Security agency moves forward with groundbreaking outsourcing plan

The National Security Agency is planning to outsource up to 1,000 information technology jobs without public-private competition. NSA's "Project Groundbreaker" is exempt from the government's public-private competition process because it qualifies as a "new requirement," according to agency officials. Under federal contracting rules, agencies may tap the private sector to perform new work that is commercial in nature. While NSA civil servants already provide the telephone, Web and desktop-computing tasks covered by the project, Groundbreaker is new because it involves a complete modernization of these operations, officials said. "It is recognized within DoD that a new requirement could cover existing activities currently performed by government employees," said an NSA spokesman. "Extensive restructuring of an existing activity may result in a qualitatively different activity, the performance of which fulfills a new requirement." The spokesman cited the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet project as a similar outsourcing venture that qualified as a "new requirement." NSA's rationale did not sit well with an official from the largest federal employees' union. "How can [the project] be new if there are federal jobs involved?" questioned Wiley Pearson, defense policy analyst with American Federation of Government Employees. While AFGE does not represent NSA employees, Pearson warned the union will fight attempts by other agencies to use the "new requirement" rule to bypass the public-private competition process. NSA employees have no union representation.

NSA decided to outsource its non-critical computer systems after a 15-month feasibility study conducted by Booz-Allen & Hamilton Inc. OAO Corp., Computer Sciences Corp. and AT&T are vying to be the prime contractors for the project, which is estimated to be worth $5 billion over 10 years. NSA is on track to award a contract by July, officials said. The winning contractor will be charged with overhauling NSA's aging computer systems, which received wide criticism after a January 2000 meltdown that derailed the agency's internal communications systems. The contractor will offer jobs to affected NSA employees, and the agency has no plans to conduct a reduction-in-force, the spokesman said. NSA has never done a full public-private competition, the spokesman added.