Contracting Out a Mixed Bag

The year also produced a mixed bag of results on an issue of long-running conflict between the White House on one side and federal unions and many Democrats in Congress on the other, contracting out. In recent years numerous provisions were enacted, over the administration’s objections, to limit cost comparison studies and to give in-house employees greater rights—provisions that in many cases reversed policy decisions the administration made in overhauling OMB Circular A-76 in 2003. Congress this year moved in appropriations bills to impose a one-year moratorium on new studies government-wide and a three-year moratorium at DoD, which does the bulk of such studies, along with imposing new reporting requirements, new deadlines and other restrictions. However, all of those provisions were dropped as part of the temporary government funding measure that carries into March; the only change that survived, as part of a separate DoD authorization bill, requires the executive branch to produce a new definition of what type of work is inherently governmental.