Defense Department says war will not halt job competitions

The war on terrorism will not keep military installations from holding public-private job competitions, the Defense Department announced on Thursday.

But competitions can be delayed or even cancelled at installations that are directly involved in the war effort, Pete Aldridge, undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, said in a March 7 memorandum to the military services.

The memo sets out the Pentagon's new policy for handling job competitions in times of declared war or military mobilization, when federal outsourcing rules contained in Office of Management and Budget Circular A-76 do not apply to the Defense Department. When A-76 does not apply, Defense can still contract out federal jobs through direct conversion, which bypasses the cost comparison process that gives federal employees a chance to compete for their jobs.

While the Pentagon has been exempt from Circular A-76 since President Bush mobilized reserves in mid-September, Defense has encouraged installations to continue their job competitions unless they are in the midst of mobilization. Aldridge's guidance makes this approach the department's policy.

"I have considered the effect of current levels of mobilization on the Department's activities and conclude that we shall continue to apply OMB Circular A-76," he wrote.

The guidance allows installations involved in mobilization to delay job competitions and petition to cancel them, although the Defense Department must approve all requests to halt competitions due to mobilization. Cancellation requests must be vetted by service commands and will be scrutinized by Pentagon headquarters, said Annie Andrews, assistant director of the Pentagon's competitive sourcing and privatization office.

"Our hope would be that people would have done their homework before a request got to us, but that doesn't mean we're going to rubber stamp it," she said.

Mobilizing for war can create "surge requirements," or extra work at a base, making it difficult to conduct A-76 competitions, which require sustained attention from base commanders and can be stressful for workers who are competing to keep their jobs.

Following Sept. 11, some bases that were not involved in the mobilization began to ask Defense if they could scrap their competitions, according to Andrews.

"As soon as 9/11 hit, I started getting calls asking, 'Can I cancel this competition?' or 'Can I outsource whatever I want?'" she said.

Defense must hold job competitions to obtain savings that are assumed in out-year budget requests and to comply with Office of Management and Budget job competition targets. The Defense Department had 399 public-private competitions involving more than 31,000 civilian jobs under way at the end of 2000.

The new guidance is not meant to tie the hands of the military services, "but to ensure consistency across the military departments and to meet our financial obligations," Aldridge wrote.