OMB will allow alternatives to A-76 through fiscal 2003
The Office of Management and Budget will allow certain agencies to keep using alternative methods to traditional A-76 job competitions after new federal outsourcing rules take effect, according to government officials.
The methods-including an "express review" process used to analyze activities of 10 or fewer federal employees-are not mentioned in the new version of OMB Circular A-76. But agencies can still use the methods for credit toward OMB competitive sourcing goals if they previously received permission from the budget office, an OMB official said Friday.
"In terms of the competitive sourcing goals, studies and conversions must be in keeping with agreed-upon plans for fiscal '02 and '03," said the official.
The Interior, Treasury, Agriculture and Health and Human Services departments received OMB's permission to use "express review" for competitive sourcing credit in their plans. The budget office authorized the process as a way to help agencies pursue competitive sourcing while OMB created a new job competition process, which was unveiled in a draft Circular A-76 last month, according to Angela Styles, administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy.
"Certainly some of those special express streamlined mechanisms were put in place because of what I started out describing-we were left in the somewhat awkward position of pushing public-private competition while at the same time recognizing we had a system that was broken," Styles said last week at a conference sponsored by the National Council on Public-Private Partnerships.
It is unclear whether OMB will allow agencies to use express review after fiscal 2003. The White House wants agencies to use the new A-76 process, which it says will be easier to use. "We're looking forward to agencies using the newly revised A-76 on larger studies since it's faster, easier and creates a more level playing field that the existing A-76 process," said the OMB official.
Agencies can always petition OMB to let them use alternative methods. "Well, nothing is precluded if you get specific authority from us to go forward with it," said Styles at the conference.
The Interior Department created express review earlier this year as an alternative to the traditional direct conversion process for activities involving 10 or fewer employees. Typically, agencies directly convert such small functions to the private sector without giving civil servants a chance to compete for their jobs. Interior's plan, by contrast, allows federal employees to keep their jobs if they can perform the work at a lower cost than private firms.
"It was developed for Interior because we have so many small pockets of people for competitive sourcing, and it would be kind of unfair to go into an area where they have eight people and say we're not going to give them a chance to compete," said Helen Bradwell-Lynch, director of Interior's competitive sourcing center.
But contractors have won most of the express review studies so far. Interior has held about 15 studies, and employees have "lost a significant number," according to Bradwell-Lynch.
The Veterans Affairs Department also plans to keep using an alternative to normal A-76 competitions that has been approved by OMB, according to Curt Marshall, director of the VA's strategic planning service. "We are operating under the assumption that the new circular won't affect our plans in that regard," he said.
In April, the VA won OMB's approval for a competition process that uses market research to see if commercial activities could be performed more efficiently in the private sector. The department has used already tested the process, dubbed "Tier 2," and plans to use it as part of a plan to compete all 61 VA laundry facilities by the end of fiscal 2003, according to Marshall.
VA has unique regulatory and statutory authority that makes it difficult for the department to hold normal public-private job competitions. Circular A-76 has an exemption for jobs that involve direct patient care, a practice that has protected many jobs at the Veterans Health Administration from outsourcing-the agency contains 97 percent of the department's commercial jobs.
The new circular narrows this exemption, and VA is reviewing the change, Marshall said.
A provision under Title 38 of the U.S. Code also prohibits VA from conducting traditional competitions for jobs at the VHA unless Congress funds the competitions.