President Joe Biden is ahead of the pace in filling key management roles in his administration. The latest is Biden plans to nominate Biniam Gebre, a former political appointee at the Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Obama administration, to lead the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, Federal News Network has learned.

If the Senate confirms Gebre, he would replace Michael Wooten, who left in January and was only OFPP administrator for 16 months. Former President Barack Obama didn’t nominate his OFPP administrator until October.

Gebre would join the administration after spending the last four years with Accenture Federal Services where he was a senior managing director and head of management consulting.

As head of OFPP, Gebre would face several challenges and opportunities. First off, he will surely have to address the never-ending need for more and better trained acquisition workers.

Another opportunity and challenge will be around modernizing the federal acquisition system, both the regulations and the processes that rely on technology such as artificial intelligence and robotics process automation. This area of challenges and opportunities also include more mundane, but important issues like how to modernize multiple award contracts and governmentwide acquisition contracts, as well as addressing the increased use of other transaction agreements, commercial service openings and other non-Federal Acquisition Regulation-based processes.

And then there are the Biden administration’s own priorities, like adding more rigor and emphasis to the Buy American Act and the Made in America executive order and guidance, supply chain security and increasing federal contract awards to small disadvantaged businesses by 50% to $100 billion by 2026.

Before joining Accenture in 2017, Gebre was a partner with Oliver Wyman, a management consulting firm.

During the Obama administration, he served as general deputy assistant secretary, acting assistant secretary and commissioner of the Federal Housing Administration. In that role, Gebre focused on access to credit for low-income families, FHA’s financial health and revitalizing public housing properties.

During his private sector career, Gebre helped dozens of organizations within both the public sector and private sector address management, operational and technology issues ranging from agriculture to banking to artificial intelligence.

Gebre earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Williams College, and an MBA in finance and economics from Northwestern University. Gebre also sits on the Board of Pathfinder International, a global health organization.

With the nomination of Gebre, the Biden administration still must fill the controller role at the Office of Management and Budget, and several agency level chief information officer positions at agencies such as the departments of Defense, Transportation and Veterans Affairs.

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