Return to Article: FEATURES Competing To the Death
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50817
With all that is being said on how this plan has not worked from our stand point it is not that the private sector has not tried. Case in point, each year federal executives must complete the OGE 450 Financial disclosure Form. With a CRADA agreement with the FAA our firm developed a totally automated wizard to allow the filer to complete the document electronically, the OGE lawyers to review it electronically and for the following years to be able to populate the document for the filers review, saving litterally millions. The FAA and our firm was blocked from presenting this capability to other agencies by none other than the Office of Government Ethics. Rather than to prusue a competative solution OGE elected to award / support an initiative of the US Army to develop a simular electronic solution at a wopping cost to the tax payers of $20 Million Dollars and growing. In 2008 the FAA quitely processed all 10,000 FAA filers with ease and substantial cost savings. To-date no one knows what the Army's solution was able to achieve. By the way the head of the OGE Interagency Steering Committe is chaired by someone from, you guessed it, the US ARMY. So Mr. President if you really want to know why your worthy initiative is not working you only have to look at your Office of Government Ethics.
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50028
The entire A-76 process at DOE has been a farce in which estimated savings are grossly exaggerated. One such A-76 competition resulted in the expenditure of several million dollars that were not included in the cost of running the competition. The excuse was "The government had to pay those employees working on the competition anyway." Of course that totally ignores the fact that scores of employees involved over 2-3 years could not get their mission-related work done because they were consumed by the A-76 competiton. Ironically, much of that work was completed by contractors the cost of which was also excluded from the cost of competition.
Further, the money spent on travel and training over this time period for those employees directly involved in A-76 efforts "did not count". Neither did the expenses of consultants that were brought in to design and execute the competition.
All these false accounting efforts were brought to the table via guidance issued by the White House sanctioned OMB. If we as individual taxpayers resorted to this type of "cooking the books", we'd be fitted with steel bracelets and a nice set of striped clothing. What happened to the "managers" who foisted this nonsense on the Federal employees and the American public? Many of them received massive cash awards for a "Mission Accomplished."
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49487
How did Lockheed win the FAA Flight Service Contract with no employees?
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48527
The A-76 process is corrupt. In the case of the Flight Service outsource, there were dozens of questionable decisions made. They were blown off. The FAA had its own fox guarding the hen house look it over. Figures were used against the cost of the service, including costs that still exist AFTER the contract was won by the contractor. There is still ongoing litigation pending, over 2 years past the award. How much is that costing the U.S. Taxpayer?? Plus as the article states, costs incurred 2 years before the preplanned outsourcing. Then figure in all the severance pay (not counted) etc. Then after the MEO protested it, it came down to the decision of ONE person. Marion Blakey. This former administrator ruined the lives of 2500 dedicated federal workers all for what? A service the now mimics Toys R Us. There needs to be checks and balances in this process. No 1 person should EVER have the power to make a decision like that.
Kudos on the article.
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48424
If I was an outsider looking in, I'd see public-private competition as an unabridged benifit to the taxpayer. However, as a competition official for a recent A-76 study, I can say first-hand that the costs for conducting these competitions are grossly understated. The new "Preliminary Planning Period" is not only excluded from the study timeline, the costs associated with Preliminary Planning including associated consultant support, travel, employee interviews/meetings, program mgmt, contract services, etc., are not included in the competiton costs. It appears as a deliberate misrepresentation, and I'm deeply troubled by how easily this can be swept under the rug.
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47518
Every day Federal managers make decisions about changing the face of the Federal government by deciding it is better to use Blackwater for security, architect-engineer firms to design bridges and roads, professional service firms to write such things as environment assessments and construction companies to do road maintenance. All this change in fact shrinks the Federal workforce because Federal employees once did these tasks. These changes are made outside the sideboards of A-76 and are exemplified by just looking at what the Government contracts for daily. NFFE, AFGE and the Federal employee want to chalk the disappearance of A-76 and competitive sourcing up to a win? Their view is clearly uneducated and veiled bias. With A-76 gone there is still a great opportunity for the Federal employee to loose their job due to Congressional mandates that result in a shrinking budget and contracting out for work. Now with A-76 gone the employee won't be able to compete for the job. It will simply be gone based on a management decision! Just wait the day will come in the not to distant future where NFFE, AFGE and the Federal employee will be crying for use of A-76 when there job is threatened and they finally open their eyes that A-76 lets them compete for the job not only their own interests but the interests of the taxpayer.
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47236
This is just another battle in the continuing war between paternal big government socialism and competitive small government capitalism. The Soviet Union is gone, but the ideological battle between the two views of government remains. The question is, who will surrender the United States first.
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47180
Contracting out saving money? In 2004 Defense Finance and Accounting Services contracted with Unisys Corporation to provide IT support (Desktop and software deployment) with an Estimated Potential Value of up to $83.5 Million. Gardner Group had previously stated that DFAS in-house desktop support was the best value but stated that the "total cost of ownership" would be better served being outsourced. It should be noted that the GSA Contract with Unisys was let without performing an A-76 study, or any other study to compare the services provided by governemnt performing the same duties. DFAS claimed that Unisys would not be performing the same duties the government had previously done, which is still in question. The head of DFAS IT pushed through this fiasco, and it's been nothing but problems. None of the promises of better support for the dollar have ever been realized. Service has been slow, software deployment haphazard, responsiveness unacceptable. The renewal of option years was dropped earlier this year and the head of the DFAS IT abruptly left DFAS to continue her incompetancy working for the Air Force. Had this been in the public sector she would have been drawn and quartered. Worse yet, the contract contained no remediation clauses to penalize the contractor for work not completed on time, not completed at all, and downtime to the government. You might also remember the story (here from the Washington Post 9/24/2007): "The FBI is investigating a major information technology firm with a $1.7 billion Department of Homeland Security contract after it allegedly failed to detect cyber break-ins traced to a Chinese-language Web site and then tried to cover up its deficiencies, according to congressional investigators." No surprise, another Unisys contract. Why anyone would pay one of the first companies that failed in the PC business to maintain their desktop computers and security is beyond me. Both DODs organizations: DHS and DFAS should have a lot to answer for!
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47148
Just see your other story: "Passport scandal raises questions about reliance on contractors"
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47147
Competitve sourcing was just another way for Bush and Cheney to hand out jobs to their contracting buddies, as they did with Iraqi. They should make the Department of Contracting with 2 agencies, The Office of Haliburton and The Office of Blackwater.
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47079
My boss wanted to lose the competition so she could get rid of undesirables so when the paperwork came through she added a GS-13 to supervise, a couple of GS 11's and a few extra GS 7's when in reality we had 2 GS-7's doing the work. Of course we were going to lose but NTEU saw the farce and called them on it to which management said, "OOPS, we made a mistake." If I had made a mistake like that I would have been canned immediately. She got a promotion.
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47020
"Competitive sourcing" has been nothing more than a waste of resources, and opportunity. To tax payers, this is a complete loss, but more importantly...critical government missions have been compromised.
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46987
I was displaced due to a reorganization that ended up keeping the "senior" workers and losing most of the younger ones. Yes they met the goals on paper of the MEO but also lost the aggressive, efficient younger workforce. Do you think this improved efficiency and reduced costs? And I agree about the opinion of rapid changeover of CO's, SES's etc. How can you implement real cost savings if your term is 18 to 24 months? The BOP is famous for this as well. Oh well I better hush up before my career goes on the black list... Aloha
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46939
There is some value to competitive sourcing, though it will never be acknowledged by unions.
I know at VA alone, where competitive sourcing has been eliminated due to legislative restrictions, there are commercial activities, which are performed in-house at significantly higher costs (upwards of 30%-50% more than commerical vendors). Why VA should perform these commercial activities is beyond me as a tax payer and as a vendor.
While there are certainly many positions within government which are uniquely governmental and should never be outsourced (procurement functions are one that readily comes to mind), the reality is that everyone wants to gain an advantage (be it employees with unionized jobs or contractors with their overpriced "cost plus" contracts to perform routine functions).
The program has morphed into something of a waste as government employees continue to win the majority of the competitions. What use is it to a contractor to spend tens of thousands of dollars to compete with government insiders. I guess though, it is very similar to most defense competitions, just that the insiders are working for the contractors.
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46911
Wise Old Owl is 100% correct. take a look at the FAA and air traffic control. The entire national airspace system is on the verge of totally collapsing all in the name of saving a few bucks and trying to break the controllers union. A aviation disaster is right around the corner. the sad part is when it is all said and done, nobody will be held accountable.
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46904
Death of A-76? Well, now, that's what I call PROGRESS! No other federal program has wasted more time, resources and $$. Stan Soloway can whine all he wants, but the tide is finally turning. Just like everything else he has touched, Dubya's "competitive sourcing initiative" has been a fiasco.
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46878
Resistance to Competitive Sourcing is about protecting Federal employee (morale)interests over taxpayer and non-Federal employee interests (union and non-union) - not about local jobs and it is about member reelection interests over the national interest. Its not about savings or performance - those 30-year records are well established. Its recent decline is a casualty of war. DoD and DHS, for example, are awash in money for contractors and for Federal employees. The number of Federal employees has almost doubled since Clinton left office - but that will never be enough. Agencies still find it easier to plead for more resources than redirect them - and its a better excuse for failure. Battle weary veterans of the war for transparent government are throwing A-76 overboard and abandoning ship. What is needed is to simply declare all work of this or that kind reserved for in-house or contract performance. We need to get away from a competitive procurement based approach that can be manipulated by Congress and other special interests. We can then declare, with certainty, that specific Federal jobs are part of the larger welfare system.
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46867
The groundrules going into the A-76 competitions I have seen have universally assumed that the gov't agency was over staffed. There was no analysis of the required functionality to determine a realistic staffing level required to maintain the quality of service. I can only conclude that the quality requirement in all of the out-sourcing competitions that I have personal experience with were served up as lip service only. Quality of service universally has declined in all of the functions, regardless of who was awarded the contract.
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46833
As a federal acquisition professional I have seen the results of numerous competitive sourcing efforts and by and large they do save me money, but by and large service/performance declines. This is especially true when the MEO wins. Developing realistic and executable proposals has never been a core competancy of most federal agencies. In most cases, rather than develop innovative methods to accomplish the work the MEO merely slashes workforce and grades to be competitive. If they win the outcome is almost invariably poor performance. Of course the MEO is also limited by regulations and bureaucracy that hinder the flexibility and innovation that are prevalent in the commercial sector. One dark little secret of this process is that past performance by MEOs is not systemically tracked, so they do not get downgraded for poor performance during a recompetition, whereas industry does. Just ask Boeing about the significance of past performance in a source selection after losing the Air Force's KC-X tanker deal...
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46832
If federal employees worked half as hard and were half as good at what they did as the private sector, there would be no need for A-76.
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46826
Competitive Sourcing (A-76) was cost effective back in the 70's/80's when you could achieve a 33% cost savings by outsourcing a lot of the public works functions. However, attempting to outsource you mission related functions is fruitless. You achieve savings by continual streamlining your installations. Cross training and having multi-tasked functions creates a cost savings. However, each time a new CO, etc comes into play, the savings sometimes are lost. They have a tendency to re-create what was taken away. We use to conduct Business Case Analysis (BCA's) and Zero Base Analysis (ZBA's) that achieved more savings at less of a cost to the American tax-payer. However, conducting these type of studies wasn't glamorous enough for the heads sitting in the metro DC area. They all have to create a name for themselves that eventually cost us all. Example: NMCI (THE BIG BLACK HOLE THAT WE CONTINUE TO DUMP MONEY INTO). All of this for the name of a now retired admiral. We have now created another big black hole. It's call "Lean Six Sigma". The money dumped into this one, could be a major $$$$ increase to the "cost of war" (COW).....
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46779
This was just an anti federal worker trick. Good riddance. They learned this from trecherous CEO's who send American jobs to slave countries just to make more money.
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