Bottom Line Up Front: The Pentagon is re-training its acquisitions workforce. The new rules fully kick in October 1, 2021.
The Last In This Series
This entry wraps up our read-along of acquisitions boss Ellen Lord’s article where she looks back on the work she’s done to reform acquisitions at the Pentagon to make it more like the commercial world.
Her Final Act: Re-Train The Acquisitions Workforce
In her own words:
First, upskilling our current workforce and institutionalizing modern software and digital competencies not only for software practitioners (developers and software engineers), but also for acquisition professionals (program managers, cost estimators, contracting professionals).
The last step in her reforms was to re-educate all the thousands of acquisitions professionals throughout the Department of Defense so they could put the new rules into practice. Ellen Lord’s last memo to the workforce establishes a new initiative called “Back-to-Basics” to do just that. You can read her memo here.
You can visit the “Back-To-Basics” home right here. It is part of the Human Capitals Initiatives office, whose job it is to train the acquisitions workforce.
There Is A Deadline
As you can see in the memo above, Ellen Lord sets a deadline of October 1, 2021. On that date, all the new acquisitions rules and policies will be in place, all of the Pentagon acquisitions workforce will be fully trained in its use, and —most importantly— from that day on, all new contracts will be written with the new contracting language.
As the initial blog post in this series said, Government contracting as you know it is dead.
One more time for emphasis
After October 1, 2021, the world of DoD contracting as it currently exists comes to an end.
If your company is not ready, the clock is ticking!
If your company has never worked for the Pentagon, they’re about to roll out the welcome mat for you!