Agencies' job competition ratings well-earned, analysts say

A jump in ratings on the competitive sourcing portion of the Office of Management and Budget's latest traffic-light scorecard likely reflects real headway on the initiative, rather than political maneuvering, according to several analysts.

The effort to put federal jobs up for competition with private firms has become the most politically contentious part of the president's five-part management agenda. Federal employee unions and some lawmakers have attacked the initiative as simply a way to privatize government jobs. Opponents have nibbled away at OMB's guidelines for running A-76 job competitions in language attached to fiscal 2004 spending bills.

The administration is "sensitive to the risks" of having competitive sourcing seen as part of a political agenda, rather than an attempt at improving government management, said Donald Kettl, a professor of public affairs and political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But at the same time, OMB officials strongly believe in the initiative, and developed the quarterly traffic-light scorecard as a means to measure results, he said.

"They really are trying to use this as a stick to move agencies in the direction they want to go," Kettl said.

Nearly half of federal agencies evaluated on OMB's scorecard for the last quarter of fiscal 2003 earned yellow ratings for competitive sourcing, a notable contrast from six months ago, when all agencies received red marks in that area.

Higher grades on competitive sourcing reflect a change in the criteria for earning a yellow light, an OMB official said after the scorecard was released in early November. OMB previously pushed most agencies to work toward competing 15 percent of positions designated as "commercial in nature" in order to earn a yellow rating. In July, OMB announced it would eliminate the uniform 15 percent target and establish specific goals for each agency.

Under the revised criteria, agencies receive a yellow light if they reach their individual, OMB-approved target. Over the past two quarters, they must also have finished 75 percent of all streamlined competitions-those where fewer than 65 full-time equivalent jobs are at stake-within a 90-day timeframe and have followed through on at least 80 percent of publicly announced competitions.

OMB lowered the bar for achieving a yellow light because the previous standards for competitive sourcing were "unreasonably high," said John Kamensky, director of the Managing for Results Practice at IBM Business Consulting Services. Most civilian agencies could not come close to earning a green light, he said.

The new standards for competitive sourcing are simply a way of giving agencies more realistic goals, so they don't become discouraged with the entire initiative, Kamensky said. Previously there was an "enormous amount of activity" in competitive sourcing that was not reflected on the scorecard, he said.

The upcoming presidential election might give OMB an incentive to show progress, Kettl said. But government management is not usually a big factor in elections to begin with, he added. "It's hard to stir up the public on issues of management reform," he said.

Ratings on the scorecard are not the most meaningful way of demonstrating management results in the first place, said Paul Light, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

"The key question isn't whether lights are green on progress, but how many years of progress will actually produce gains in the core capacity of agencies to faithfully execute the laws," he said.

"I have no doubt that some of the progress is real," Light added. "But M.B.A. presidents and their M.B.A. management chiefs know that progress takes time."