The Office of Management and Budget needs to help agencies
consistently classify positions as governmental or
commercial, identify functional areas for competition and
focus more on outcomes, the General Accounting Office has
said in a report on agency competitive sourcing efforts.
It said that while the six civilian agencies it reviewed
have created a basic infrastructure for their competitive
sourcing programs, those agencies face significant
challenges in achieving their goals.
Agencies have not maintained inventories of government and
commercial positions needed to identify their own positions
for competition, said GAO, nor do they focus on efficiency,
saving money and improving performance in competitive
sourcing efforts. Instead they focus on following Office of
Management and Budget guidance to come up with a certain
number of positions to compete, GAO said, implying that
competitions are often based merely on general grounds.
However, the report also found that many civilian
department-level offices are understaffed for competitive
sourcing, employing just one or two full-time staff to
interpret new laws, implement new OMB guidance, maintain
inventories of compete-positions and activities, and oversee
competitions.
The Federal Acquisition Council is currently identifying
staffing needs to address this challenge, said GAO. Some of
the agencies it reviewed reported funding challenges in
implementing their programs, for which OMB told them to
include a line item for competitive sourcing activities in
their fiscal year 2005 budget requests.