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Competitive Sourcing Policy: More Sail Than Rudder, Steven L. Schooner

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

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, …