Agencies Told to Count Their Service Contracts Civilian agencies are preparing inventories of their service contracts to determine which work should be insourced and which contracts restructured. The Office of Federal Procurement Policy said the reviews will focus on professional and management services—including acquisition support and policy and program management—and on IT support services. “These functions have been identified by OMB for heightened management consideration, based on concerns of increased risk of losing control of mission and operations,” OFPP administrator Dan Gordon wrote in a Nov. 5 memo. The inventories are required by the 2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act. OFPP told agencies to submit them to Dec. 30 and to complete an analysis of their data by June 30, 2011. Gordon said the analysis should determine “if contract labor is being used in an appropriate and effective manner and if the mix of federal employees and contractors in the agency is effectively balanced.” “A service contract inventory is a tool for assisting an agency in better understanding how contracted services are being used to support mission and operations and whether the contractors’ skills are being utilized in an appropriate manner,” Gordon wrote. “Information about how contract resources are distributed, when taken into consideration as part of a balanced workforce analysis, can help an agency determine if its practices are creating an over-reliance that requires increased contract management or rebalancing to ensure the government is effectively managing risks and getting the best results for the taxpayer.” While Gordon has said civilian agencies are continuing to consider insourcing some work, the future of the Obama administration’s insourcing initiative is in doubt because the incoming Republican majority in the House has focused on cutting spending, possibly including reductions in the federal workforce. The Defense Department has shifted gears and plans to reduce spending on service contracts. Secretary Robert Gates said DOD’s insourcing effort had not produced the anticipated cost savings.