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For years, procurement officials have bemoaned — with ample justification — the diminished role they play within state and local governments. There is widespread belief that the acquisition community is not given the level of respect by governmental leaders that its responsibility and centrality to all government operations should command. Agencies' ability to execute their core missions would be stopped in their tracks without a high functioning procurement organization supporting them. Yet, all too often, procurement is an afterthought.

Passed in February, the federal government's massive stimulus bill — the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) — offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to procurement officials to change the dynamic and restore the procurement department and its management to its rightful central place in the constellation of government agencies. As the economic downturn rapidly turned into one of the most severe recessions in modern history, politicians, business leaders and economists called on the new Obama administration and Congress to pass a stimulus bill. With a general lack of confidence in the economy, consumer spending had cratered and corporations were forced to cut costs instead of making major new investments. The only sector capable of pumping money into the economy was government. The ARRA contains historic investments in alternative energy, energy efficiency, broadband expansion and infrastructure. Much of the spending will go through the offices of state and local procurement directors. Given the sheer amount of spending and the need to spend it quickly, the procurement community faces its sternest test in generations.

Preparing for the challenge

Every state has a different approach to spending the stimulus money, but there are a few constants. Many states have developed a recovery website where the public can track the money's movement through the system and the effect that money has had. Most of the governors have named stimulus czars, some of whom have developed teams of project managers, subject matter experts and managers of enterprise-wide operations to coordinate the implementation. Whether the teams include someone from the procurement organization is a good early indicator as to whether the contracting component of spending the stimulus bill is seen as a core function or an afterthought. It also can be viewed as a proxy as to how procurement generally is viewed by government executives — whether it is a strategic partner to the chief executive or a nameless, faceless part of the bureaucracy.

Oregon offers a typical example of how state officials interpreted the need to have procurement at the table. The state created the Oregon Economic Recovery Team to coordinate and track its infusion of federal stimulus funds. The team consisted of a finance manager, a technology manager and program managers for education, transportation, human services, natural resources, and housing and economic development — the key areas receiving stimulus funds. However, one key area was missing: procurement.

As Oregon and other states were assembling their stimulus teams, the 50 state procurement directors were gathering at the annual marketing meeting of the National Association of State Purchasing Officials (NASPO) in Chicago. With so much interest and uncertainty swirling around the stimulus bill, NASPO added a meeting to the agenda to discuss the recovery legislation. The meeting was an eye opener for Dianne Lancaster, Oregon's Chief Procurement Officer. "I came home from Chicago with a new belief that procurement had to put its hand up and claim our place at the table on the stimulus team," she says. "I got in touch with the Governor's Deputy Chief of Staff, who was the coordinator of the stimulus effort, and said that we had to be at the table. To my pleasant surprise, shortly thereafter, he asked one of his team members to contact me. We have been at the two meetings since then, and I was invited to be at the podium for our first agency briefing. [Being included] was easier than I thought it would be. Just asking went a long way," Lancaster says.

Lancaster's inclusion extended past the state's central procurement agency. The early meetings with agencies included budget and technology staff, but not procurement directors. When Lancaster was added to the working group, agency procurement directors were invited as well. "The point is we're not the first group that executive policy people think about. That's why we have to raise our hands," Lancaster says.

Procurement took a back seat in March at a White House conference on ARRA for the state recovery czars convened by President Obama and Vice President Biden. NASPO's President and Alaska's Chief Procurement Officer Vern Jones noted that only one question was asked about procurement in the daylong session. "And the question that we asked about the additional procurement procedures that are going to be required still haven't been answered," Jones says.

Governor offers purchasing a seat

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels was intimately involved with and aggressively supportive of his state's strategic sourcing initiative, so it is not surprising that Daniels put the state procurement organization front and center in the recovery implementation effort. Rob Wynkoop, deputy commissioner of the Indiana Department of Administration (IDOA), credits Daniels and IDOA's new commissioner Mark Everson with giving procurement a seat at the table. "The commissioner saw there was a need for disbursing the money quickly but also for doing it in a fair, open, competitive way wherever possible," Wynkoop says. "He knew that the state needed to have a consistent bidding process for all stimulus-related procurements. IDOA procurement had the infrastructure and the people already in place to ensure the money was spent wisely and timely."