Federal Manager's Daily Report

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.

http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-04-367