The Foreign Service Journal, April 2004

and a simple reluctance to obey presidential directives. Of all the competitive contracting done since the effort began in the 1950s, as much as 98 percent of it has been done by DOD. More recently, other agencies, namely Agriculture, Interior, Health and Human Services, Education, Treasury and the Veterans Administration, have begun to move ahead with the initiative. Both State and USAID compile and maintain the mandatory FAIR Act Inventory, but neither has an active A-76 program. In the case of USAID only a few positions have been found eligible for contracting out, but the agency has no plans to subject any of them to the formal A-76 competi- tion process. Indeed, since the inauguration of the pres- ident’s program in 2001, according to USAID staff, the agency has competed none of its in-house positions — many of which have been on the FAIR Act inventory list since the Clinton administration — and has no plans to do any formal competitions in the future. However, in the recent past USAID may have gone directly to outsourcing without a formal study, a privilege permitted agencies for operations with fewer than 10 FTE. (According to the A-76 guide- lines, a complete cost-accounting of the work of a government position or section — a formal study — is required before that work can be put up for competitive bidding.) Nonetheless, USAID’s most recent FAIR Act invento- ry for 2002 does offer insight into how an agency chooses to categorize its many staff positions, and how it then responds to the opportunities identified. The first process involved in preparing the FAIR list requires the agency to F O C U S A P R I L 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 43 The fact is that the existing government work force wins about half of the competitions conducted under the A-76 guidelines. T HE R EMINGTON