Competitive Sourcing Policy: More Sail than Rudder
Public Contract Law Journal, Vol. 33, p. 263-297, 2004
36 Pages Posted: 28 Jan 2004 Last revised: 29 May 2012
Date Written: May 29, 2012
Abstract
This essay predicts that the Bush administration's competitive sourcing initiative will fail. Granted, the number of government employees will continue to shrink, while the number of contractor personnel serving the Government will methodically increase. But the Government's unwillingness to appreciate the policy's costs leads to the corresponding failure to identify, obtain, and invest appropriate resources needed to properly effectuate the policy. The Government simply lacks sufficient qualified acquisition, contract management, and quality control personnel to handle the outsourcing burden. Because the Government is ill-positioned to successfully out-source in a manner that generates higher quality services, lower prices, greater efficiency, or, ultimately, better government, an aggressive outsourcing policy will further expose long-standing problems in service contracting, including poor planning, inadequately defined requirements, insufficient price evaluation, and lax oversight of contractor performance. All of which lead to disquieting expectations for the Government's future.
Keywords: public procurement, outsourcing, privatization, government contract law
JEL Classification: L33, H57, K23, H42
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation