PSC's Agenda for the Next President

The Professional Services Council (PSC) calls itself " ... the voice of the government technology and professional services industry, representing the full range and diversity of the government services sector." It has more than 400 member companies representing small, medium, and large businesses who employ hundreds of thousands of workers in all 50 states.

The PSC just released a report entitled "An Agenda for the Next President of the United States". The agenda identifies a number of specif issues and actions, grouped around four main areas; harnessing technology and new business models to modernize Government service delivery, improve Government operations to better compete globally, build a better engagement model to bring the best ideas and solutions from industry into Government, and develop the Government and industry work forces of the future. It is the last of these agenda items that we want to highlight today.

PSC writes:

Attracting and retaining the workforce of the future is a crucial imperative for both federal agencies and the contractors that support those agencies. There is a war for talent, competition is fierce and new approaches must be considered to create an environment that encourages our best and brightest to take on careers of public service. ... there are continuing challenges that are preventing new employees from remaining in the government and having the tools and experiences to optimize their performance and contributions.

The organization writes about a capacity gap, a capability gap, and a confidence gap. The capacity gap refers to the current workforce not having the time and resources to keep up with demand. We could not agree more. The capability gap comes from hiring, training and retaining workers. We think the primary contributor to this gap is employee retention. The Government has no problem hiring and its training programs (including on-the-job training) is top-notch. However, when private industry, including PSC members themselves dangle a boat-load of dollars in their faces to jump ship, they leave. Pay equality would solve some (perhaps a lot) of the retention gap. The confidence gap refers to current workers unprepared or unwilling to take well-reasoned risks to achieve potential innovations or cost savings, instead of defaulting to familiar, often sub-optimal, strategies.

One of PSC's solutions is to dump the Government employees and hire more (PSC member) contractors. PSC writes: "...government leaders must also be thinking about and addressing the appropriate mixture of government and contractor personnel to achieve agency mission needs." There have been many many studies over the years comparing the cost of government service versus privatization. These studies have varied and conflicting results and there is certainly no consensus on which is most cost-effective.

You can read the full report by clicking here.