OMB releases second round of outsourcing lists

The Office of Management and Budget on Wednesday released the second round of 2001 job inventories that could be performed in the private sector under the 1998 Federal Activities and Inventory Reform (FAIR) Act. Thirty-four agencies, including the Commerce, Education and Interior Departments were included in the second round of 2001 FAIR Act lists published by OMB in Wednesday's Federal Register. OMB could not provide numbers on the total jobs that are included on the second round lists or say which of those jobs are eligible to be performed in the private sector under the FAIR ACT's rules. Of the 310,507 jobs included in the first round, 74 percent, or 228,631 positions, are eligible to be performed in the private sector under the FAIR Act. The FAIR Act requires agencies to compile annual inventories of jobs that are commercial in nature and could be performed by contractors. Every year, OMB reviews the lists and then releases them to Congress and the public in three rounds. Agencies' FAIR Act inventories for 2001 were due to OMB on June 30. OMB requires agencies to post their FAIR Act inventories on their Web sites. But the second round of 2001 lists, like previous lists, was difficult to track down. Even though OMB provided a Web site link for each agency, in many cases the link pointed to the agency's home page, with no reference to where the FAIR Act list is located on its Web site.

The American Federation of Government Employees plans to study the 2001 FAIR Act inventories carefully, according to Brendan Danaher, a policy analyst at AFGE. "After Sept. 11, all Americans understand that you can't ignore the role of government in public safety," Danaher said. "We are going to examine the FAIR Act, just like we examine other things." Danaher said it is sometimes difficult to distinguish which labels should apply to jobs included in the inventories. "We kind of have to wait and see. Under the system that's been set up, it's not always obvious which jobs are inherently governmental and which are not, and that's one of the real dangers," he said. "Intentionally or unintentionally, jobs that are inherently governmental have appeared on the FAIR Act lists in the past." Last spring, OMB Deputy Director Sean O'Keefe revitalized the FAIR Act by ordering agencies to directly outsource or perform public-private competitions on 5 percent of their 2000 FAIR Act inventories, or 42,500 federal jobs, by October 2002. In budget guidance for fiscal 2003, OMB directed agencies to outsource or perform public-private competitions on 10 percent of all commercial jobs by October 2003, for a total of 15 percent. According to Danaher, OMB's 5 percent mandates are dangerous, and could force agencies to privatize in order to meet quotas. "They [OMB] are using an ax when a scalpel would do," Danaher said. "It is an amazingly awful example, and totally inappropriate, approach to privatizing contracting. We would be a lot better off focusing on getting the job right, rather than getting the job out the door." Under the FAIR Act, contractors, unions and employees can challenge the lists if they think jobs should have been, or should not have been, included. In 1999, when the first FAIR Act lists were published, contractors and unions filed several challenges with agencies, but only about 6 percent of the challenges to the largest federal agencies' FAIR Act lists were successful.