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The CBO has again raised the prospect of creating more DoD federal employee positions by converting work from military personnel, saying it would save costs, allow the military to focus more closely on warfighting, and “would not lead DoD into uncharted waters because it has previous experience with such transfers.”
In a presentation to an economics group, an official revisited the long-running issue of making such conversions, which CBO has included for years in reports on potential cost savings, but that has been put into practice on only a limited basis in some medical and other occupations.
The latest analysis said that of the 2 million active duty and reserve military positions, 533,000 are classified as “commercial” — with no requirement that the duties be performed by uniformed personnel. Of those, only about 2,000 could be performed by contractors, while only federal employees would be eligible for the rest due to the “inherently governmental” nature of the work.
The military services have uniformed personnel in commercial type jobs for a variety of reasons, it added, including for meeting readiness objectives and complying with laws, executive orders, treaties and international agreements.
“CBO estimates that, if all services used the same mix of the service branch with the smallest percentage of military personnel, about 80,000 active-duty positions could be available for transfer,” it said. Of those, it said, 36,000 would be in the Navy, 24,000 in the Air Force and 14,000 in the Army.