Contracting Changes Also Coming

By signing the Transportation-Treasury appropriations bill containing the raise, President Bush also agreed to several changes that will scale back revisions his administration made in 2003 to Circular A-76, the contracting-out guidance. The measure specifies that for functions employing 10 or more federal employees, the in-house bid must be based on a “most efficient organization” and contracts can be awarded only if the contractor would save at least 10 percent or $10 million. Those provisions, which some in Congress have been seeking to enact since the 2003 changes, largely undercut the administration’s attempts to speed up the process and allow decisions on factors other than cost. The White House has accepted similar restrictions for the Defense Department for the last several years but until now had successfully resisted such changes at other agencies.