United States Government Publishing Office publisher pbl distributor dst United States Government Accountability Office General Government Division author aut Government Organization text government publication eng GAOREPORTS Legislative Agency Publications gao legislative 2010-08-12 U.S. Government Printing Office 2000-04-14 monographic deposited born digital 36 p. GA 1.13:GGD-00-68 https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GAOREPORTS-GGD-00-68 P0b002ee180386105 f:gg00068 DGPO 2010-08-12 2011-03-24 GAOREPORTS-GGD-00-68 machine generated eng fdlp REPORT GAOREPORTS-GGD-00-68 GGD-00-68 Competitive procurement Privatization Reporting requirements Federal agency reorganization Federal procurement Cost effectiveness analysis OMB Circular A-76 Program Letter Report GGD

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the implementation of the Federal Activities Inventory Reform (FAIR) Act of 1998, focusing on: (1) the overall initial implementation of the FAIR Act; (2) the clarity and understandability of five agencies' FAIR Act inventories; (3) the extent to which these agencies exempted commercial activities from competition; and (4) supplemental information that enhanced the understandability of agencies' inventories.<p/>GAO noted that: (1) 98 executive agencies developed and published inventories of their commercial activities under the FAIR Act's first year of implementation, identifying about 904,000 full-time equivalent employees performing commercial activities; (2) compared to prior efforts to inventory commercial activities, the initial implementation of the FAIR Act increased the number of agencies identifying and reporting on their commercial activities and increased the amount of information about agencies' commercial activities that is publicly available; (3) however, the clarity and understandability of the five FAIR Act inventories GAO reviewed was limited; (4) Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) June 1999 list of function codes used by agencies to characterize the types of commercial activities they perform was incomplete; (5) because OMB allowed agencies to use an expanded list of function codes for their FAIR Act inventories that was not contained in OMB's June 1999 guidance, it may have been more difficult for interested parties who did not have the expanded list to identify the activities agencies are performing; (6) function codes on both the official and expanded lists are vague, and OMB has not defined them; (7) agency officials said that OMB's function codes were not adequate to clearly categorize the commercial activities that their employees perform; (8) the five agencies exempted a range of from 37 to 99 percent of the commercial activities they identified from consideration for competition; (9) interested parties may challenge the omission of a particular activity from, or the inclusion of a particular activity on, an agency's inventory; (10) however, since the FAIR Act does not require that commercial activities be competed, it does not provide for challenges to agencies' decisions to exempt commercial activities listed on the inventories from competition; (11) some of the supplemental information that the five agencies included enhanced the understandability of the FAIR Act inventories; (12) for example, although the FAIR Act does not require agencies to identify their inherently governmental activities, the General Services Administration's (GSA) inventory listed both its commercial and inherently governmental activities; and (13) including this information provided a fuller perspective about the range of activities that GSA performs. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-GGD-00-68/html/GAOREPORTS-GGD-00-68.htm https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-GGD-00-68/pdf/GAOREPORTS-GGD-00-68.pdf GAO/GGD-00-68 https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GAOREPORTS-GGD-00-68 Letter Report GAO/GGD-00-68; Competitive Contracting: The Understandability of FAIR Act; Competitive procurement Privatization Reporting requirements Federal agency reorganization Federal procurement Cost effectiveness analysis OMB Circular A-76 Program Title 5 Section 7103 5 U.S.C. 7103 Title 31 Section 501note 31 U.S.C. 501note Volume 112 Page 2382 112 Stat. 2382 Public Law 105-270