Federal agencies obtain acquisition training to meet requirements but have limited insight into the costs and benefits of those investments, GAO has said in calling on the Office of Federal Procurement Policy to do more to ensure agencies collect and report cost data and track training outcomes.
Agencies often reported insufficient training resources as a top challenge – a problem that is to be exacerbated by a tight budget environment, including sequestration.
Both funding and staff are in short supply and half of the agencies GAO looked into reported that the fundamental step of identifying the acquisition workforce is a challenge especially when members of the workforce are involved in acquisitions as a secondary and not primary duty, according to GAO-13-231.
It said training cost data that agencies collect is not comparable and agencies have limited information on the benefits of their acquisition workforce training investments.
OFPP agreed with recommendations to provide further guidance on the cost data agencies are to report annually as well as require agencies to analyze course evaluations, at a minimum, to help assess the benefits of training investments.
