TOPICS
TOPICS
Law could stop A-76 studies for thousands of Defense employees
About 60 public-private job competitions involving thousands of Defense Department workers could be cancelled because they have taken too long, violating a tight new time limit for competitions included in the Defense budget bill for fiscal 2004, a Defense official said Wednesday.
Joe Sikes, Defense's director for competitive sourcing and privatization, said the department is still studying how to respond to the measure, which requires all multi-function job competitions to be finished in 30 months or less, down from 48 months, the old deadline. But he said Defense may have little choice but to cancel ongoing competitions that have been under way for more than 30 months.
"It looks unlikely that there is any way to interpret it other than it looks," he said of the provision. "I'm particularly worried about studies where we were near a decision and put substantial time and resources into it, and we would have to stop prior to implementing a decision."
Pentagon officials have told the military services not to spend fiscal 2004 funds on questionable studies - essentially putting them on hold - until they reach a final verdict on the provision. The measure is Section 8022 of the final Defense appropriations bill (Public Law 108-87), which President Bush signed into law on Sept. 30. It applies only to Defense.
Sikes said the number of Defense workers involved in competitions that could be scuttled is "less than 10,000." Many are in the Navy, which has started more competitions than the other military services in recent years. The Army, the largest military service, initiated competitions on just 1,324 jobs between 1999 and 2002.
Sikes said that potential cancellations would not hold up Defense efforts to comply with the Bush administration's competitive sourcing agenda. Defense has classified 270,600 jobs, or 45 percent of its nonmilitary workforce, as potentially eligible for competition.
"In terms of our total scorecard number, it's not a huge number," he said. "But it is significant relatively to places where significant work has gone into [a competition] and they are nearing a decision to make the government more efficient."
Defense officials are still exploring alternatives to cancellation, including legislative relief, according to Sikes. He said he was still not sure who backed the shorter time limit, which was included in the conference report on the appropriations bill.
COMMENTS
- As a manpower analyst I conducted "Commercial Activities" studies at installation level within the Army. Later, I worked at higher levels in the government and did manpower and organizational studies as a Team leader. These studies were to ensure mission essential workload was accomplished and that only essential manpower was allocated to an organization. I saw outsourcing for some unique functions as beneficial and cost saving. However, to outsource for outsourcing sake serves no purpose for efficiently run organizations. There is no "fairness" in this type of competing. In these cases, the contractor underbids to raise the price later. i.e. I saw a small greenskeeper maintenance contract awarded for $10,000. It soared to $84,000 in a couple of years. We were not allowed to try and bring this function back into the government.This is only one small example, there have been studies conducted to show more numerous problems than I can remember or would attempt to cover here. These documents go unnoticed because they are not politically correct. When we (manpower folks) would go back and do manpower studies based on an organization's mission and workload to accomplish that mission, more often than not, the private companies were not doing the efficient job the dedicated Army employees had provided. There was a lack of dedication when compared to the government employee to to get the job done. It is impossible to write a contract (Performance Work Statement (PWS)) that is going to cover every task to get a job done. And, if part of a task is left out, it becomes a new tasking; reason to charge the government more money. Today what you find is the overworked military solider carry the weight of an inefficient support system or lack thereof. Organizations are forced to outsource. The old timers that grew in the system are retired or retiring and because many of the jobs that grew these competitent managers are no longer there, the depth of knowledge to manage some functions is missing in the workforce. This limits the capability to monitor a contract. It is good to see their are those that understand the problem. I still shake my head in amazement of the process of outsourcing to outsource instead of based on an organization's requirement. Lucy Cook Posted October 20, 2003 10:46 PM
- As a chief of procurement policy and then of Review and Compliance, I have found that contracting out of government operations was not all that it was thought that it might be. I have seen where cooking was contracted out for military units and then military units were deployed and there was a lack of trained military cooks. I have seen a reduction of doctors because they civilianized jobs that required military doctors before. Then units were deployed and reserve doctors had to be called to active duty. I have seen guard service contracts awarded below civil service competitive bids. (e.g. Civil Service $850,000 and contractor $750.00) In the second year of the contract with the 8(a) contractor the price jumped to $1,500,000.00 for the same work. The contractor increased his overhead expenses and charged for work that was not well-defined in the first contract. I have found that the government does not anticipate every contingency and thus the contract grows. The cost increases make government operations of the same work pale in comparison. All it does is decrease the number of government employees, but costs goes up. I have seen contractor operating government-owned contractor-operated Ammo plants strike to get the Command to allow increase cost under the contract to cover the pay increases demanded by striking workers. Workers had better medical insurance program than the government employees monitoring the contract and the cost was passed on to the Government. Contractors had better retirement than government employees in the plant overseeing the contract and quality. One contractor at one plant paid the janitors the same wages as the machine operators. They justified it and the contracting officers approved this. That same contractor refused for a long time an incentive on work related accidents. The contractor told the General that safety was the most important thing in their operation. They had never had an accident in over 35 years of operation of the ammo plant and said, "We don't want to sell safety for a pound of silver." They were forced to take the incentive and they continued a accident free year and made maximum incentive because the General forced the provision upon them. I could go on and on with example after example of stupid things that happened when contractors operate services. George T. Nickolas, CPCM (National Contract Management Association) Posted October 20, 2003 11:57 PM
- This article is incomplete because it doesn't list the competitions which may be cancelled. Employees facing loss of their jobs would like to know. GovExec.com reader Posted October 17, 2003 8:47 AM
