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TITLE VIII--ACQUISITION POLICY, ACQUISITION MANAGEMENT, AND RELATED MATTERS

Subtitle E — Provisions Relating to Acquisition Workforce

P. L. 114-

House Conference Report. 114-840

(1) in the first sentence, by inserting a comma after “may be available”;

(2) at the end of the first sentence, by inserting before the period the following: “and other purposes specified in law”; and

(3) in the last sentence, by striking “shall consist of” and all that follows through “this Act.” and inserting the following: “shall consist of—

“(i) amounts appropriated to the Fund;

“(ii) amounts credited to the Fund pursuant to section 828 of this Act; and

“(iii) any other amounts appropriated to, credited to, or transferred to the Fund.”.

The House amendment contained a provision (sec. 839) that would amend section 1705 of title 10, United States Code, to allow the Secretary of Defense to reduce the threshold amount that must be credited to the Defense Acquisition Workforce Development Fund during fiscal year 2017 from $400.0 million to $0. This section addresses an overfunding of the fund that has resulted from carryovers from prior years.

The Senate bill contained no similar provision.

The Senate recedes with an amendment that would require the Department of Defense to transfer $225.0 million from the Defense Acquisition Workforce Development Fund (DAWDF) in fiscal year 2017 to the Department’s Rapid Prototyping Fund. The conferees also direct the Secretary of Defense to brief the Committees on Armed Services of the Senate and the House of Representatives, not later than March 15, 2017, on the extent to which DAWDF funding is sufficient to meet acquisition workforce development requirements and on steps the Department has taken to improve the management and implementation of the DAWDF to avoid carryover funding. The conferees encourage the Department to make use of the expanded authorities for the use of the DAWDF to address workforce training and development of acquisition tools and practices to improve acquisition practice and outcomes. It is the opinion of the conferees per section 1705 of title 10, United States Code, that the amounts transferred into the DAWDF from unobligated balances, as described in subsection 3, does not have a maximum limit each year. The $500,000,000 limitation only applies to subsection 2 relating to credits for contract services. The conferees direct the Secretary of Defense to establish waivers to procedures regarding obligation and expenditure rates, applicability of standard financial management regulations, and other financial management procedures, as necessary, to ensure the most efficient and effective execution of projects supported by the Rapid Prototyping Fund. Specifically, the conferees direct the Secretary to establish procedures that provide relief from strict obligation and expenditure benchmarks and flexibility in using amounts in the Fund consistent with a broad range of efforts under research, development, test and evaluation budget activities. The conferees believe that strict adherence to standard Department financial management procedures may negatively impact program execution and not enable the program to achieve its goals. The conferees direct the Secretary to notify the congressional defense committees within 30 days after any such procedures are waived.