Return to Article: OMB to report that job contests saved $1.25 billion last year
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10678
I am not going to point fingers at any group or organization. I will note the fact that management positions continue to grow and blue collars positions go. I personally have seen nothing good come of contractors. They don't or can't do the work and always request more money to complete the job. And now the government is contracting jobs that there is no private sector equivalent for. Well done FMA.
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7870
The current thinking is that if the OMB contracts it out,it will show how good of managers they are. BullHockey. They won't be happy till this government is run by another country under contract. What they don't tell you is they downsize the operation and cut salaries if you win the MEO. We were under the gun and the contractor that was assisting us, told us to win was we had to cut everyone's pay grade by 2 and lose 30% of our staff at a facility that was already under manned. During the process we lost a lot of expertise that cannot be replaced due to the fact that they wanted to keep there income and then our HQ changed there minds at the last moment and took us off the table, because they found out it was not going to help the long term strategic plan. How did this help anyone? It didn't. It was totally based on the trying to show the general public that the someone in Washington can justify there job and save a couple of dollars. This isn't making America Stronger it knocking the wind out us.
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7849
Lawmakers and the public should view the OMB report with a skeptical eye. Only last year a DoS report claimed terrorism was at an all time low. Top officials announced the report with such an air of certainty that many assumed it must be true. And yet two months later we saw these same officials apologizing for gross miscalculations and omissions. The truth, as it turned out, was just the opposite of what the original report claimed. Unfortunately this Administration has a bad habit of massaging numbers to fit whatever goal they have in mind. This is how we ended up in a costly war and it's how we'll end up with a costly and ineffective privatized government. Clearly we shouldn't buy what OMB says either without deeper independent analysis.
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7848
Bravo Sarah- that is exactly the kind of response and story that my provocative letter was meant to illicit and will maybe in fact win the day in the end. I know the manpower people aren't just number crunchers-- but that is all you read about. What is that saying- pennywise and pound foolish. Any other HR/Manpower/Staffing people across the government care to add their human interest story to the mix.
And Sarah, although I don't know which MEO you worked on, you should be commended for at least working to save a portion of the civil service from the relentless attack of A-76. If more people knew and appreciate the human cost of these projects maybe, just maybe, Congress would end the suffering.
HR Specialist
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7843
Well, it's Thursday. Still no OMB report on all the "savings" that have been generated by A-76! But fear not, fellow feds: Come Saturday, word is that David Safavian is going to hold a press conference on a bench in Lafayette Park, trumpeting the good news. He'll be next to the crazy guy ranting about the apocolypse. You know what? It will be hard to tell whose claims are more outlandish.
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7832
Excuse me HR Specialist, but I spent almost 3 years working on an MEO, busting my butt to keep the civil servants employed. I lobbied Congress on my own time, I wrote to the newspapers and magazines about the "human" cost, as well as the financial. Don't think just because I focus on overall costs that I don't know what happens to the people. I saw the migration start at the announcement, I saw people leaving from the MEO team ... I was there til the end. Through two appeals I was sure we had "won", then the GAO ruled against us. I felt like I let 1,200 people down and it took me a very long time to recover. So don't presume to think that I'm just some number cruncher. I just know that you aren't going to win the A-76 debate over "human interest" items, but over dollars, and that's what needs to be exploited.
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7819
Simply amazing -- am I the only HR person left who focuses on employee impacts. The strategic planning people focus on getting us to green and the manpower people seem to focus also on number crunching.
I guess I'm a young old school HR type. I came into this field to hopefully make a difference in people's lives and work toward building high performing and high morale organizations.
It is like the Visa Commercial: what is such an organization worth-- priceless. But priceless is not something the accountants who run all the HR programs in the federal government are comfortable with. We are going to pay dearly for having organizations crafted solely on the cheap-- and we are going to pay for this philosophy for decades to come.
Not one comment to this A-76 article came from an HR person whose perspective is the impact on our people who lose their benefits and/or their jobs to programs that don't really measure performance or cost. What young person is going to want to enter a civil service career as shaky as the one we are quickly crafting through these programs?
HR Specialist
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7801
When the Government Accountability Office audits A-76 savings estimates, it routinely finds that empirical evidence does not exist to support OMB's claims.
Agencies simply do not track contract costs over time. The Army attempted such an agencywide tracking effort but was stopped from doing so by OMB.
In light of this, I cannot understand why Congress does not hold OMB accountable. We have experienced routine audits of our in-house Most Efficient Organizations to determine that we are: (1) within staffing limitations; (2) within cost limitations; and (3) meeting or exceeding quality and timeliness standards. Why are contractors not held to the same standards as Federal employees?
Anyone familiar with A-76 is acutely aware that contract cost growth and/or cost overruns completely devour any projected savings.
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7798
Does the commercial sector always stand accountable for any security vulnerabilities in its products? Would they outsource work to a Nation that does not genuinely care about U.S. security, or worse, has or can become hostile? Iraq was our ally at one time.
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7797
I would like to know the amount that the contract modifications cost when the contractor wins the cost comparison. That seems to be the one thing that no one is willing to talk about. The numbers straight off COMPARE and the contractor's bid are NOT the final numbers or cost savings, it's just the beginning. The contract modifications start the day after announcement. How much do they cost the government? I'd love to see a 1, 5 or 10 year study of those numbers!
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7796
Another article that brings tears to my eyes in laughter. More HR bean counting by federal accountants that don't have a clue what the cost of outsourcing really is to the workforce. They say they save $20,000 per position. And the cost for federal employees outsourced or who join companies without benefits or who remain in the winning, but leaner and meaner MEO is?
From an HR employee relations and workforce development standpoint- the cost in the stuff the accountants can't measure is really, really significant. How do you measure post traumatic syndrome in a successful MEO for the survivors left-- or in the RIF and outsourcing?
HR Specialist
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7790
Whoa, OMB, don't make us wait till Saturday for this thrilling report! What is going to happen on Saturday, anyway? Is Safavian going to hold a press conference out on the EEOB loading dock?
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