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. 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. 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. 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 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. 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. 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. 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. Table 1 provides the roles and responsibilities of key acquisition workforce management positions outside of 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. In May 2011, the DOT Inspector General identified a number of weaknesses in the Office of the Secretary’s acquisition function. 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 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. 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 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. 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 department- wide 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. 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.