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Washington, D.C.—President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) has been appointed to a General Accounting Office (GAO) panel that will review government practices dealing with the use of outside contractors.

Kelley, who has called for a halt in government contracting out until the true cost and effectiveness of the practice can be determined, said the new GAO Commercial Activities Panel “has the opportunity to bring real reform to an area sorely in need of better management and more accountability.”

NTEU, which is the nation’s largest independent union of federal workers, has long argued that the true size, cost and performance of the contractor workforce is unknown because no one is looking at it in a systematic way.

“There are people who simply assume that the private sector can perform governmental tasks better and at less cost than federal employees,” Kelley said. “Not only is there no proof of that, there is ample evidence that the reverse is true.”

The Commercial Activities Panel was established in last year’s Defense Authorization Bill, which called on GAO to set up a body to “focus on the policies and procedures governing the transfer” of activities from government to private contractors.

Kelley, who urged GAO to make sure the voices of federal employees are heard in any such review, said the panel must not limit itself to examining the transfer of government activities to the private sector, but should focus as well on keeping governmental tasks in the hands of federal employees and bringing back work that could be performed by those in public service but which has been contracted out.

She pointed to a GAO report last fall placing the federal personnel system and its human capital management capabilities on a high-risk list. “If this panel limits its focus to contracting out work,” she said, “then we can be assured that future GAO reports will place human capital management at an even higher risk level.”

Kelley reiterated her support for the statement of Comptroller General David Walker in connection with the GAO report on human capital management that federal employees “are assets to be valued, not costs to be cut.”

NTEU represents some 150,000 employees in 25 agencies and departments.