The Competitive Sourcing Program is an initiative under the President's Management Agenda which sets up a process of competition between the public and private sectors on work that is commercial in nature but currently performed by government employees. The NPS will support the President's agenda while minimizing the risk and stress to our workforce by using the Preliminary Planning effort.

The NPS has improved the competitive review process by exercising the full flexibility embodied in the May 2003 revision to OMB Circular A-76 while remaining consistent with the President’s Management Agenda. This flexibility allows the NPS to conduct preliminary planning with the assistance of outside industry expertise to ensure that we have the best, most efficient organization (MEO) and operations in place.

The Preliminary Planning effort takes a very detailed look at functional areas (e.g., archeology, maintenance work, curation, etc.) before a decision is made to continue the formal process of Competitive Review. During this preliminary planning effort, we:
• examine the work performed to determine which job series most logically belong together to perform the required work;
• conduct a market analysis to determine what the cost is within private industry to do that work;
• develop a performance work statement of what needs to be accomplished; and
• take the current organization and reshape it into the resulting MEO.
Once this process is accomplished, the results are provided to the NPS Director for a decision to implement the MEO or proceed with the formal competitive review process. Only after a decision to proceed with the formal competitive review process does industry get the opportunity to compete on the work done by the NPS personnel.