FedWeek - August 11, 2004
President Bush has signed the fiscal 2005 appropriations bill (PL 108-287) for the Defense Department that contains language limiting that agency’s ability to use the streamlined procedures for considering federal jobs for contractor performance that the administration issued last year. The measure would require that for any functions employing more than 10 employees, DoD would have to allow the in-house workers to reorganize into a “most efficient organization” for comparison with private sector bids. It also would allow contracting-out only if the private sector bid shows a saving of at least 10 percent or $10 million. That effectively would bar the use of other considerations that would be allowed by the revisions to last year’s revisions to Office of Management and Budget Circular A-76. Similar restrictions were imposed on DoD last year for fiscal 2004 and are pending in the fiscal 2005 appropriations bills for several other agencies. Even more severe restrictions would be placed on DoD contracting-out activities under an authorization bill (HR-4200) now in a House-Senate conference. The administration has issued statements opposing restrictions on its competitive sourcing activities but the President signed the DoD appropriations bill nonetheless.