Report Highlights Employee Concerns

The CRS report, in focusing on the data—or lack of it—on the contracting-out program addressed one of the concerns that employee organizations and some in Congress have raised about the program, the difficulty in assessing what agencies are doing, what happens with contracts and specifically whether in the long run after a contract is granted money is being saved and the work is being performed as well as when federal employees performed it. CRS noted that in recent years Congress has imposed numerous restrictions on the administration’s “competitive sourcing” program—which the White House considers one of its major management initiatives—including government-wide provisions enacted last year allow the in-house side to reorganize for efficiency before being put up for bid and to add appeal rights for the agency side.