With Stimulus Contracts, Let's Avoid Another Katrina

If Uncle Sam wants to avoid the fiasco he wrought when trying to get help to Hurricane Katrina victims, he'd better get his acquisition act together fast.

That's the message from a report issued yesterday by the Professional Services Council, the group that represents contractors who will get a piece of the $787 billion stimulus package.

In order to get the money to the companies that will fix the roads, repair the bridges and make real those shovel-ready projects, Sam needs a good, solid core of federal employees to do advance work before the shovels break ground.

"We cannot repeat the Federal Government's response to Hurricane Katrina," the council says. "Without a government workforce sufficient to plan, deliver and manage the contracts and grants that dispense these huge funds, it will be like constructing an office building on a foundation of sand."

Stan Z. Soloway, president of the council, characterized the current state of the procurement workforce as "generally under-resourced and under-empowered." The council has estimated that contractors will get anywhere from $35 billion to under $100 billion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

That's a pretty rough estimate, but if the people who eventually get a good chunk of change from the stimulus package have little clue as to how much they'll get, it shows just how many questions remain about implementation of the program.

Answering the questions will fall to federal staffers who work directly with contractors. Government data show that the procurement workforce, while increasing in recent years, remains short of the 67,085 that the Federal Acquisition Institute said Uncle Sam employed in 1992. As of fiscal year 2007, that number was 61,434, with more than half of those in the Defense Department.

To help the government meet the enormous challenge of actually making the stimulus stimulate, the council issued immediate and long-term recommendations.

First on the list is the creation of "tiger teams" in each agency. These rapid-response teams would include experts in program management, financial, legal, acquisition, human resources and audit functions and would include industry representatives.

Their job: "conduct rapid reviews of existing capabilities and develop rapid response plans for implementing the stimulus."

It almost goes without saying, but the council added that the Obama administration also should develop a "well-trained and experienced federal acquisition workforce with the tools, resources and support it needs and deserves."

The stimulus package will generate more business for government contractors at a time when government contracting is coming under greater scrutiny.