FORT LEE, Va. - Tina Vetreno received the first-place individual award for headquarters and major command level contributions in budget formulation and execution during a ceremony held at the American Society of Military Comptrollers' National Professional Development Institute in Orlando, Florida, June 1.
Specifically, she was recognized by the undersecretary of defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for improving operational full-time equivalent execution for Defense Contract Management Agency offices in 2015. The recognition is part of the USD(C) Financial Management Awards Program.
"As a result of Vetreno's initiatives, (contract management offices) have become more aware of their annual attrition, and aggressive in their hiring practices," said Marie Greening, DCMA chief operations officer. "Process time for approving requirements decreased from 141 to 39 days, and overall management of the manning report improved. Feedback from the CMOs has been extremely positive and Vetreno has become a recognized expert in manpower resourcing across DCMA."
When Vetreno became the chief of resourcing planning in 2013, she assumed responsibility for providing management control of manpower execution for the DCMA Operations Directorate. Recognizing that new tools and policies were necessary to reverse historic under-execution, Vetreno started working on ways to decrease vacancy fill times while staying within hiring limitations.
"It was determined that one of the primary causes of under-execution was that CMOs were only backfilling vacancies and were limited by the requirement to provide a vacant funded system number when requesting to fill vacancies," said Vetreno. "With an average of 141 days end-to-end hiring time, offices were always behind in filling their workforce."
To correct the issue, Vetreno and the planning team initiated a plan to provide CMOs with over-hire authority. Her initial step was to complete a three-year attrition analysis by month, series, category and CMO to determine top attrition drivers. In coordination with DCMA's Human Capital Directorate, she then looked forward and analyzed three and five year retirement eligibility within the acquisition workforce. Finally, with the support of her team, a Keystone decision matrix that compared average attrition, retirement eligibility and performance indicators by CMO, was developed.
"As a result of her analysis, each CMO was given over-hire authority, and decisions were made as to where best to place trainees," said Greening. "Another of Vetreno's ground-breaking initiatives was to remove the requirement for CMOs to manage fund-type for their positions being filled, and place that requirement on her team. This reduced the complexity of the action for the CMOs and allowed them to focus solely on whether they needed to hire a developmental or final-target grade employee."
Vetreno also implemented steps to leverage automation to reduce manpower requirement approval time, improve monthly performance metrics to enhance visibility, and support visits to CMOs to identify and develop plans to eliminate logjams preventing positions from being filled.
"Vetreno's initiatives are being realized in 2016, and will undoubtedly pay dividends for years to come," said Greening. "CMOs will have the staff they need to properly perform their mission, and service to the warfighter will improve."
As a result of their success, Vetreno's over-hire and other initiatives are being considered best practices for implementation across DCMA.