2016 Assessment of the Civilian Acquisition Workforce Personnel Demonstration Project

Abstract

This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest.RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.Support RAND Make a tax-deductible charitable contribution at www.rand.org/giving/contribute www.rand.org For more information on this publication, visit www.rand.org/t/RR1783Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this publication.ISBN: 978-0-8330-9731-6 Published by the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif. © Copyright 2017 RAND CorporationR® is a registered trademark.iii PrefaceIn August 2015, René Thomas-Rizzo, director, Human Capital Initiatives, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (OUSD) for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics (AT&L), asked the RAND Corporation to undertake a study to accomplish the fiscal year (FY) 2016 Civilian Acquisition Workforce Personnel Demonstration Project (AcqDemo) assessment mandated in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of FY 2011. The assessment used multiple data sources-both quantitative and qualitative, both objective-and perception-based-to evaluate AcqDemo using the original 12 criteria enumerated in the NDAA, as well as five new criteria specified by the AcqDemo Program Office. These criteria call for a look at the following:• AcqDemo's key features pertaining to hiring, appointments, and performance appraisal • the adequacy of its guidance, protections for diversity, efforts to ensure fairness and transparency, and means used to involve employees in improving AcqDemo • AcqDemo's impact on career outcomes, such as compensation, promotion, and retention, particularly with respect to similar outcomes for the General Schedule workforce • AcqDemo's ability to support the acquisition mission.This research should be of interest to U.S. Department of Defense personnel involved with civilian manpower and personnel policy issues and to congressional representatives and staff responsible for AcqDemo project oversight. Some expertise about government civilian personnel management and performance-based personnel systems is presumed.This research was sponsored by Human Capital Initiatives, OUSD for AT&L, and conducted within the Forces and Resources Policy Center of the RAND National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded re...

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“…(The exception is NOAA-which had a larger share of women than men off grade in 2008 onlyand so women had a small pay advantage on average [.006 logged dollars] in that year.) These findings overall are consistent with a recent evaluation of a program in the Defense Department, in which off-grade employees had higher earnings and women were less likely to be hired off grade (Lewis et al 2017).…”

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“…The higher pay of pay-banded employees is notable, given that we found no statistical difference in retention between pay-banded and GS/GG cyber employees in series 854, 855, and 1550 (and no statistical difference in retention conditional on tenure for 854 and 1550). However, this result is consistent with prior analyses of the Civilian Acquisition Workforce Personnel Demonstration Project (AcqDemo), a demonstration project for a pay-banded pay plan in the acquisition community (Lewis et al, 2017).…”

“…All cyber employees in AcqDemo are assigned to the same pay-banded pay schedule (DoD, undated; see also 82 FR 52104 at DoD, 2017). Previous RAND research suggests that employees in AcqDemo have higher salaries but similar retention compared with GS/GG acquisition employees (Lewis et al, 2017).…”

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“…Indeed, this hypothesis regarding the civilian General Schedule personnel system motivated the DoD Civilian Acquisition Workforce Personnel Demonstration Project (AcqDemo), which is an initiative beginning in 1999 to reengineer the civilian personnel systems with greater flexibility (e.g., tying a greater portion of pay to performance) to meet the needs of the acquisition workforce. Lewis et al (2016) indicates that, within AcqDemo, higher levels of contribution to the organizational mission were associated with higher salaries, more-rapid salary growth, more promotions, and a greater likelihood of retention, 157 but the perceived complexity of the project's evaluation system has been a long-standing concern. 158 Guo, Hall-Partyka, and Gates (2014), another RAND assessment of the acquisition workforce, illustrates that people who were in the AcqDemo project, or any demonstration pay plan, were retained longer than those in the General Schedule.…”