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Help wanted at FAS
Battling the golden tsumani at GSA\'s Federal Acquisition Service.
By Max Cacas
FederalNewsRadio
The new acting head of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, Tyree Varnado, is making the rounds of events in the federal acquisition community. One of his most recent speeches offers some insight into his hopes for the FAS. In a lunchtime keynote speech to INPUT’s recent Fed Focus Conference in Falls Church, Varnado told attendees that he has told his staff he always wants, “an engaged and professional staff focused on a singular mission.”
He has been on the job a little over a month, but in that time the 30-plus year veteran of the GSA has been talking about a topic that is important for the future of his agency.
It’s no secret that workplace issues are a challenge in today’s competitive environment. To meet the challenge, FAS is working to expand its institutional capacity, through recruitment, retention, and workforce flexibility, knowledge transfer, secession planning, and leadership development.
Varnado says the future of the Federal Acquisition Service depends on getting more qualified and trained contract officers, and hanging on to the established veterans already in place. That’s because more than 42 percent of the FAS’s current staff of about 700 will become eligible for retirement in the next 10 years.
And Varnado says that along with a group that is reviewing all sorts of recruitment, retention and succession issues for FAS, he is promoting another new initiative: an intern bootcamp, in which current contracting staff are encouraged to become certified in federal acquisition contracting, under guidelines set by the Office of Management and Budget, and the Office of Federal Procurement Policy.
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On the Web:
GSA – Tyree Varnado bio
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