GovernmentExecutive.com

The Bush administration is years away from fulfilling a campaign promise to open up half of all government jobs considered "commercial in nature" to competition from the private sector, Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch Daniels said Wednesday.

While OMB has directed agencies to directly outsource or perform public-private competitions on 5 percent of all commercial positions, or 42,500 jobs, by October 2002, making the leap from 5 percent to 50 percent will take several years, Daniels said at the annual symposium of the American Association for Budget and Program Analysis in Washington.

The 50 percent figure "is a long way off," Daniels said. He added that OMB has not yet set a timetable for meeting the President's goal or decided on a competition target for fiscal 2003.

Daniels is taking steps to jumpstart public-private competitions across government. In a briefing on President Bush's management agenda delivered at a May 16 Cabinet meeting, Daniels directed agency chiefs to emphasize the administration's outsourcing plan. In his speech to budget officers Wednesday, Daniels reiterated his intent to provide financial incentives to agencies and individual federal workers who perform public-private competitions.

"We are wide open to allowing departments to keep savings generated through public-private competition, and for my money individual program officers and others who lead ought to be rewarded," he said.

Daniels added that agency lists of commercial positions are incomplete. Under the 1998 Federal Activities Inventory Reform (FAIR) Act, agencies must compile annual lists of positions that could be performed by contractors.

"The...question is whether there aren't a number of jobs that ought to be on FAIR Act inventories but aren't yet," he said.

OMB has directed agencies to submit lists of all positions considered inherently governmental with the next round of FAIR Act inventories, which are due to OMB on June 30. OMB has requested the lists to better determine whether agencies are leaving commercial positions off their FAIR Act inventories.