**GAO-10-744T**                      Published: May 20, 2010. Publicly Released: May 20, 2010.                  

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## Highlights

Federal agencies face a complicated set of decisions in finding the right mix of government and contractor personnel to conduct their missions. While contractors, when properly used, can play an important role in helping agencies accomplish their missions, GAO has found that agencies face challenges with increased reliance on contractors to perform core agency missions. Congress and the Executive branch also have expressed concern as to whether federal agencies have become over-reliant on contractors and have appropriately outsourced services. A March 2009 Presidential memorandum tasked the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to take several actions in response to this concern. Based on GAO's prior work, this statement discusses (1) civilian agencies' development and implementation of guidelines to consider whether contracted functions should be brought in-house --a process known as insourcing; (2) OMB's proposed policy on work reserved for federal employees; (3) challenges agencies face in managing the federal workforce; and (4) key tools available for insourcing and related efforts.

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## Topics

Worker and Family Assistance

Agency evaluationAgency missionsBest practicesCivilian employeesContract administrationContract performanceContractor personnelContractorsExecutive agenciesFederal agenciesFederal employeesGovernment contractsHuman capitalInternal controlsLessons learnedSource selectionStaff utilizationStrategic planning