Article on costs of government outsourcing

[Nataqua]

This is happening at my place of employment and it's pretty devastating to the affected people, all of whom are long-term career employees.

snip
You might think that privatizing federal jobs is one thing the Bush administration, in its zeal for shrinking government, would get right. Think again.

According to a recent report by a House appropriations subcommittee, the U.S. Forest Service spent more than $23 million in fiscal 2002 and 2003 on an outsourcing program that eliminated exactly 16 maintenance jobs. Program managers also claimed to have "saved" taxpayers a grand total of $5 million -- all of it by hiring a private company to run a computer help desk.

This is hardly the only picture of failure and foolishness resulting from the president's Competitive Sourcing Initiative (CSI), which requires all federal agencies to accelerate their cost-benefit studies, called "competitions," on jobs that have been deemed "commercial," or appropriate for private-sector contracts. Indeed, the White House Office of Management and Budget's own figures for all CSI competitions undertaken in fiscal 2003 -- at a cost of $88 million -- show that public employees proved to be better and cheaper than private contractors in nine cases out of 10.

More at...

http://www.startribune.com/stories/561/4867160.html