TOPICS
TOPICS
TSA awards human resources contract to California agency
The Transportation Security Administration this week announced it has awarded a five-year, $554 million contract to a California government agency to handle recruitment and hiring processes for security screeners and other personnel.
The contract, worth $108.3 million in the first year, was awarded to CPS Human Resource Services, a government agency that is jointly run by the California State Personnel Board and several local governments in and outside California. The award marks a unique arrangement in federal contracting history. While federal agencies routinely contract with one another for services, few have awarded service contracts to state or local agencies.
TSA also awarded a five-year, $214 million contract to New York-based consulting firm Accenture, which will handle TSA's day-to-day human resources administration, such as personnel recordkeeping and processing. Accenture's contract is worth $65 million in the first year.
The work under the two contracts was handled last year by NCS Pearson, a Minneapolis-based firm. NCS Pearson bid on the contracts but lost. The company successfully hired about 60,000 employees for TSA last year, but sources close to the work said NCS Pearson was beset by performance problems and complaints from applicants.
The recruitment contract is a coup for CPS, which had only $14.3 million in revenue in 2001. Accenture, which had $11.6 billion in revenue last year, also bid on the recruitment and hiring contract. Other companies that bid for the work include Chicago-based Aon Corp.; Vienna, Va.-based Resource Consultants Inc.; IBM Federal in Fairfax, Va.; and Avue Technologies of Tacoma, Wash.
TSA's contracts also represent a new way of getting human resources work done in the federal government. Typically, agencies have kept much of their human resources work in-house. It has been performed by government workers trained in the ins and outs of Uncle Sam's complicated personnel rules. TSA is keeping only a small group of in-house officials to oversee human resources policy, outsourcing the vast majority of human resources work.
Congress created TSA in 2001 following the Sept. 11 attacks, ordering its leaders to build an agency from scratch to defend the nation's airliners and other transportation modes from future attacks.
CPS, based in Sacramento, Calif., is officially known as a "joint powers authority," operating as an independent agency and reporting to state and local officials, much like independent transit authorities across the country operate. The head of the board of directors is David Hill, human resources director for the city of Anaheim, Calif. Walter Vaughn, executive director of the California State Personnel Board, is also a board member.
The contract to CPS raises questions about public-private competition, said Stan Soloway, president of the Professional Services Council, an Arlington, Va.-based contractors association. "As a matter of philosophy, one has to wonder what a state organization is doing bidding on national work," Soloway said.
COMMENTS
- Speaking from a point of view of and screener who has been with TSA since the inception of the agency in 2002, CPS and Accenture are collecting millions of dollars and doing practically nothing, I feel Accenture has given the HR job to a few oportunist screeners who have terrorise the average worker, at TSA I learned the meaning of Sexsual harrasemnt, racisim, and the worst kind of favortisim I seen in my life, here at Sea Tac TSA, I think some one should take the time to examine their contracts and see what are they doing for all the money they are collecting, is a waste, not to talk about the fact that the safety of the traveling public is the last thing in the minds of TSA esecutive staff, the goverment should stop waisting taxpayers money on this companys, just to try and keep the unions out of TSA, belive me when I say this, the only people outside of DRB, in Arlington, who have really help me, is the AFGE, the Union. andy Posted August 28, 2007 8:33 PM
- So TSA has contracted out to the state of California and to a private firm its HR functions— fascinating. I had an interesting training session last week about A-76 and contracting out non-essential government functions and operations. What OMB fails to access is the value given by federal employees who feel an obligation to their programs—a sense that they own their jobs and their missions. There is a great value to having a stable and energized civil service which the accountants and auditors at OMB and across the federal government do not, and I’m afraid cannot, measure. It is really hard to value morale and “esprit de corp” in a quantitative way but we HR types certainly know the qualitative value. In my own experience I have seen countless examples of federal employees fixing the large and small mistakes made by contractors, those employees who feel no loyalty to the agency or their programs outside of a paycheck. I have seen federal employees figuratively walk over burning coals to save their programs from these mistakes. Once these federal employees also become contractors there will be fewer and fewer federal employees who feel they own their programs and these mistakes will become really evident. So, like the Mastercard commercial: What is a stable and energized federal civil service worth? Priceless. And I’m afraid this won’t be seen until we are all contracted out and the programs start to fail. Mike Posted March 3, 2003 11:46 AM
