Federal agencies could do a better job of complying with the 1998 Federal Activities Inventory Reform (FAIR) Act, starting with job inventories that are easier to understand, according to a new General Accounting Office report.
Under the FAIR Act, agencies are required to release lists of jobs that theoretically could be contracted out. Agencies did so for the first time in 1999. The act also allows contractors to submit appeals to agencies when they think jobs that could be outsourced are not included on the lists. The idea is to ensure that agencies use outsourcing as a cost savings strategy when it is feasible to do so.
But, in 1999, agencies' outsourcing lists often served only to create confusion among contractors and other FAIR Act stakeholders, GAO said. "In the future, more consistent use of function codes and formats would be helpful in trying to identify whether an agency's inventory should be challenged under the FAIR Act for including or excluding a particular activity," said the report, "Competitive Contracting: The Understandability of FAIR Act Inventories was Limited" (GGD-00-68).
The Office of Management and Budget writes the rules for FAIR Act implementation. In June 1999, OMB introduced function codes describing different types of activities federal agencies perform. Agencies were asked to classify each job position using one of the OMB function codes, to create a standardized way to review the lists. Upon review of five agencies' FAIR Act inventories, GAO found that the lists were inconsistent across agencies and not very useful. GAO reviewed lists for the General Services Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Environmental Protection Agency, and the departments of Commerce and Transportation.
"OMB's June 1999 list of function codes to categorize commercial activities was incomplete, vague in some cases, and did not adequately capture agencies' activities," the report said.
For example, a complete list of function codes was not available on OMB's Web site or in its June 1999 guidance. The June guidance contained 12 major categories of jobs and 163 specific job function codes. However, the guidance left out 9 major categories and 222 other function codes. OMB said officials didn't have time to complete the full list of codes. While some agencies used the full list of codes, the list was not readily accessible to FAIR Act stakeholders.
In addition, the function codes were too vague, and did not always capture the job function. Categories like "other nonmanufacturing operations," do not paint a clear enough picture of what the actual job is, GAO said.
Agencies often created their own function codes when the ones provided by OMB did not adequately describe their job functions. GSA, for example, created 10 new function codes, and FEMA classified all of its jobs using an entirely unique set of function codes.
To make things worse, agencies released their 1999 FAIR Act inventories in a wide variety of formats, effectively negating their usefulness to contractors for comparing common activities across agencies. And, when agencies said certain jobs were exempt from being outsourced, the reasons they gave were not always clear.
The Commerce Department, for example, did not assign reason codes, which explain why a job can or cannot be outsourced, to many of the jobs on its list.
In order to ensure that the FAIR Act is a useful exercise, OMB needs to revise its guidance, the report said.
"At a minimum, OMB's list of function codes should identify all of the codes agencies can use to identify their particular activities," the report said. In future iterations of FAIR Act guidance, GAO said OMB should:
- make the codes more accurately reflect the job activities that agencies perform
- define the codes so that they are easily understood
- ensure that all lists of function codes are complete, and include codes that are specific to individual agencies.
In March, OMB announced it is planning to give agencies more guidance on how to structure their FAIR Act lists. In addition, agencies will be required to post their lists on their Web sites. (As in 1999, GovExec.com will provide links to all the FAIR Act lists online at www.govexec.com/fairact.)