The Congressional Research Service has said there is a “longstanding problem” in the government’s contracting-out program arising from the “dearth of accurate, reliable, useful, and comprehensive information about agency competitive sourcing activities and outcomes. Information has been made available, or otherwise obtained, on an ad hoc basis.” The agency said that the Federal Activities Inventory Reform (FAIR) Act—which requires agencies to annually compile listings of jobs that are or aren’t subject, in theory at least, to contracting-out review, was an exception to that problem. CRS added, “Over the years, since the inception of Circular A-76, there does not appear to have been any coordinated, government-wide effort to calculate the costs of competitive sourcing to agencies, and to provide them, in turn, with funding for this initiative.”