Veterans Affairs Acquisition Academy (VAAA)

VA's Jan Frye explains the rationale behind the department's Acquisition Academy

June 17, 2010

The case for more acquisition training options
By Jan Frye

Jan R. Frye is the senior procurement executive at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

I couldn’t be happier with the success of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Acquisition Academy, the award-winning program that develops our acquisition workforce.  It’s important to remember that we created this program out of necessity.

The issue surfaced earlier this month when Steve Kelman, a former administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, wrote in his blog at FCW.com that the VA academy should be able to offer its services to other agencies, thereby creating competition with the Federal Acquisition Institute and Defense Acquisition University.  Some readers who commented on his blog post wondered why VA decided to take this route rather than simply send employees to FAI or DAU.

I want to take the opportunity to set the record straight. Before launching the academy, we consulted with leaders at the Office of Management and Budget, the General Services Administration, FAI and DAU and shared our vision for creating a holistic learning model based on a mixture of competency-driven online and classroom courses.

Read more at FCW.com

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