Contracting Issues May Settle Down

One area where there might be less controversy this year than in years past involves the contracting out program, which the Bush administration calls competitive sourcing. Last year Congress finally enacted, after years of back-and-forth with the White House and various forms of compromise, language largely overriding several key changes the administration made in 2003 to OMB Circular A-76, the contracting-out guidance. Under those spending bills, where functions employ 10 or more federal workers, the in-house bid must be based on a “most efficient organization” and a contract can be awarded only if the contractor shows a savings of at least 10 percent or $10 million. Those provisions targeted parts of the 2003 revisions designed to speed up the process and allow contracts to be awarded on factors other than merely cost.