Changes in FAIR Act unlikely this year

Congress is unlikely to consider legislation this year that could lead to opening thousands of additional federal jobs to private-sector competition, according to Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo.

Thomas has proposed legislation that would tighten the 1998 Federal Activities Inventory Reform (FAIR) Act. That law requires agencies to annually review their work forces and submit lists of commercial jobs to the Office of Management and Budget.

"We have made some progress, but frankly it has not accomplished what we thought it would," Thomas said in remarks Wednesday at a Contract Services Association of America symposium in Arlington, Va.

Thomas, who sponsored the FAIR Act, said the law was intended to spur agencies to find commercial jobs and open them to outsourcing. However, he said, most agencies have found reasons for exempting commercial jobs from competition.

For example, DoD's 1999 FAIR Act review found more than 500,000 commercial jobs in the department, but about 40 percent were labeled as exempt from competition.

Agencies turned in their most recent round of inventories to OMB on June 30, but they have yet to be sent to Congress or made public.

The proposed legislation would make it harder for agencies to shield commercial jobs from competitions by requiring agencies to offer OMB detailed explanations for exempting jobs. Also, under the legislation agencies would be required to submit to OMB annual lists of jobs that are inherently governmental and cannot be outsourced.

"OMB is really the problem. If OMB wanted to do something [to increase outsourcing] they really could," Thomas said.

OMB has made some changes in how the lists are compiled this year, including requiring agencies to post their lists on their Web sites and giving contractors and employees more time to appeal jobs left on or off the lists. Also, agencies are being asked to provide more detailed job descriptions and reasons for leaving them off their lists.

Thomas has requested that the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee hold a hearing on how OMB and agencies have implemented the FAIR Act.