More than half a million civilians' jobs in the Defense Department could be performed in the private sector, according to the Pentagon.
In numbers announced on an official Defense Department Web site, about 504,000 civilian jobs will be listed on an inventory of jobs to be released at the end of the month as required by the 1998 Federal Activities Inventory Reform (FAIR) Act. About 662,900 civilians work for the Defense Department, according to the Clinton administration's fiscal 2000 budget. That means three out of four DoD civilian positions will be included on the FAIR Act inventory.
"For years, private businesses, and to a lesser extent, local communities, have been relying upon others to provide the goods and services that are outside of their core competencies," said Randall Yim, deputy undersecretary of Defense for installations, speaking at a conference in Washington last week. "The military has been much more isolationist. ... We cannot afford to manage our military installation infrastructure as we have in the past, in an isolationist thinking culture."
Throughout the Defense Department, 112,000 employees are already undergoing competitions with private sector contractors. If the employees win the competitions, they keep their jobs. If they lose, the jobs go to the private sector. Another 118,000 employees are scheduled to undergo public-private competitions by 2005.
Most of those 230,000 employees' jobs will be included on the FAIR Act inventory, which the Pentagon expects to release on Dec. 30. But about 50,000 military positions that could be performed in the private sector are not included on the FAIR Act list.
Of the 504,000 positions on the list, 308,000 will be targeted as potential candidates for outsourcing. The other 196,000 will be listed as exempt from outsourcing because the Pentagon has determined they should be performed by government employees.
Under the FAIR Act, private contractors will be able to challenge the Pentagon's assertion that jobs should not be outsourced. Conversely, employees and federal unions can challenge the inclusion of jobs on the outsourcing list.
The department's inventory will be posted in a searchable database at gravity.lmi.org/dodfair, where the Pentagon's overall numbers were announced. The Office of the Secretary of Defense created the Web site and FAIR Act database, which is not yet accessible to the public. Contractors, employees and unions will be able to use the database to decide what job designations to challenge.
About 95 federal agencies have released FAIR Act lists since September. The Defense Department is one of about 25 agencies that have yet to release their lists.
Yim described the Defense Department's plans at a conference on contracting sponsored by ESI International, an Arlington, Va.-based training firm.
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