DoD may use FAIR Act to guide A-76 decisions

The Defense Department may use annual job inventories compiled under the 1998 Federal Activities Inventory Reform Act as a guide for deciding what department jobs should be opened to private-sector competition, said Randall Yim, the Pentagon's privatization chief.

"We must set some tough out-year targets and savings goals [for outsourcing]. Maybe the targets can be tied into the FAIR Act," said Yim in remarks Tuesday at a Contract Services Association of America symposium in Arlington, Va.

The FAIR Act requires all agencies to annually review their workforces and come up with lists of jobs that could be performed by contractors. In 1999, agencies found about half of all federal jobs (about 1 million positions) could be performed by the private sector.

Industry critics however, charge the law is weak because it only requires agencies to come up with the lists. There's is no requirement in the FAIR Act for agencies to outsource any commercial jobs.

DoD would be the first agency to link its outsourcing goals with the FAIR Act.

Yim said Defense agencies and the military services now conduct commercial competitions to meet savings goals prescribed by the Pentagon. Yim called that process unfair and said agencies and services often rush to meet their goals and than scrap future outsourcing.

Yim said linking outsourcing to the FAIR Act would create a continuing job target for work that is truly commercial.

The Defense Department will use "strategic sourcing" to determine what work should be opened to competition. Strategic sourcing requires a service or agency to seek savings through internal restructuring, streamlining, downsizing or direct privatization-in addition to opening jobs to commercial competition.

Yim said strategic sourcing is not an avoidance of traditional job competitions, which are outlined in Office of Management and Budget Circular A-76. Those rules require a competition between federal workers and contractors before any jobs are privatized, with the work going to the lowest bidder.

Most commercial jobs in the services and agencies still will face A-76 competitions, Yim added.