NBC & the President's Management Agenda
Competitive Sourcing

Competitive Sourcing is a concept that was originated in 1955 with the promulgation of OMB Circular A-76, "Performance of Commercial Activities". This is the traditional method of comparing the value of performing a function inside the government versus performance by the private sector. The key concept is competition enhances the economy and productivity of a function that is to be performed. Competitive sourcing, through the use of formal and informal competition, methods increases the efficiency of performing commercial functions and provides better value to our customers. In 1998, Congress passed another piece of legislation called the Fair Act Inventory Reform Act that brought a greater visibility to competitive sourcing. The Fair Act required that each year the government inventory and post for the public all commercial functions that are being performed by each Federal agency. This has cast a light on commercial functions being performed by the government and caused industry to show a new interest in obtaining some of this work.

One of President Bush's campaign themes was that if elected, he would strive to make government more citizen centered, results oriented, and market based. After being elected, the President followed up on that campaign theme by creating five initiatives to accomplish that goal, one of which was competitive sourcing. Specifically, the President set a goal of studying 50% of all commercial positions across agencies during his administration, with specific targets of studying 5% and 10% of commercial positions inventoried respectively in FY 02 and FY 03. Our leadership has embraced these concepts and made it a central part of our strategic planning process. Secretary Norton, in her memo on competitive sourcing, emphatically stated that unlike the past where competitive sourcing was used at times as a down-sizing tool, the Department of the Interior would use this as one tool to assess how to improve the delivery of our services. The memo also stated that the goal was to improve performance and not to mechanically contract out activities. To strengthen this commitment and to assure a consistent leadership across the Department on competitive sourcing, the Secretary established a central Competitive Sourcing Center. This office quickly provided assistance across the Department as we have all begun to roll out our competitive sourcing programs, and is issuing standard policies and guidelines to keep the program as consistent and fair as possible at all locations.

Following the direction of the President and the Department's leadership, the NBC officially received approval of our competitive sourcing plan in April. The plan was then formally announced via an all hands memorandum from our Director, Timothy G. Vigotsky dated April 24, 2002. I can assure you that careful planning went into identifying the positions that are being studied in FY 02 and 03. The final selection process was made with the Department's mandate in mind that this was a tool to increase the efficiency of the NBC with a goal of improving performance. Every attempt is being made to minimize potential employee impacts as a result of these studies. Meetings have been held to explain the process and new or updated information will continue to be passed on to update all employees on how the implementation of the competitive sourcing program is proceeding. Used properly, this is one of many the tools that the NBC is employing to improve the delivery of our products and services and help us to meet our vision of being a preferred provider of administrative services.

Kirby Hunolt, Assistant Director, Administrative Operations