New job competition process to be tested on IT workers

Federal information technology workers will likely be guinea pigs for a new public-private job competition process developed by the Bush administration, the government's top procurement official said Monday.

In a speech to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank, Angela Styles, administrator for procurement policy at the Office of Management and Budget, said the White House would probably use federal IT work to test a new process for deciding whether to outsource federal jobs. The new method uses Federal Acquisition Regulation rules now used for competitions among private firms to govern public-private job competitions. But the new method will not immediately replace the current process mandated in OMB Circular A-76, Styles said.

Use of the new process "is going to be limited a little bit in some respects until we have a period of test and evaluation to see how this new process is working," she said. "We're going to limit it to a particular industry-probably IT-but if we have a broad definition of IT it can be a very useful process for that industry."

Styles could not say how long OMB would test the new process before extending it to other areas of the federal workforce. Until the trial period is complete, agencies will continue to use a modified version of the current A-76 process for competitions, she said. Agencies can also still use direct conversions, in which federal jobs are directly outsourced to private firms without public-private competition.

It is unclear whether the Defense Department could use the new process under current law, which requires Defense to decide public-private competitions on the basis of cost alone. "It's a legal question, so we are looking into it right now," said Jack Kalavritinos, associate administrator for procurement at OMB. "People shouldn't necessarily assume that the [new process] doesn't apply to Defense, but we are looking into it."

Under the new process, the in-house team may also be allowed to file bid protests with the General Accounting Office, as private firms are now able to do, Styles said. "It will be subject to determination by GAO, but the more we treat the public sector as a private sector [bidder], the more likely it is GAO will accept a protest as well." Federal employee unions have urged that federal employees be given the right to appeal job competition decisions to GAO.

OMB crafted the new process in response to the final report of the Commercial Activities Panel, a congressionally mandated organization that urged widespread changes to federal outsourcing policy in its final report, issued in April. The new process will be included in a revised version of Circular A-76 that will be released shortly, according to Styles. OMB plans a 45-day period for comments on the new method.

The revised circular will include a two-page statement of policy and more than 40 pages of attachments that describe how the new competition process will work, according to Styles. OMB currently maintains about 120 pages of federal guidance on outsourcing, she said.

The new policy will also revise current guidelines on what constitutes "inherently governmental" work, which by law must be performed by federal employees.

OMB will also require agencies to publicly release lists of "inherently governmental" work in the future, Styles said. By law, agencies must make public inventories of "commercial" work, but lists of inherently governmental work have never been shared with the public.

"We have not to date released the inherently governmental inventories," said Styles. "We think we should. We think that's very important to get the full perspective on what an agency is doing."