OPM employees defeat contractors in latest job competition

The Office of Personnel Management last week announced that it has decided to keep work performed by 15 employees in house, marking the 14th public-private competition that employee teams have won at the agency.

The award was made under Office of Management and Budget Circular A-76 rules for streamlined competitions where fewer than 65 full-time jobs are involved. It will ensure that 15 full-time positions based in Washington, and Boyers, Pa., will continue to be filled by OPM employees rather than contractors. The jobs are in training, human resources, program management and training technician functions.

"This competition lets the world know how good OPM employees are," said Linda Springer, the agency's director, in announcing the award. "These OPM employees were determined to be able to perform their work more efficiently than the private sector and as a result, were selected to continue to perform these functions."

OPM employees presented their bid to keep the work through a "most efficient organization," which allowed them to propose an approach that differs from the way the work historically has been done. OPM spokesman Edmund Byrnes said the employees' proposed approach would save $700,000 over five years, compared to the current organization.

"The estimated contract price to perform the work was over $1 million more than the MEO over the five-year period," Byrnes said.

Carlos Braithwaite, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 32, which represents the nine affected employees based in Washington, said the management team overseeing the work wanted to change how the office operated, so employees developed a new strategy that they presented in a projected work statement.

"It's a good process if there are going to be changes down the road," Braithwaite said. "We expect in the near future there will be a competition for an initiative that they're working on now, retirement system modernization . . . where I could see this being used." He said his bargaining unit is involved with three streamlined competitions that he expects will be completed by August, though Byrnes said OPM currently has no other competitions on the horizon.

OPM has conducted 16 public-private competitions under A-76 rules since late 2002, 14 of those under streamlined rules that allow contracting officers to condense the competition timeframe and use market research to determine the private sector cost for performing work. OPM won 13 of the 14 streamlined competitions for a total of 295 full-time equivalent positions and one of the two standard competitions, involving an additional 180 FTEs.

The streamlined contest won by a contractor involved 10 full-time jobs, and the award in the standard-sized competition involved 163 full-time positions.

"It's more beneficial for us when it's streamlined because we think the playing field is more level in that process," said Braithwaite. The streamlined format uses private contractor wage rates from a Labor Department salary base, he said, allowing the federal employees access to the information used in the bid. He said in the standard competition format, it is more difficult to challenge the private contractor bid because wage data is considered proprietary.