Administration reported that only 36 percent of its contract specialists (4 

of 11) were certified. According to DOT’s Acquisition Career Manager, the 

department should be aiming to have all of its contract specialists 

certified, but he and other officials stated that 100 percent certification is 

not feasible. For example, Level 1, or entry-level contract specialists, 

generally need to complete certain core contracting courses and have 1 

year of contracting experience to be eligible for certification. Given 

attrition levels of about 15 percent across the department, a sustained 

focus on developing and certifying the contracting professionals is critical 

to improving and maintaining certification levels.

Certification for Program/Project Managers

DOT reported that 58 percent of its 64 program/project managers were 

certified in fiscal year 2011. Program/project managers perform such 

duties as developing government requirements, defining measurable 

performance standards, and managing contractor activities to ensure that 

the intended outcomes are achieved. FAA, with 54 program/project 

managers reported that 29 were certified, for a certification rate of 54 

percent. The Maritime Administration and the Office of the Secretary both 

reported that 100 percent of their program/project managers were 

certified while the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration 

reported that it does not have any programs of the magnitude or 

complexity that require program/project manager certification, but that its 

two program/project managers are in the process of obtaining 

certification.

Certification for Contracting Officer’s Representatives

DOT reported that 47 percent of its 2,441 contracting officer’s 

representatives were certified in fiscal year 2011 despite the federal 

requirement that they to be certified within 6 months of their date of 
 

Page 17 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

appointment.

15 Contracting officer’s representatives are appointed by 

contracting officers to perform certain contract administration duties, 

including inspection and acceptance of supplies or services. Across the 

department, three OAs reported certification rates over 90 percent while 

the remaining reported certification rates ranging from 18 percent at FAA 

to 78 percent at the Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation. 

Table 4 provides information on the number of contracting officer’s 

representatives certified at each OA in fiscal year 2011.

Table 4: Number of Contracting Officer’s Representatives and Percent Certified in Fiscal Year 2011

Operating administration

Number of Contracting

Officer’s Representatives Number certified Percent certified

Federal Aviation Administration 1,320 238 18% 

Federal Highway Administration 432 393 91

Office of the Secretary of Transportation 93 65 70

Maritime Administration 119 119 100

Federal Transit Administration 67 37 55

Research and Innovative Technology Administration 90 90 100

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration 164 103 63

Federal Railroad Administration 65 35 54

Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration 49 37 75

Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration 33 23 70

Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation 9 7 78

Total 2,441 1,147 47% 

Source: DOT.

Although the data we obtained and reviewed were not sufficient to assess 

DOT’s progress in improving certification rates over time, DOT reported 

that the number of people certified increased substantially between fiscal 

years 2010 and 2011 and that a focus on certification programs is central 

to DOT’s strategy to strengthen the skills and capabilities of the 

acquisition workforce. FAA officials also stated that they have made a 

 

15The certification requirement, formerly in Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) 

Memorandum, The Federal Acquisition Certification for Contracting Officer Technical 

Representatives, (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 26, 2007) is currently in OFPP Memorandum, 

Revisions to the Federal Acquisition Certification for Contracting Officer’s 

Representatives, (Sept. 6, 2011), effective January 1, 2012, which revised and replaced 

the former 2007 OFPP Memorandum.
 

Page 18 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

concerted effort to increase certification rates particularly for 

program/project managers and contracting officer’s representatives. For 

example, FAA officials reported that as of the end of fiscal year 2012, 85 

percent of program managers responsible for major programs were 

certified at the requisite level and that the percentage of contracting 

officer’s representatives certified has improved to 49 percent.

DOT lacks the strategic focus and oversight needed to ensure that the 

department can meet its acquisition workforce goals and that strategies to 

hire, develop, and retain acquisition professionals are implemented and 

sustained over time. Federal policy requires agencies to conduct strategic 

planning to identify short- and long-term agency needs. This includes 

recruitment and retention strategies for obtaining the acquisition 

workforce resources and skills required to meet future agency mission 

needs. GAO has identified leading practices agencies should follow when 

developing workforce plans which include developing a coordinated 

planning process to involve stakeholders; analyzing workforce gaps to 

inform strategic planning and budget formulation; and developing 

strategies to monitor and evaluate progress.16 The Office of the Senior 

Procurement Executive has not developed a coordinated planning 

process and does not use the acquisition workforce data reported to 

OFPP for acquisition workforce planning and management. The Office of 

the Senior Procurement Executive has recently taken steps to align its 

workforce plans with the department’s strategic goals, but given 

challenges with maintaining reliable data, lacks a sound baseline for 

assessing progress toward reaching these goals or for making a business 

case for directing resources or management attention to OAs, which may 

face the greatest workforce challenges. Further, the Office of the Senior 

Procurement Executive has only recently identified a limited set of 

performance metrics to assess progress toward reaching acquisition 

workforce human capital goals. By contrast, we found that only FAA has a 

strategic process to align the organization’s human capital program with 

its current and emerging missions, and to develop long-term strategies for 

acquiring, developing, and retaining the staff needed to perform agency 

missions. Different approaches may be appropriate, but without strategic 

workforce planning, agencies risk not meeting mission requirements and 

are unable to develop strategies for achieving long-term goals. We also 

 

16GAO-04-39; GAO-10-413. 

DOT Lacks the 

Strategic Focus and 

Oversight Needed for 

Effective Workforce 

Planning and 

Management 
 

Page 19 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

found that the Office of the Senior Procurement Executive has not 

maintained training and certification data for its acquisition workforce in 

accordance with federal requirements, but has efforts under way to 

improve compliance.

The Office of the Senior Procurement Executive collects acquisition 

workforce data for reporting purposes, but has not determined its own 

data needs or developed a coordinated planning process to fully involve 

stakeholders including human capital officials and procurement and 

program officials at the OAs. Our prior work has shown that strategic 

workforce planning is most likely to succeed if top management officials 

set the overall goals and direction of the effort and involve stakeholders in 

developing and implementing strategies to achieve the goals. For 

example, top leadership that is engaged in strategic workforce planning 

can provide organizational vision, help provide stability as the workforce 

plan is being developed and implemented, and create support within the 

agency to ensure that workforce strategies to hire, develop, and retain 

acquisition professionals are implemented and sustained over time. By 

contrast, the Office of the Senior Procurement Executive has not 

established specific responsibilities for itself or the OAs for maintaining 

the data reported to OFPP, or for using the data for management 

purposes. For example, officials from the Office of the Senior 

Procurement Executive told us that they have not used the workforce 

data reported to OFPP to manage the workforce, determined other 

information that would be useful for planning and oversight, or provided 

oversight through ongoing monitoring of workforce data. However, the 

Acquisition Career Manager retained the data for the 2012 plan and 

indicated that he intends to retain and review data compiled for future 

plans.

Officials from some of the five OAs we met with reported that they do not 

use DOT’s annual strategic planning effort for long-term planning 

purposes. FAA, which accounted for more than half of the 3,146 

acquisition workforce members reported in DOT’s 2012 plan, issues its 

own annual acquisition workforce plan, which is tailored to meet its 

workforce management priorities. In contrast with FAA, some OA officials 

told us that their acquisition workload and workforce is generally stable. 

For example, officials from the Federal Transit Administration and the 

Maritime Administration, which reported 80 and 155 acquisition workforce 

members in fiscal year 2011, respectively, stated that forecasting 

workforce needs is straightforward due to a stable workload and set

number of authorized positions. Additionally, some OA officials stated that 

DOT Has Not Determined 

Its Data Needs or 

Developed a Coordinated 

Acquisition Workforce 

Planning Process
 

Page 20 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

DOT’s workforce planning efforts are limited because the reporting 

instructions are not clear and the data requested varies from year to year.

Our prior work has also shown the importance of collaboration between 

human capital and acquisition agency leaders and managers to develop 

acquisition workforce plans. While some OAs reported that they consulted 

with human resources officials to obtain information such as retirement 

eligibility to prepare their submissions, we found that DOT’s Chief Human 

Capital Officer and Office of Human Resources have had a limited role in 

strategic planning for the acquisition workforce. According to a senior 

human resources official, his office took the lead in preparing DOTs 2010 

workforce plan, but had very limited involvement in preparing the plans for 

2011 and 2012.

Officials from the Office of the Senior Procurement Executive cited 

several reasons why the office does not direct the department’s 

acquisition workforce planning efforts. Specifically, officials told us that 

the OAs are best suited to manage the workforce given the decentralized 

nature of the department and the wide range of missions performed by 

the OAs. However, officials stated that their capacity to direct planning 

efforts is limited because the OAs have their own budget authorities and 

that the office does not have the staff or resources needed to perform 

oversight of strategic planning efforts. For example, as of October 2012, 

the Office of the Senior Procurement Executive had just two staff 

supporting the department’s acquisition workforce program on a part-time 

basis. In addition, the office’s limited focus on acquisition workforce 

issues is also due in part to other acquisition priorities and challenges 

facing the office. The current Senior Procurement Executive and 

Acquisition Career Manager assumed their positions in late 2010 after a 

period of longstanding vacancies and have been focusing on addressing 

significant weaknesses in the department’s acquisition function identified 

by the DOT Inspector General.17 As of December 2012, the Inspector 

General had closed 14 of the 16 recommendations it made to address 

weaknesses it identified in the Office of the Secretary’s acquisition 

function based on actions taken by the Senior Procurement Executive in 

2011 and 2012.

 

17ZA-2011-119.
 

Page 21 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

According to Office of the Senior Procurement Executive officials, their 

role is to provide a focal point for coordination among the OAs, rather 

than providing direction and support for acquisition workforce planning 

efforts. For example, in 2009, the Senior Procurement Executive 

chartered the Strategic Acquisition Council to provide a forum for senior 

DOT acquisition leaders from each of the OAs to address issues affecting 

the DOT procurement community, share best practices, and ensure a 

consistent focus on acquisition improvement throughout the department. 

The Senior Procurement Executive also chartered the Acquisition 

Workforce Working Group with the goals of performing comprehensive 

workforce planning for DOT and developing tools, guidance, and 

suggestions for recruitment and retention. To date, the group has focused 

on outreach initiatives to publicize contracting career opportunities, and 

organized a conference in April 2012 to share knowledge and provide 

networking opportunities among contract specialists.

The Acquisition Career Manager also administers the department’s 

certification program and aims to leverage limited training resources by 

identifying and informing the OAs of free and low-cost training 

opportunities across the government. For example, the Acquisition Career 

Manager is responsible for approving all certifications and views this as 

the department’s means of providing oversight that the OAs are in 

compliance with DOT and federal certification requirements. According to 

the Acquisition Career Manager, the department has also played a role in 

bringing together individual OAs with other federal partners to support the 

development of acquisition workforce training programs. For example, the 

Federal Highway Administration developed and implemented a 40-hour 

training course for contracting officer’s representatives through 

collaboration with the Federal Acquisition Institute and the Department of 

Homeland Security. According to officials, the Acquisition Career 

Manager will continue to work with the Federal Highway Administration to 

leverage this course to create a low cost, and customizable training 

course available across the department.
 

Page 22 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

The Office of the Senior Procurement Executive has recently taken steps 

to align its workforce plans with the department’s strategic goals, but 

given challenges with maintaining reliable data, lacks a sound baseline 

for assessing progress toward reaching these goals or for making a 

business case for directing resources or management attention to OAs 

which may face the greatest workforce risks. According to leading 

practices identified in our prior work, agencies need to determine the 

occupations, skills, and competencies that are critical to achieving their 

missions and goals, as well as to identify any gaps between their current 

workforce and the workforce they will need in the future. Further, 

workforce planning that is linked to an agency’s strategic goals and 

budget formulation allows agencies to assess the extent to which the 

workforce contributes to achieving overarching mission needs and ensure 

that their annual budget requests include adequate funds to implement 

their human capital strategies, such as recruitment or retention bonuses, 

awards, training, student loan repayments, and tuition assistance.

In October 2012, the Senior Procurement Executive issued a strategic 

plan for fiscal years 2013 through 2016 which identifies acquisition 

workforce development as one of four strategic goals. The strategies to 

achieve the acquisition workforce goal focus on efforts to promote 

existing certification programs, leverage training resources, and make 

DOT a more attractive workplace for acquisition workforce professionals. 

One of the indicators intended to measure progress is the percentage of 

the acquisition workforce certified. By 2016, the department aims to 

achieve certification rates of 85 percent for contract specialists and 75 

percent for program/project managers and contracting officer’s 

representatives. However, without a reliable baseline, the Senior 

Procurement Executive has no basis for measuring progress.

The Office of the Secretary’s fiscal year 2011 and 2012 budget proposals 

requested $7.6 million for acquisition workforce development with some 

of the funds to be transferred to the OAs. According to both proposals, 

funds would be used to increase acquisition workforce capacity through 

training, recruitment, retention, and hiring additional members of the 

acquisition workforce. The fiscal year 2012 proposal also specified that 

funds would be used for business process re-engineering, organizational 

development, and contractor support costs to collect acquisition 

workforce data. According to officials, the specific plans were abandoned 

when funding for these proposals was not approved. Because the Office 

of the Senior Procurement Executive has not collected and maintained 

reliable workforce data, the department lacks the basis needed to make 

informed decisions to justify agency resource needs. For fiscal year 2013, 

The Office of the Senior 

Procurement Executive 

Has Taken Steps to Align 

Its Workforce Plans with 

Strategic Goals, but Faces 

Challenges to Assess 

Progress
 

Page 23 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

the Office of the Secretary requested about $700,000 to strengthen the 

acquisition workforce but did not propose transferring funds to the OAs. 

The proposal specified three key areas: contractor support costs to collect 

data and provide training; business process re-engineering; and 

innovative acquisition approaches.

DOT’s workforce plans do not identify clear workforce development 

strategies or establish metrics to assess progress toward reaching 

acquisition workforce human capital goals. Once agencies have identified 

gaps, our prior work has found that they need to develop human capital 

strategies—the programs, policies, and processes that agencies use to 

build and manage their workforces—to close these gaps. These 

strategies, tailored to the agencies’ unique needs, may include strategies 

for hiring, training, staff development, succession planning, performance 

management, and the use of human capital flexibilities, among other 

things. While the OAs have identified and utilized some acquisition 

workforce development strategies such recruiting entry-level hires, they 

have generally not been linked to specific recruitment, retention, and 

certification goals. For example, one of the strategies identified in DOT’s 

2010 acquisition human capital plan was to develop a rotational exchange 

program within the department to improve retention by providing 

professional development opportunities for the acquisition workforce. In 

November 2010, the Office of the Senior Procurement Executive 

established a rotational exchange program within the department, but the 

department’s plan did not identify goals or metrics such as the desired 

number of exchanges. According to an official, the program had facilitated 

one exchange as of July 2012. Similarly, DOT’s 2012 workforce plan 

identified the agency’s goals for managing and strengthening the 

acquisition workforce but did not include any specific metrics to assess 

progress. These goals include a continued focus on certification 

programs, staff development and retention, and communication and 

knowledge sharing.

In contrast with DOT’s other OAs, FAA operates under its own acquisition 

authority and has its own workforce planning process and oversight 

function that generally includes the key elements of leading practices for 

workforce planning. For example, FAA has taken steps to identify its 

acquisition workforce needs and incorporate them into planning decisions

and established the Acquisition Workforce Council, an executive-level 

group that provides strategic leadership and oversight for acquisition 

workforce planning and management. FAA has since issued acquisition 

DOT Has Not Identified 

Workforce Development 

Strategies with Metrics to 

Assess Progress

FAA Has Developed a 

Strategic Acquisition 

Workforce Planning 

Process but DOT’s 

Inspector General 

Identified Challenges
 

Page 24 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

workforce plans in 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 with planning data 

through 2017. As a basis for its planning efforts, FAA took steps to 

identify the acquisition workforce and develop career competencies and 

certification requirements. FAA also developed a model to estimate 

staffing requirements for each year which is validated by program officials 

knowledgeable of program needs. FAA’s workforce plans include metrics, 

such as the percentage of acquisition workforce positions filled against 

forecasted needs and the average time to fill positions, and provides 

monthly reports on staffing gains and losses to the workforce council. 

Despite FAA being further along than DOT’s other OAs in terms of 

developing the capacity and framework needed for effective planning, the 

DOT Inspector General identified several challenges FAA has faced in 

collecting accurate data on members of its acquisition workforce and 

addressing workforce gaps and made a series of recommendations to 

improve the programs, policies, and practices needed to ensure an 

adequate and effective acquisition workforce.

18 For example, the FAA 

reported that it met its fiscal year 2009 workforce targets while the 

Inspector General concluded that the FAA, by over-hiring in some 

segments of the acquisition workforce and under-hiring in others, had not 

adhered to its workforce plans. As of December 2012, the Inspector 

General had closed 8 of the 11 recommendations based on FAA actions.

DOT policy requires the OAs to maintain current and complete records on 

acquisition workforce training and certification in accordance with OFPP 

requirements, but has only recently begun to provide oversight to improve 

compliance. According to OFPP requirements, agencies are to maintain 

complete, current records on education, training, experience, and 

certification for all acquisition workforce members in a government-wide 

information management system. In 2011, the Federal Acquisition 

Institute Training Application System (FAITAS) replaced the Acquisition 

Career Management Information System as the repository of such 

information. According to FAA officials, FAA is not subject to this 

requirement and has its own process for tracking comparable data.

The Acquisition Career Manager has efforts under way to improve OA 

compliance with the requirement to record training and certification data 

in FAITAS, but current data are not complete. For example, DOT reported

 

18ZA-2011-148.

DOT Has Not Maintained 

Training and Certification 

Data in Accordance with 

Federal Policy, but Has 

Efforts Under Way to 

Improve Compliance
 

Page 25 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

that 1,093 acquisition workforce professionals were certified in fiscal year 

2011, but as of September 2012, only 472 were registered in the system. 

Of those, 398 were contracting officer’s representatives, fewer than half of 

the 909 contracting officer’s representatives that DOT reported as 

certified in fiscal year 2011, despite the OFPP requirement that all be 

entered in the FAITAS system no later than February 15, 2012. The 

Acquisition Career Manager stated that the data migration from the 

Acquisition Career Management Information System to FAITAS did not 

go smoothly and that his office has begun to manually reconcile data in 

the system with data that the OAs are required by DOT policy to maintain. 

The Acquisition Career Manager also stated that his office will not 

approve a certification request unless the individual is registered in 

FAITAS. While this is a step in the right direction, this level of oversight is 

not sufficient as it only maintains management control over those who 

submit certifications for approval, but not those who should be certified, 

but are not. For example, several OAs were unable to provide us with the 

number of CORs in the workforce or the number certified for fiscal years 

2009 through 2011. As a result of this lack of oversight, the department 

has no way of knowing whether the workforce meets the minimum 

requirements needed to meet the department’s acquisition missions.

DOT relies on its acquisition workforce to negotiate and administer 

contracts and manage large-scale acquisition programs, but lacks the 

reliable data and strategic focus needed to fully understand its workforce 

needs over time and to ensure that the department can hire, develop, and 

retain the acquisition professionals needed to perform the agency’s 

current and future missions. This may put the department’s acquisition 

missions at risk. While DOT has submitted annual acquisition workforce 

plans to OFPP, the Office of the Senior Procurement Executive has not 

maintained past data or determined what data it needs for management 

purposes. Further, the Office of the Senior Procurement Executive relies 

on the OAs to collect and compile acquisition workforce data and conduct 

strategic planning but has not provided guidance on how to collect and 

report workforce data, established internal controls to ensure that data 

provided are accurate and complete, or established specific 

responsibilities for maintaining the data, or for using it for management 

purposes. Until the Office of the Senior Procurement Executive 

determines what data are needed, and assesses resources necessary for 

performing oversight, input into strategic plans will be inconsistent and 

ultimately its utility will be diminished which limits the department’s ability 

to plan for and address workforce challenges. While efforts are under way 

to improve oversight of the agency’s certification program, oversight is 

Conclusions 
 

Page 26 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

needed to ensure OA compliance with the requirement to record training 

and certification data in FAITAS. To develop a comprehensive strategic 

acquisition workforce planning framework, DOT needs to incorporate key 

elements of effective planning, such as fully involving the Chief Human 

Capital Officer and other stakeholders, analyzing workforce gaps and 

developing strategies to address them, and monitoring and assessing 

progress over time. Until DOT establishes such a framework, it will not 

have a sound basis to identify or justify resources needed to fully address 

its short- and long-term workforce needs. This exposes the department to 

substantial risk that the workforce does not have the capacity or skills 

needed to effectively manage the department’s current and future 

acquisition missions.

To help improve DOT’s ability to effectively address workforce needs, we 

recommend that the Secretary of Transportation take the following five 

actions:

• Direct the Senior Procurement Executive to define data the 

department needs to meet OFPP and DOT workforce planning and 

oversight requirements;

• Provide standards for internal controls or other guidance to ensure the 

OAs collect, report, and maintain consistent and reliable data for 

workforce planning and in FAITAS;

• Establish specific responsibilities for the Office of the Senior 

Procurement Executive and the OAs to maintain workforce data, 

develop strategies and metrics, and monitor progress toward 

addressing workforce gaps and certification deficiencies;

• Assess whether the Office of the Senior Procurement Executive has 

sufficient resources to effectively oversee the acquisition workforce; 

and

• Direct the Senior Procurement Executive and Chief Human Capital 

Officer to establish a coordinated process for future acquisition 

workforce planning.

We provided a draft of this report to DOT for its review and comment. 

DOT provided written comments which are reprinted in appendix II, as 

well as technical comments, which we incorporated as appropriate. DOT 

generally agreed with our recommendations and described actions under 

way or planned to address them. DOT also expressed concern, however, 

that the draft report did not clearly convey the current status of its 

acquisition workforce efforts and that much of the information that the 

draft report relied upon to formulate its findings was drawn from the 

Recommendations for 

Executive Action

Agency Comments 

and Our Evaluation
 

Page 27 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

period when there was considerable instability at multiple management 

levels, including the Office of the Senior Procurement Executive. 

We disagree that our findings do not reflect the current state at the 

department. Our findings were largely based on the data and approach 

that DOT used to prepare the acquisition workforce plan that it submitted 

to the Office of Federal Procurement Policy in April 2012. Specifically, we 

found that the operating administrations were not consistent in their 

approach to reporting workforce data due in part to a lack of guidance, 

oversight, and internal controls at the department level. DOT agreed in its 

comments with the need to provide additional guidance to the operating 

administrations and stated that collaborative efforts are currently 

underway between the Office of the Senior Procurement Executive and 

the Chief Human Capital Officer to better ensure the consistency and 

reliability of the department’s acquisition workforce data. If implemented, 

these steps could help the department establish a more reliable baseline 

for monitoring and assessing changes in the size and certification rates of 

the acquisition workforce over time. However, it is premature to determine 

the effectiveness of the planned actions in addressing the acquisition 

workforce challenges noted in this report. Continued progress and 

successful implementation of these recent efforts will require sustained 

leadership and management attention.

We are sending copies of this report to interested congressional 

committees, as well as the Secretary of Transportation, and the Director, 

Office of Management and Budget. In addition, this report will be made 

available at no charge on the GAO website at www.gao.gov. 

Please contact me at (202) 512-4841 or martinb@gao.gov if you or your 

staff have any questions concerning this report. Contact points for our 

Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on 

the last page of this report. GAO staff who made major contributions to 

this report are listed in appendix III.

Belva M. Martin 

Director, 

Acquisition and Sourcing Management
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology

Page 28 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

This report focuses on the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) efforts 

to identify and address its acquisition workforce needs through its 

acquisition workforce planning efforts for 2010, 2011, and 2012. While we 

obtained data from the 11 DOT operating administrations (OA) with 

procurement spending in fiscal year 2011, we focused our review on the 

five which accounted for 92 percent of the department’s fiscal year 2011 

procurement spending based on data reported in the Federal 

Procurement Data System-Next Generation. Our report assessed: (1) the 

efforts of the Office of the Secretary of Transportation and DOT’s OAs to 

identify acquisition workforce needs, and (2) the Office of the Secretary’s 

role in providing oversight and support for acquisition workforce planning 

and management. For the purposes of this report, we focused on the 

Office of the Senior Procurement Executive, the office within Office of the 

Secretary with primary responsibility for the acquisition workforce 

planning and management.

To assess the efforts of the Office of the Senior Procurement Executive 

and DOT’s OAs to identify acquisition workforce staffing and training 

needs, we reviewed the acquisition workforce plans that DOT submitted 

to the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) for 2010, 2011, and 

2012 and took steps to assess the reliability of the data reported. We also 

interviewed officials from the Office of the Senior Procurement Executive 

and Office of Human Resources to discuss how the plans were compiled, 

data sources used, and steps taken to verify the accuracy and 

completeness of the data. We also collected acquisition workforce data 

from the 11 OAs included in DOT’s human capital plans and interviewed 

officials from the five OAs with the highest procurement spending in fiscal 

year 2011 to discuss the data sources and methods used to track data on 

the acquisition workforce such as attrition, staffing needs, and certification 

levels. The data we reviewed included information on the size of the 

acquisition workforce and certification rates for fiscal years 2009, 2010, 

and 2011, as well as hiring targets, and estimated attrition through fiscal 

year 2013.

To assess the reliability of the aggregate data reported to OFPP, we 

reviewed the data presented in DOT’s plans for readily apparent errors, 

omissions, and logical consistency. We also requested the underlying 

data by OA that the Office of the Senior Procurement Executive used to 

prepare the plans; however, officials were only able to provide us with the 

underlying data used to prepare the 2012 plan. Since DOT was not able 

to provide the underlying data used to prepare the 2010 and 2011 plans, 

we attempted to obtain the data directly from the OAs. In response to our 

initial data requests to the OAs, we received a variety of different 

Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology 
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology

Page 29 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

documents including resource charts and succession plans. Because the 

data from the OAs was not provided in a consistent format and was not 

always complete, we prepared and distributed a data collection 

instrument to each of the OAs. We pre-populated the instrument based 

on data the OAs provided, and asked the OAs to validate the data, 

correct errors, or provide missing data. In some cases, the underlying 

data was not available from the OAs. As a result, we were unable to 

independently verify the accuracy and completeness of the data DOT 

reported to OFPP in 2010 and 2011. We also identified discrepancies that 

call into question the reliability of the data reported to OFPP. For 

example, DOT’s 2010 plan includes conflicting information on the size of 

the acquisition workforce for fiscal year 2009. DOT officials could not 

explain the discrepancy. As a result of these limitations, we concluded 

that the aggregate data DOT reported in its plans was not sufficiently 

accurate or complete for assessing changes in the size of the acquisition 

workforce or certification rates over time.

To assess the reliability of the data DOT used to prepare its 2012 plan, 

we compared the OA-level data we received from the Office of the Senior 

Procurement Executive with data we received from the OAs. We 

compared the data and interviewed OA officials regarding the sources 

and methods they used to compile the data. We identified inconsistencies

in how the data were reported by the OAs. These inconsistencies affect 

the reliability of the department’s aggregate data, but we determined that 

the OA-level data were sufficiently reliable to make qualitative 

observations about staffing and certification challenges at the individual 

OAs.

To determine the extent to which the Office of the Senior Procurement 

Executive has provided support and oversight for acquisition workforce 

planning and management, we reviewed relevant OFPP policy and 

guidance, as well as DOT policy, guidance, and acquisition workforce 

plans for 2010, 2011, and 2012. We interviewed DOT procurement and 

human resources officials to obtain their views on their roles and 

responsibilities. We also reviewed budget and strategic planning 

documents from the Office of the Secretary and the Office of the Senior 

Procurement Executive and interviewed officials from the five OAs with 

the greatest fiscal year 2011 procurement spending to discuss their 

approaches to strategic acquisition workforce planning and to obtain their 

views about the level of support and oversight from the Office of the 

Senior Procurement Executive. Based on this review, we identified Senior 

Procurement Executive responsibilities to support and oversee acquisition 

workforce planning and management and determined the extent to which 
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology

Page 30 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

these functions are performed. We compared Office of the Senior 

Procurement Executive strategic workforce planning efforts to leading 

practices for workforce planning identified by GAO and others. We also 

reviewed the Federal Aviation Administration’s acquisition workforce 

plans for 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 and interviewed officials to discuss 

their approach workforce planning.

We conducted this performance audit from March 2012 to January 2013 

in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. 

Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain 

sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our 

findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that 

the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and 

conclusions based on our audit objectives.
Appendix II: Comments from the Department 

of Transportation

Page 31 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

Appendix II: Comments from the Department 

of Transportation
Appendix II: Comments from the Department 

of Transportation

Page 32 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce
Appendix II: Comments from the Department 

of Transportation

Page 33 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce
Appendix II: Comments from the Department 

of Transportation

Page 34 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce
Page 35 GAO-13-117 DOT Acquisition Workforce

Belva Martin, (202) 512-4841, martinb@gao.gov

In addition to the contact named above, W. William Russell, Assistant 

Director; MacKenzie Cooper; Danielle Greene; Julia Kennon; Jean K. 

Lee; Steven Lozano; Angie Nichols-Friedman; Carol Petersen; and Marie 

Ahearn also made key contributions to the report.

Appendix III: GAO Contact and Staff 

Acknowledgments 

GAO Contact

Staff 

Acknowledgments 

(121056)
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