Coast Guard Senior Leaders Conduct Acquisition Media Roundtable
March 31, 2009 discussions touch on a wide ranged of topics, including readiness of recent deliveries and the Coast Guard’s efforts to ramp up their acquisition programs. Assistant Commandant for Acquisition Rear Adm. Gary T. Blore provided an update on the Coast Guard's major acquisition programs.
The National Security Cutter, of course, was a topic for conversation. Although the budget numbers for the Coast Guard were unclear at the time of the roundtable, RADM Blore did say that “Assuming the funds are in the President’s budget, and we suspect that it will be, we expect to award the contract for the fourth National Security Cutter immediately at the beginning of the next fiscal year.” That could come as early as October of the current calendar year.
• Coast Guard Acquisition Team: Where are they now?
Questions from the media following Blore’s opening briefing, centered chiefly on the Coast Guard’s current acquisition team, its readiness to get the job done and where it is headed from here. The Assistant Commandant for Acquisition declared, “We’ve come a long way…ADM Allen has put us on a path of acquisition reform.” He went on to say, “So, we’ve learned a lot of lessons from the past, we’ve had a lot of programs that ran well and some that did not.” He summed up his assessment of the Coast Guard’s acquisition group by saying, “I think we have a first rate acquisition organization right now.”
A follow-on question pressed Blore on where improvement still needed to be made and when all of that might happen. Blore replied, “We are partnering closely with NAVSEA systems….and a variety of other Naval commands to use the organic capabilities that they have. We’re trying to build a right-sized acquisition organization for the smaller agency that we are.” He also stressed the need to develop and maintain key core competencies within the Coast Guard for acquisition responsibilities. Still, he conceded that many of the “ancillary activities that are extremely important to acquisition will continue to go to our Navy partners, because they have that organic capability themselves.”
• Workforce
Blore’s current focus for improvement within the Coast Guard’s Acquisition group centers on training of personnel and improving headcount. “We have a lot of great people working for us, we just don’t have enough of them,” he added. Beyond this, he pointed out the lack of parity between DHS and the DOD in terms of hiring capabilities and the incentives available to both.
The Coast Guard has added about 80 personnel (civilian and military) to their acquisition workforce over the last 18 months, reported Blore, and they expect of add roughly another 100 positions over the next 2 to 3 years. The division now stands at 835 employees with the goal of arriving at what Blore characterized as “the perfect complement of 935.”
• Deepwater
Blore then turned his attention on the sticky subject of Deepwater, the massive recapitalization program, where the Coast Guard’s performance has come under heavy scrutiny and criticism. At this point, Deepwater is now expected to cost about $26 billion, or about $2 billion more than originally estimated when the program began. But Blore also admitted that this figure was a best estimate and additionally, that he did not know what the final requirements for the offshore patrol cutter – and other assets – would eventually be. And, he asserted, that some program changes could actually reduce that number.
• Looking for a Legislative Solution
It was clear from Blore’s descriptions that the recruitment of acquisition personnel, at least for the Coast Guard, will continue to be a challenge. And, while the Coast Guard, according to Blore, has a “rewarding set of missions,” lack of pay parity with the DOD was hampering their best efforts to staff this aspect of the Coast Guard’s mission with adequate talent. “We need a level playing field,” he asserted. And he said, “We are looking for a legislative solution to that issue.”
RADM Blore's written statement for the March 24 hearing before the House Subcommittee on Coast Guard & Maritime Transportation can be read by clicking HERE