[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 150 (Tuesday, November 19, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Page S11561]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               OMB PROPOSED REVISIONS TO A-76 REGULATIONS

  Mr. AKAKA. Mr. President, I rise today to express my concern over the 
administration's proposed changes to the A-76 process, and its impact 
on the Federal workforce and accountability in contracting decisions. 
The OMB draft rules issued last week raise serious questions over the 
transparency of Federal procurement policies and their effect on 
Federal workers. True competition must be fair to Federal employees, be 
cost-effective, and promote financial transparency and public 
accountability.
  The proposed regulations to A-76 do not represent fair competition. 
The regulations would place Federal workers at a severe disadvantage by 
implementing a competition process where Federal jobs may be eliminated 
at any time, even before a competition is completed. The process would 
place greater emphasis on a contractor's past performance but would 
fail to account for the past performance of in-house employees.
  The OMB proposal could threaten cost-effective procurement policies. 
Under the draft rules, subjective notions of ``best value'' would 
replace objective cost-savings in driving decisions for whether Federal 
work would be performed in-house or by the private sector. Government 
procurement should be based on sound analysis giving the greatest 
weight to cost savings. Decisions to contract out Federal jobs, which 
are based on projections and expectations of performance, risk 
squandering limited public resources on contractor promises to deliver 
more work than is needed, at a higher cost to the public.
  We must ensure that any changes to A-76 are fair. The OMB proposal 
would require agencies to complete competitions within a 12-month 
timeframe. If a Federal agency was unable to finish a competition in 
this time, OMB could simply out-source Federal jobs to a contractor 
without competition. Moreover, the draft regulations would support the 
administration's arbitrary targets for contracting out Federal jobs, 
which I oppose because these targets artificially impose goals for 
contracting out. The proposal would also expand the types of Federal 
jobs that would be subject to public-private competitions, such as 
supervisory positions.
  According to OMB's Office of Federal Procurement Policy, the majority 
of public-private competitions under the proposed rules would be based 
on the current lowest cost standard. There would be a pilot project to 
test the ``best value'' standard on information technology jobs. 
However, the use of the ``best value'' standard approach is 
controversial and subjective. I would hope that this would be limited 
to a genuine pilot project and would allow for a careful, objective 
review of the results.
  There are important steps we can take now to improve financial 
transparency and accountability in Federal contracting while 
strengthening fairness in public-private competitions. In June of this 
year, I was pleased to work with Senator Kennedy to improve financial 
transparency and cost-savings in contracting policies at the Department 
of Defense. Our amendment to the DoD authorization bill failed by only 
one vote. Our amendment would have required cost savings before 
decisions were made to contract out Government functions. It would have 
improved financial transparency by establishing measures for the true 
cost and size of the DoD contractor workforce. Our proposal would have 
promoted equity in public-private competitions by ensuring that Federal 
employees had the opportunity to compete for existing and new DoD work 
and that DoD competed an equitable number of contractor and civilian 
jobs.
  As chairman of the Senate Government Affairs Federal Services 
Subcommittee and Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee, I look forward 
to ensuring that Federal contracting policies are conducted in a manner 
that achieves the best return on the dollar and is fair to our Federal 
workforce. It is my intention to work with my colleagues in the 108th 
Congress to pursue these goals.

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