Pentagon official promotes fair A-76 competitions

The Defense Department must ensure that public-private job competitions are run fairly if it wants top commercial companies to be interested in bidding for the work, said Stan Soloway, deputy undersecretary of defense for acquisition reform, at a recent symposium.

The Defense Department must hold competitions that give both contractors and employees a legitimate shot at winning the work, Soloway said in remarks at an Aug. 24 symposium sponsored by the Center for Public-Private Enterprise. Recently, he said, some military commands and bases have failed to attract contractors to bid because companies felt the competitions were biased toward federal workers.

The Pentagon's reform efforts call for opening more than 200,000 jobs to commercial competition by 2005 to save more than $10 billion. The process follows outsourcing rules outlined in Office of Management and Budget Circular A-76. Those rules require a competition between federal workers and contractors before any jobs are privatized, with the work going to the lowest bidder.

Soloway cited several examples of why contractors are avoiding A-76 competitions, including: bases allowing employees whose jobs are a stake to play a role in judging the competitions; bases not putting up for competition all the jobs they initially promised to; and bases not following General Accounting Office decisions on bid protests.

Soloway blamed many of the problems on a lack of training for federal employees about the A-76 process. Training efforts must be stepped up if the Pentagon wants to reach its savings goals, he said.

Joe Sikes, DoD's director for competitive sourcing and privatization, said base commanders are often leery to hold competitions because they feel they will lose workers and not receive any of the savings.

"There needs to be a benefit to the bases if they are going through the process," said Sikes, adding DoD is considering ways to return money to bases that save money through A-76 competitions.