Ely returns to private sector after short stay at OPM

The Office of Personnel Management’s revolving door in its procurement executive suite continues to turn. Kay Ely, the senior adviser for competitive sourcing and acting policy adviser, is returning to the private sector next month. Ely’s departure comes after only four months at OPM (see ). She will return to Acquisition Solutions Inc. of Chantilly, Va., as a senior principal consultant, where she worked before coming back to the government. She will advise federal customers on procurement methods and regulations, she said.“I felt like a college student who got homesick and went home,” Ely said. “I’m returning to a great group of people doing great things, and the bond I had with them was too deep to stay away.”Ely is the second high ranking OPM procurement official to leave in the last six months. Corey Rindner headed off to become the State Department’s procurement executive after only two months at OPM. Both were brought to the agency, in part, to help steady the agency’s rocky e-government initiative. Ely’s hiring came a month after the General Accounting Office upheld a protest from losing bidder Symplicity Corp. of Arlington Va. on the Recruitment One-Stop contract in May (see ). Her last day at OPM will be Nov. 14.“We were able to make headway in the competitive sourcing area,” Ely said about her short stay at OPM. “We were well into our fiscal 2004 competition plan and finished our 2003 deliverables.”