Reading the latest Office of Management and Budget (OMB) memo on how do do federal privatization is more than wading through and obfuscatory sea of acronyms. The language reminds me of nothing so much as a slave auction. Take, for example, the wording used to mean federal employees who will lose their jobs to private contractors - Federal Activities Inventory Reform (FAIR) Act workforce inventory.
Workers as inventory. Things. Who can care about the fate of mere inventory? Especially when it is all done in a FAIR way.
crossposted from unbossed
On a ratio of deceptive language to pages, this 3-1/2 page memo may be at the top of the confuse-o-meter. These are the terms that are part of the engine of destroying federal jobs and the lives of the workers who held them.
Competitive Sourcing initiative (CSI)
Commercial Services Management (CSM)
business process reengineering (BPR)
Resource Management Offices (RMOs)
Chief Acquisition Officers (CAOs)
Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP)
Federal Activities Inventory Reform (FAIR) Act
Federal Activities Inventory Reform (FAIR) Act workforce inventory
The words remind me of the antisceptic way the Nazis cleansed their territories of undesirables - gays, Roma, Poles, Jews.
Let us not forget: The resources in RMO and the inventory in FAIR are people and their jobs. If you did not understand that this is the issue under discussion, you would think it was some memorandum about widgets or legal pads.
One of its other features is the tradition of renaming things, creating new acronyms, when the old ones fall into disfavor.
For example,
This spring, we renamed the Competitive Sourcing initiative "Commercial Services Management" (CSM) to recognize that agencies improve the operation of their commercial functions using a variety of techniques. This memorandum provides guidance to help agencies as they prepare plans under this initiative.
Add to this obfuscation, language that sounds like that used by a primary school teacher to motivate pupils. What motivates our federal agencies is getting green stickers and submitting "proud-to-be" plans. It's just part of the No Federal Agency Left Behind Act (NFALBA), and a continuance of last year's NFALBA's advances. Yes, federal agencies are motivated to privatize by getting electronic green stickers - or not getting red stickers.
Agencies should submit CSM plans for activities through FY 2009 to their Resource Management Offices (RMOs) by August 29, 2008. Many agencies have already worked with OMB to identify specific BPR projects as part of their competitive sourcing green plans or proud-to-be plans. These agencies should continue to pursue such projects and consult with their RMOs and the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) to determine if additional submissions under this guidance are necessary.
Just a few months ago Clay Johnson issued his competitive sourcing guidelines.
Strategic Management of Human Capital
. Created overarching standards for assessing the integration and institutionalization of strategic human capital management in the Federal Government.
. The Green standard links human capital management to agency human capital outcomes.
. The Yellow standard focuses on integration across human capital management systems and implementation of agency-specific and government-wide measures for assessing the efficiency and effectiveness of strategic human capital management.
Commercial Services Management (formerly Competitive Sourcing)
. Green and yellow standards recognize business process reengineering initiatives to improve internal operations, including those leading to the development of high performing organizations, that use the same disciplined skills associated with competitive sourcing, such as workload measurement, cost analysis, and human capital planning.
Faith-based and Community Initiative
. Green requires agencies to demonstrate progress in expanding the cross-government application of agency-developed "best practice" policies, models and practices.
You can read the HHS "proud to be" memo here. It will help you understand a lot about how our government disfunctions these days.
Yep, that's how our government "runs" these days - stickers, "proud to be" status, getting on by getting rid of people. When you read about federal privatization, the image that should come to mind is slaves tossed overboard when the ship [of state] thinks it's in its interest to do so.
You can read the new memo here.