List of jobs that could be contracted out grows

The tally of federal jobs that could be contracted out rises to 155,000 Friday as the second wave of agencies release jobs lists required under the Federal Activities Inventory Reform (FAIR) Act.

According to an Office of Management and Budget announcement in Friday's Federal Register, 43 agencies have listed 35,000 jobs that are not inherently governmental and therefore could be performed by private firms.

Last month, 52 agencies released their FAIR Act lists, which included a total of 120,000 jobs that could be outsourced. (For a complete database of the lists, see GovExec.com's FAIR Act Report.) Of the 440,000 jobs in the 93 agencies that have now released their lists, 35 percent have been categorized as commercial, rather than inherently governmental.

Another 25 agencies must release their FAIR Act lists by the end of the year, including the Defense Department, which has already committed to putting more than 200,000 jobs up for competition with the private sector over the next five years. DoD's list is expected to be released in December.

"The purpose of this act is not to serve as a witch hunt for jobs to privatize," said Rep. John Duncan, R-Tenn., at a hearing Thursday of the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and Technology. "However, if certain functions performed by agencies can be more economically carried out by the private sector, we need to look at those situations."

Duncan was one of the sponsors of the 1998 FAIR Act, which requires agencies to release lists of jobs that could be performed by private contractors each year. Agencies then have the discretion to put those jobs up for public-private competition under procedures laid out in Office of Management and Budget Circular A-76.

At the hearing Thursday, lawmakers complained that the FAIR Act lists released so far have varied widely in format and have difficult to obtain, requiring interested parties to contact each of the government's agencies separately to get a copy of the lists.

Associations representing private contractors submitted written testimony decrying agencies' decisions not to compete most of the jobs on their FAIR Act lists. Many of the jobs on the inventories have been designated as core to agency operations or exempt from requirements to consider outsourcing.

Federal unions and one Democratic lawmaker, meanwhile, criticized the government's already widespread reliance on contracting out, pointing to difficulties federal agencies have in overseeing contractor operations and preventing fraud and abuse.

"I'm not for dismantling the government," said Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio.