By Allan V. Burman he challenge for federal acquisition officials these days is to convince top managers that they are with the program. A frequent complaint is that procurement folks are wedded to outmoded procedures and fail to see the big picture the agency s mission. Concerns about acquisition offices are abundant, but data to track their performance are scarce.
Criticism comes from a number of quarters.
The political ranks see agency performance being put on hold while procurement staffs fret and chafe over contracting procedures. Program officials, who themselves may have spent months debating contract requirements, get frustrated when their solution meets roadblocks in the procurement shop. The bureaucracy has ways of dealing with these impediments. Like the supervisor who redistributes the workload to keep the nonperformer out of the mix, the program office often tries to minimize interaction with the procurement shop. In some cases, just one or two program staffers become the designated conduit.