Civilian agencies will get an additional $25 million in 2011 to boost hiring and development of acquisition professionals, under the White House budget proposal released Monday.

The money would come from a new "Acquisition Workforce Initiatives Fund" of which:

• $8 million would be used to assist agencies with hiring and training acquisition employees to better manage the government's contracts.

• $6 million would be used for human capital support of those efforts.

• $3 million would establish an acquisition workforce database.

• $6 million would be used to create a database of contractor employees.

Another $2 million would be targeted toward studying the current and future needs of the acquisition workforce, as well as the balance between federal employees and contractor employees in contracting offices.

The General Services Administration (GSA) will administer the fund. GSA already administers a $15 million "Acquisition Workforce Training Fund" for civilian agencies, which is financed by fees agencies pay when they use GSA's Multiple Award Schedule contracts, governmentwide acquisition contracts (GWACs) or other multiagency contracts.

In other budget-related acquisition news, the White House intends to continue a moratorium on public-private competitions for federal work in 2011. President Obama has also pledged to hold agencies to his goal of cutting contract spending by $40 billion in 2010 and 2011. The budget tells agencies to increase their use of "strategic sourcing" — buying in bulk — to add to the $19 billion in savings they identified in 2010.