A House caucus focused on increasing the government’s use of contractors will launch next week, the Business Coalition for Fair Competition (BCFC) announced today. Members of the “Yellow Pages” Caucus believe that if the government is performing a service that is being done by private businesses in the Yellow Pages, then the service should be subject to market competition, the BCFC said in an email and Facebook announcement. “This caucus is being created by a group of like-minded members of Congress to create a forum to work together to lower the cost of government, make it more efficient and get a better idea of what government and…
Browsing: insourcing
Stan Soloway and Alan Chvotkin over at the Professional Services Council expressed their displeasure with Defense Department insourcing efforts in a May letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Recent congressional attention to the issue hasn’t done much to assuage their concerns. In a conference call with reporters this morning to discuss the Senate and House versions of the 2011 defense authorization bill, Soloway and Chvotkin said PSC supports an amendment by Rep. Jim Langevin that would prohibit DoD from setting quotas for its insourcing efforts. However, two other amendments passed by the House seem to conflict with the Langevin amendment,…
The Office of Personnel Management tends to look askance at agencies’ requests for direct hire authority to fill critical needs. OPM asks for reams of information and has some quite specific guidelines for agencies that want to sidestep the normal federal hiring process. The Homeland Security Department, looking to hire federal employees to fill jobs currently done by contractors as part of the government “insourcing” initiative, is trying to tweak the system a bit in order to fill critical needs, DHS chief human capital officer Jeffrey Neal said yesterday at a congressional hearing. DHS is asking OPM for something it…
Defense Secretary Robert Gates delivered a tough message earlier today for his department’s bureaucracy (not to mention its contractors): The spending spree is over. Read an account of his Kansas speech and some of his planned changes at our sister publication, Military Times, here. And the Washington Post’s article has this interesting detail on contracting: Among Gates’s apparent targets for major cuts are the private contractors the Pentagon has hired in large numbers over the past decade to take on administrative tasks that the military used to handle. The defense secretary estimated that this portion of the Pentagon budget has…
Federal employees worried that their jobs will be outsourced to the private sector can rest easy for another year. The 2011 budget proposal continues a governmentwide moratorium on public-private competitions for federal work. But contractors may face further insourcing under the proposal. While blocking agencies from competing federal work, the budget’s “general provisions” section requires agencies to take a head count of all contractor employees performing services for the government. The so-called “service contract inventory” must also include the name of the vendor, the type of service provided and the cost of that service. Businesses may also see fewer federal…
UPDATE: OMB says the definition of inherently governmental functions is still being worked on. Expect to hear something by the end of the year. The Office of Management and Budget just released two long-awaited procurement reform memos. The first is about increasing competition while reducing risk in contracting. The second is about strategic planning for the civilian agency acquisition workforce. So far no word on a A third piece of expected guidance meant to clarify the definition of inherently governmental functions was not released today as expected [see update above]. That memo will help agencies carry out earlier guidance to…
 Update: AFGE has also sent yours truly this point-by-point refutation of industry’s opposition to the CLEAN UP Act. We told you earlier today about a Republican bill introduced yesterday to promote the outsourcing of commercial work performed by federal employees. Now enter the American Federation of Government Employees, a privatization foe, announcing it has taken “its contracting out reform campaign to the House of Representatives.” In a June 4 news release, union boss John Gage applauded the introduction of Mikulski’s CLEAN UP Act in the House by Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Md. Gage said: The CLEAN UP Act is vital to any serious effort to…
In April, several senate Democrats, led by Maryland’s Barbara Mikulski, introduced a bill to convert some contracted work to federal performance and otherwise prevent the government from competing federal jobs with the private sector. Mikulski’s “CLEAN UP Act” – short for “Correction of Longstanding Errors in Agencies Unsustainable Procurements Act” – drew applause from unions and criticism from industry groups. But now Senate Republicans are getting in on the act with their own bill designed to do the opposite. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., introduced the “Freedom From Government Competition Act” yesterday. The bill mandates federal agencies rely on the private sector for…
Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he will convert 11,000 acquisition contracting jobs to Defense employees and hire 9,000 more government acquisition staff by 2015. He plans to start with 4,100 employees in fiscal 2010, the budget he presented at a news conference today. You can read his full budget speech here.
A provision in the omnibus spending bill could halt public-private job competitions for federal work. The provision introduced by Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., would temporarily suspended public-private competitions for federal employees’ jobs conducted under Office of Management and Budget Circular A-76. Other bill provisions indroduced by the lawmakers would: Require agencies insource work currently performed by contractors and to allow federal employees to perform new work. Require agencies determine the size of their contractor workforces. Prevent agencies from outsourcing functions performed by 10 or fewer employees without holding a competition. The American Federation of Government…