Nontraditional hiring practices and cooperative buys can help procurement teams reduce backlogs

Governments will need more procurement talent as infrastructure spending expands. Stephen Goldsmith, former mayor of Indianapolis, says: “Local and state governments increasingly face labor shortage pressures aggravated by retirements and resignations. Few agencies feel this labor shortage more acutely than procurement, which concurrently is also facing the complexity of keeping up with new technologies and dramatically greater workloads.”

Goldsmith, who is a professor of the Practice of Urban Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, explains that local governments are being tested on multiple fronts as they strive to maintain and improve professionalism in their procurement operations. “One issue involves the increasing percentage of new technologies embedded in a widening range of products and services. Secondly, almost every level of government is now experiencing retirements and resignations and their resulting labor shortages.”

He adds that while cities and states have more money to spend than any time in the past, the combination of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA) and potential Build Back Better funding will continue to dramatically increase workloads for procurement teams.

Goldsmith says procurement in the public sector has changed. “Modern technologies and new approaches to old problems make it difficult to decide what to buy, even before determining the qualifications, scoring matrix or definitions of outcomes. Procurement shops will benefit by incorporating more outside advisors, technical specialists and outside lawyers with subject matter expertise. A vendor who has done dozens or hundreds of contracts should not be paired against a city doing the first one of its kind.” When he was deputy mayor of New York City, Goldsmith did boost the number of subject matter experts within the city’s procurement teams. These experts had deep knowledge of the city’s requirements and the vendor’s skills.

Cooperative buys and piggybacking may help lessen procurement workloads, Goldsmith tells Co-op Solutions. “Utilization of cooperative purchasing agreements and more selections from the contracts of other governmental entities will help accelerate speed and reduce backlogs, without diminishing integrity.” He adds that simplifying or automating routine processes will provide relief. “Collectively, these reforms will allow purchasing agents to focus their time where most needed: on complex, expensive and novel approaches.”

In the future, local government procurement organizations will need dedicated, professional and diverse employees to replace those who retire or leave, Goldsmith says. “To accomplish this result will require changes in the way government hires and promotes. Civil service relies on tests that narrowly evaluate knowledge. Test design is complex and, despite best efforts, too often discriminates against candidates of color and those who rely on English as a second language. HR departments should look for nontraditional ways to recruit workers.”

In their book “Growing Fairly: How to Build Opportunity and Equity in Workforce Development,” Goldsmith and his co-author, Kate Markin Coleman, show how governments are expanding opportunities within city workforces. In the book the authors profile a Los Angeles city program that demonstrates that nontraditional hiring can aid in discovering individuals who just need an opportunity.

The book explains how the L.A. Targeted Local Hire Program serves as an entry into city jobs, in lieu of traditional civil service exams. It provides a path into government for many who have faced challenges in life. The program provides an alternate job pathway into full-time work through on-the-job training for entry-level city positions. Successful completion of a probationary period then results in regular employment in the city’s workforce.

“Of course, opening the hiring aperture doesn’t automatically solve the procurement labor problem,” Goldsmith explains. He says taking the following three steps will expand and improve the flow of candidates into more complex jobs. The steps are:

• Increase options in hiring
• Eliminate unfair barriers
• Develop more intentional upskilling efforts

“The L.A. Targeted Local Hire Program mainly aims at entry-level positions, but many of the employees hired progressed up the ranks. Throughout city hall are hardworking, conscientious employees who deserve an opportunity to upskill into the more complex procurement jobs,” Goldsmith explains.

In the book, the authors note that private employers are beginning to utilize data to identify skills instead of relying primarily on exclusively post-secondary credentials and specialized experience. “If the government follows suit in its hiring and provides training to augment skills, it will fill jobs more quickly with productive workers,” Goldsmith concludes.

Goldsmith says there’s no quick solution that will help stabilize purchasing department workloads. “No easy answer will relieve the pressure placed on procurement shops. But modernization in how we purchase and hire will assist,” he believes.

Michael Keating is senior editor for American City & County. Contact him at [email protected].