# Presentation: 669112

## Opportunities in anEra of Downsizing 

**Tools for Federal Librarians:**
**Outsourcing, **
**Contracing Out, **
**Resource Sharing**

## The Federal Overview

**Kathy Eighmey**
- FEDLINK Network Program Specialist
- Federal Library and Information Center Committee

## Government Believes It Hasa Mandate for Change

- Reduce expenditures
- Balance the budget
- Reduce the deficit
- Perform only *necessary *services
- Enhance the economy

## “Reinvent Government!”

- Reengineer Government operations along a more businesslike, effeciency and effectiveness based model.
- Greater flexibility and ability to change quickly
- Reduce longterm recurring costs
- In other words:
- Reduce federal personnel rolls
- Cut expenditures
- Provide needed services at acceptable levels of quality

## The Current Solution?  Outsource!

- Management tool to meet Government’s goals:
- Reduce expenditures
- Perform necessary services
- Enhance the economy
- Outsourcing
- Is having work performed by non-government personnel
- May be all or part of an operation
- Contracting out is outsourcing a whole operation
- May outsource with the private sector or with another government agency

## Deciding Whether to Outsource

- Federal managers are supposed to be empowered to make sound and justifiable business decisions
- Informal analysis
- Formal analysis
- OMB Circular A-76, *Performance of Comercial Activities (*1983)
*A-76 Supplemental Handbook* (1996)

## OMB Circular A-76 

- Performance of commercial activities as opposed to “inherently governmental activities”
- It is not about libraries and information centers
- It is about managing costs and reducing overhead
- Structured analysis
- To guide an agency outsourcing team
- Through technical and cost factors

## “Inherently Governmental Activities”

- Exempt from outsourcing
- “Activities so intimately related to the public interest as to mandate performance by* federal* employees”
- “Activities that require either:
- The exercise of discretion in applying government authority [interpreting laws], or
- The making of value judgements in decision makingfor the government”
- Do library and information services quailfy for the exemption?

## Inherently Governmental?

- A-76 commercial activities list specifically includes libraries
- Is the library inherently governmental?
- Information service to the agency and/or the public
- Current resources, unique, archival collections
- Remember, it’s the library vs the other activities in the agency
- Is the librarian?

## Federal Librarians

- Why should a librarian be a federal employee?
- You can be flexible as the agency’s environment chanes
- You understand the agency culture
- You provide stability and “corporate memory”
- It’s easier to write a good PD than a good contract!
- You already know how to manage outsourced services

## Outsourcing in the InformationService ContextOutsourcing is already a library manager’s tool

- Collections
- development - approval plans
- consortia
- Technical services
- acquisitions - book jobbers, document delivery  ...
- serials control - orders, check-in, claiming ...
- cataloging - OCLC

- Public services
- ILL operations
- Reference & user support - database vendors
- Administration
- Contracts & accounting - FEDLINK
- Information technology - ILS vendors, web sites

## What About Contracting Out?

- When the agency wants to outsource it all
- Consider the different perspectives
- Management
- Users
- Librarians

## Management’s View

- _Plus_
- Be known as proactive, effective managers
- Reduce federal staff
- Eliminate longterm, recurring costs
- Cut operating costs on their watch
- Would rather “do no harm” if possible
- Might actually get more for less!

- _Minus_
- Personnel fallout
- Disgruntled users
- Cumbersome process
- analysis
- implementation
- administration
- Poor service will detract from mission capabilities

## Users’ View

- _Plus_
- No more gatekeeper
- May benefit from staff realignment

- _Minus_
- No more gatekeeper
- Inferior service

## Librarian’s View

- _Plus_

- _Minus_
- Losing job
- Changing job
- Reduced status
- Different work
- Having to do both the contractor’s work and your own
- Managing contarctors
- Service to customers
- Inferior information
- Personally disappointing users

## Librarian’s View

- _Plus_
- Be known as proactive, effective managers
- advancement
- Opportunity to branch out
- Establish once and for all the value of professional information service
- Agency might actually get more for less

- _Minus_
- Losing job
- Changing job
- Reduced status
- Different work
- Having to do both the contractor’s work and your own
- Managing contarctors
- Service to customers
- Inferior information
- Personally disappointing users

## It’s the Librarian,Not the Library

- Convince management that it should use a precious personnel slot on a librarian (you!)
- More to library work than “information fetching”
- Quantify the benefits of centralization through a library (and the cost of decentralization)
- Quantify the costs of inefficient or failed access to information
- End user net mucking
- Demonstrate that you manage money well
- Demonstrate that your are more flexible than a contractor could ever be

## So They’re/You’re Going to Contract Out

- Informal analysis?
- Do give them input anyway.
- Formal A-76 analysis?
- Do get on the team.
- Don’t claim that the library is inviolate
- Don’t always say “Yes, but...”  Use “Yes, and...”
- Write a good contract
- Do get input from all stakeholders
- Do plan for good contract management
- Don’t reinvent the wheel

## An A-76 Analysis

*Supplemental Handbook* refined the A-76 process
- Contracting decision can be based on management review alone.  Cost comparison not required if:
- Activity has 10 or fewer staff
- Service can be provided commercially ata fair and reasonable price
- Requires “apples to apples” cost comparison
- More stakeholders represented on an A-76 team
- Reduces administrative burdens, but improves accountabilty for making cost effective decisions
- Facilitates employee transitions

## A Good Contract Requires a Good Work Statement

- Recognize that it is hard to do
- Be clear and throrough on requirements and  responsibilities
- Evaluate all costs
- Materials?  Service fee?  Overhead?  Labor?
- Build in measurements
- Performance, mid-term reviews
- Build in flexibilty
- Develop a contingency plan for contractor failure
- Switching contractors, returning in-house

## The Devil’s in the Details

- The  collection
- Acquisitions sources, funding, multi year subscriptions
- Electronic materials
- Consortial responsibilities
- Internet services
- Policies, support, training, policies
- Web site
- Signauture authority, financial responsibility
- Materials budget
- Licensing agreements

## Who Gets the Contract?

- The current library staff
- Other units in your agency
- Other Government agencies
- Interagency agreements (IAGs)
- Interservice Support Agreements (ISSAs)
- Combined Adminstrative Support Units (CASUs)
- Franchising funds
- A commercial provider

## “All Politics Is Local”

- As the resident information professional,
- you have to guide your own agency
- toward the best way
- to get the information services it needs
- to fulfill its mission.