Bush Plan To Contract Federal Jobs Falls Short / Scope and Savings Have Not Met Goals
Source: By Christopher Lee, Washington Post, Friday, April 25, 2008
........ The public-private face-off at West Point illustrates just what Bush envisioned when he proposed the "competitive sourcing" initiative in 2001 as part of his management agenda. It turned on a simple idea: Force federal employees to compete for their jobs against private contractors and costs will decrease, even if the work ultimately stays in-house. But as Bush's presidency winds down, the program's critics say it has had disappointing results and shaken morale among the federal government's 1.8 million civil servants. Private contractors have grown increasingly reluctant to participate in the competitions, which federal employees have won 83 percent of the time.
............. "The competitive sourcing initiative did little to improve management, produced a ton of worthless paper, demoralized thousands of workers and cost a bundle, all to prove that federal employees are pretty good after all," said Paul C. Light, a professor of government at New York University's Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.