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Washington, D.C.— The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) required latest FAIR Act submissions by federal agencies to include for the first time a listing of federal jobs considered “inherently governmental.” National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen M. Kelley said while the administration is pushing ahead with its plans to create a “one-stop shop” for contracting out federal jobs, taxpayers would be better served if OMB would compile a list of all the government work currently done by private sector contractors.

“The work done by federal employees is well documented. The costs are known. The results are measured. What is not known is the true size and cost of the contractor work force, and the quality of the work being done. There are no measures in place. There is no list. All there is is the stated goal of the administration to open to the private sector some 425,000 federal jobs,” said Kelley.

The union leader said there is much American taxpayers don’t know about the failures of federal government contracting out.

“When the media reported last year that Mellon Bank lost or destroyed some 70,000 tax-related documents and payments, there were a lot of eyebrows raised. But what effect did it have? The administration is still pushing its pro-contracting out agenda and the IRS is looking to turn tax collection work over to the private sector,” said Kelley.

In the first of three rounds of upcoming announcements under the 1998 Federal Activities and Inventory Reform (FAIR) Act, OMB has initially identified 75,404 federal positions, which is 31 percent of the 242,843 jobs submitted by agencies thus far in the process. The agencies’ submissions included 167,439 positions identified as “inherently governmental.”

The FAIR Act list is used to guide agencies’ efforts to comply with mandated contracting out quotas established by OMB. In March 2001, OMB directed all federal agencies to directly outsource or open to private-public competition 5 percent of the jobs on their 2000 FAIR Act lists by October 2002. For 2003, the administration directed agencies to act on an additional 10 percent of all jobs deemed “commercial in nature.”

OMB’s use of quotas to drive its contracting out initiative has been the focus of criticism and congressional action. With strong bipartisan support, the House and Senate are both on record in opposition to the use of arbitrary quotas. A provision included in each body’s Treasury-Postal Appropriations bill for FY 2003 would prevent the use of numeric quotas to contract out federal jobs.

Kelley, who served on the congressionally created Commercial Activities Panel (CAP) responsible for making recommendations on contracting out policies and practices, said NTEU will continue to support legislation that will bring full accountability to federal contracting out activities.

A complete overview and analysis of the CAP report and recommendations are available on the NTEU web site (www.nteu.org).