The Outsourcing Debate — Special Issue

Agencies are battling their own cultures as they try to comply with the Bush administration's directive to let companies compete for 425,000 federal jobs. It's not about outsourcing vs. bureaucracy. It's about managing diverse webs of relationships to deliver value. How employees at an Air Force base played the job competition game-and won. Federal agencies are outsourcing IT work at an ever-increasing rate, but they're adding their own technology jobs at the same time. Concern about the cost of contracting could lead the Housing and Urban Development Department to bring some work back in house. Government work is big business-and businesses say they're not getting a fair shot at competing for it. Employee unions are fighting to save their members' jobs-and winning some concessions from the Bush administration in the process. Critics of competitive sourcing base their opposition on six myths. But these theories increasingly are being tested, and the data are proving them wrong.