DoD wants out of OMB competitive sourcing plan

Compiled by Irene Brown
Editor

The Defense Department does not plan to meet the Office of Management and Budget targets for opening federal jobs to the private sector.

According to a Dec. 26 letter obtained by Government Executive Magazine, Pete Aldridge, undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, told OMB officials that the Pentagon would develop its own strategy for increasing efficiency through its Business Initiatives Council.

"The OMB targets for competitive sourcing limit the Pentagon’s manpower strategy, which is still evolving after the latest Quadrennial Defense Review," the letter stated.

Aldridge told OMB officials that the strategy is now on homeland defense.

"The QDR altered our defense strategy and placed particular emphasis on homeland defense," he explained. "The effect of these actions on our manpower structure is still under review.

"Rather than pursuing narrowly defined A-76 targets, we propose to step back and not confine our approach to only A-76," said Aldridge.

OMB released guidance last year that directed agencies to directly outsource or hold public-private job competitions on 15 percent of all commercial-in-nature federal jobs by the end of 2003 and OMB officials said they still plan to hold DoD to those numbers.

"We have a presidential goal here, and we fully expect Defense to try their best to meet their goals," officials said. "The letter is simply part of the back-and-forth that usually occurs as agencies decide how to comply with new guidance."

The Pentagon plans to examine outsourcing alternatives for all non-core missions, including those performed by military and contractor personnel, Aldridge said.

"Our preferred approach, as discussed in the QDR, involves emphasizing divestitures of non-core missions, regardless of who is performing them, whether military, civilian employee or contract employee," Aldridge explained. "Because gaining overall efficiencies is even more crucial since September 11, we will expand our focus to generating savings, not just taking manpower reductions."

OMB officials said this strategy is in-line with the Bush competitive sourcing plan.

"We certainly want to leave it to the agencies to decide on various reengineerings and so forth if that’s what they believe is in their best interest," officials said.

The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 600,000 federal employees, hailed the Pentagon letter as an indictment of OMB’s competitive sourcing plan.

"I think it proves the point that we’ve been making all along, which is the privatization quotas represent a one-size-fits-all approach that often interferes with agencies’ missions," said AFGE’s legislative representative John Threlkeld. "We think this will embolden agencies to reject the quotas."

But Threlkeld emphasized that Defense should give federal employees the chance to compete for their jobs and not arbitrarily shift work to the private sector.

Both OMB and Defense have argued over other aspects of the competitive sourcing initiative. OMB has yet to release the Pentagon’s Federal Activities and Inventory Reform Act list for 2001, which lists defense jobs that could be performed by private firms. OMB released all other FAIR Act lists last year.

Under OMB’s competitive sourcing plan, defense is required to compete 10 percent of all jobs on its 2001 inventory.

Editor’s note: Some information taken from a Jan. 11 article that appeared on govexec.com.