Army sets standards for tracking contractor workforce

The Army has established standards for counting the number of contractors that work for it, a move that the largest federal employee labor union says should be replicated by all of the armed services. In a Dec. 26 Federal Register announcement, the Army laid out detailed rules for counting its contractors. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), praised the Army for creating a way to track its contractors. "The Army is to be commended for establishing a system to track the service's uncounted and unaccountable contractor workforce," said Bobby Harnage, AFGE president, in a prepared statement. The fiscal 2000 Defense authorization bill requires the military services to complete and publish contractor inventories by March 2001. A 1998 federal law, the Federal Activities Inventory Reform (FAIR) Act, requires all agencies to annually publish lists of government jobs that could be performed by contractors. In 1999, about half of the nearly 2 million federal jobs could have been done by contractors, according to the FAIR Act inventories. Harnage said contractor inventories are important because some studies suggest the number of contractor employees may be double the size of the federal workforce. "How can that massive workforce ever be managed if it's kept in the shadows?" he asked. Harnage said the other military services would be wise to use the Army's system. "The Army has devised a methodology that can reliably and accurately collect vital information about the contractor workforce and its costs without placing an unreasonable burden on contractors," he said. AFGE is pushing Congress to pass legislation requiring all agencies to publish contractor inventories along with their FAIR Act reports.