David Thomas: “The Clinton Administration did the first inventory and found that more than 850,000 Federal employees out of 1.8 million…”

“The Clinton Administration did the first inventory and found that more than 850,000 Federal employees out of 1.8 million were in jobs that were commercial in nature. The federal government was paying individuals to do jobs that could also be found in the Yellow Pages. Unfortunately, the Clinton Administration did not follow up. These positions should have been reviewed and solutions explored to return these jobs to where they belonged--the private sector. Unfortunately, there were no follow up reviews. It was only when George W. Bush was elected that a program was implemented to actually do the reviews of these 850,000 positions. Competitive sourcing could then be employed to see if it would be more effective and accountable to have these activities performed by the private sector. Contrary to misinformation by some of our colleagues and labor unions, competitive sourcing is not about eliminating or privatizing federal workers. Simply put, competitive sourcing, which relies on the A-76 Circular for public-private competitions, is a useful tool that allows federal agencies to evaluate whether or not commercial functions should be performed in the future by federal employees or the private sector. As it is now, many federal employees who work in commercial functions are stuck in inefficient bureaucracies performing activities that are non-inherently governmental. The competitive sourcing process is good government.”