It’s January. The holidays are over and a newly-elected president is preparing to take the helm.

All across the country civil servants are holding their collective breaths in anticipation of what the change in leadership might mean to current outsourcing trends.

Although the organizations representing federal employees may have cast their support for the other party, all are now planning ways to work with the new administration. And American Federation of Government Employees and Federal Managers Association officials said contracting out government jobs is the top issue on their agendas.

"Passage of the TRAC (Truth and Responsibility in Contracting) Act will be a priority for unions in 2001," an AFGE official said. FMA officials echoed that sentiment stating that passage of the bill would help curb outsourcing.

The TRAC Act, H.R. 3766, introduced by Rep. Albert Wynn, D-Md., last session, would require federal agencies to use cost-benefit analyses to justify current outside contracts. It would also require that government workers be considered for other jobs before their duties are outsourced, offering some much-needed job security for feds. But AFGE and FMA officials both agree that outsourcing and privatizing government jobs will be the toughest issues to tackle with the new administration.

While campaigning, Bush said that, if elected, he would eliminate 40,000 middle management jobs over the next five years and open to competition half of all jobs not defined "inherently governmental." Those subjective projections do not set well with some organizations that represent federal managers.

"We think it’s premature to set a number of managerial positions to eliminate," FMA officials said. "If Bush intends to make government smaller, we hope he’ll use rightsizing rather than downsizing."

One bright spot on the new administration horizon is the pay gap situation.

President George Bush signed the original Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act in 1990. The act created a formula to close the gap over 10 years beginning in 1994.

"The full pay raises needed to close the gap have never been enacted because the Clinton administration has opposed the methodology used to measure the pay gap," FMA officials said. "Hopefully the son will make sure the law his father signed is enacted."

For now federal employees will have to wait and see what the new administration has planned for them. But with all the new president will have to deal with, it may be some time before outsourcing issues even surface.