States have contracted out social services for decades. Federally funded social service programs generally support the financial, employment, and other public assistance needs of children and families. In recent years, the amount of contracting for state-administered social services has increased and the nature of privatization has changed significantly. State governments have increased their spending on privatized services, and strong support from state political leaders and high-level program managers has helped prompt new privatization initiatives. Recent changes in social service privatization have also been spurred by changes in federal legislation. As a result of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (P.L. 104-193), for example, states are now permitted under TANF to privatize eligibility determinations, a function traditionally performed by state governments. To help ensure program accountability in federally funded social service programs, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has responsibility for overseeing state performance. With the fundamental changes in the magnitude and nature of social service privatization, states continue to face new challenges—utilizing competitive markets, developing performance-based contracts, and enhancing program accountability—that program officials, contracting experts, and others believe warrant continued focus. When contracting for social services, states often seek to achieve fair and open competition among those who submit contract proposals. To protect opportunities for all qualified contractors to compete openly and fairly for government business, states may, among other things, limit certain activities of former government employees seeking employment with private organizations and prohibit financial, programmatic, and other conflicts of interest. Studies have specified that state ethics policies should apply to a broad range of public employees, including legislators, political appointees, program managers, and others involved in the contracting process, while minimizing to the extent possible the limits placed on the discretion of state employees to choose public or private employment. State governments and social service contractors often work in tandem to provide diverse program services. In response to state RFPs, contractors submit proposals they believe address state needs. Contractors recruit and hire qualified specialists to maximize their competitive positions, while at the same time government employees exercise their prerogatives in an open labor market to pursue private sector careers where they can apply their talents in return for pay and benefits commensurate with their experience and expertise. In this way, social service contractors make use of a flexible labor pool in their attempts to meet state service needs. While these practices may benefit states and social service contractors, from another perspective, the movement of government employees to work for contractors may also reduce the capacity of states to manage public services and may confer unfair advantages to certain offerors. Although many child support enforcement and TANF senior program managers left their positions from 1993 to 1998, about a quarter of them left to take positions with social service contractors. State employees generally joined contractors to increase their income. The states we examined were able to fill vacancies created by the loss of child support enforcement and TANF program managers and other staff with minimal disruption. However, Texas child support enforcement officials expressed concern over their losses in mid-level information technology (IT) personnel and related impacts on program services. Nationally, many senior program directors in both the child support enforcement and TANF programs left their positions in the last 5 years. About a quarter of these officials took positions with social service contractors. According to federal and state program officials, of the 41 states in which the child support enforcement director left that position, 11 directors went to work for social service contractors. Similarly, of the senior TANF program managers who left their positions in 40 states, 10 joined the staffs of social service contractors. According to state program officials we interviewed, senior program directors most often leave their jobs to retire, fill other government positions, or respond to changes in a state’s administration. Contractors told us that they recruit more from state child support enforcement programs than from TANF-supported programs. According to contractor officials, child support enforcement demands a high degree of technical expertise, particularly with respect to state information systems. Through such hiring practices, contractors believe they are in a better position to meet state program needs. State officials noted that personnel who leave the government for social service contractors generally do so to improve their salaries and benefits. Benefits such as stock option and profit-sharing plans offered by some companies are appealing and often critical to employees in weighing a decision to leave public service for private sector careers. Although pay and benefit considerations were often cited as the leading reasons state personnel left their positions for the private sector, we also found one instance in which state law resulted in state employees leaving their government jobs to become private sector employees. In 1995, Maryland’s legislature required two locations—Baltimore City and Queen Anne’s County—to privatize all child support enforcement services. The legislation also required that the selected contractor offer employment to state employees affected by the privatization. Of the over 300 employees who were affected, 213 accepted employment with the selected contractor, while many of the remaining employees retired or accepted jobs elsewhere. Some state officials we interviewed reported that they experienced limited impacts on program management after losing program management staff. We were told that the loss of senior officials in their states caused minimal disruption to the administration of the child support enforcement and TANF programs. These officials also reported that when they lost middle management and staff-level state employees to contractors, such losses did not cause disruption to program administration, as agencies were able to train new employees. Child support enforcement officials in Texas said that about 80 percent of their IT personnel, such as systems analysts and programmers, left state government jobs to join various firms that contract with the child support enforcement program and other program areas. The director of Texas’ child support enforcement program indicated that the movement of IT personnel to the private sector has often been driven by private sector salaries that are up to about 40 percent higher than salaries for comparable government positions. The loss of these employees resulted in longer-term program impacts than did the loss of senior program managers in other states. In those instances when Texas could not replace the IT personnel it had lost, state officials said they had to contract for IT services at a cost higher than would have been incurred if such services had been performed by government employees. According to state child support enforcement program officials, the net loss of IT personnel resulted in poor or reduced service to the public, because without timely upgrades to automated systems, program personnel could not easily access case information, update files, or respond to customer inquiries. Among the proposals we reviewed, we found that child support enforcement and TANF-related proposals listing former state employees from any state as key personnel resulted in contract awards about as frequently as did proposals that did not list such employees. Of the 59 child support enforcement and TANF contract proposals submitted in the four states we reviewed, 34 listed at least one former state employee as key contract personnel. Twenty-five of these proposals did not list any former state employees as key contract personnel. Those proposals that did not list former state employees as key personnel were awarded contracts about as often as those proposals that did. Slightly under two-thirds of the proposals from each group, that is, those listing state employees and those not, resulted in contracts being awarded. Thirty-eight percent of the proposals that listed former state employees, and 36 percent of those that did not, did not result in contract awards. When we examined the child support enforcement and TANF programs separately, we still found that, in each program, proposals not listing former state employees resulted in contract awards about as often as proposals listing such employees. These comparisons are summarized in figure 1. Even when contractors listed former state employees as key personnel from the state offering the contract, the difference in the proportion of contracts awarded among these proposals and the proportion awarded among proposals not listing such employees was not statistically significant. Of the 18 proposals that listed employees from the same state that offered the contract, 14 resulted in contract awards. By comparison, of the 41 proposals that did not list such employees, 25 resulted in contract awards. Many states, in an effort to help ensure open and fair competition among contractors, have established ethics policies. However, more than one-third of the states lack one or more of the key ethics provisions, such as those prohibiting certain postemployment activities and conflicts of interest, which ABA and other organizations recommend as critical to state efforts aimed at protecting competitive contracting. In addition, the states we examined also differ widely in their approaches to enforce ethics policies. To address the disparities in state ethics policies, model laws prepared by organizations such as ABA offer frameworks that states can use to strengthen their ethics policies. Also, the Medicaid statute may offer a model in that it requires participating states to have in place conflict-of-interest provisions applicable to those involved in the program equivalent to federal conflict-of-interest requirements. Many state ethics policies aimed at helping ensure open and fair contracting have shortcomings relative to the provisions widely recommended for protecting the integrity of the competitive contracting process. In some states, ethics provisions apply only to a limited number of state employees, leaving others who may be involved in the contracting process uncovered by them. In other states, ethics provisions differ as to the type of activity prohibited and the period of time covered by the prohibition. Moreover, more than one-third of the states lack one or more ethics provisions, such as restrictions against certain employment activities by former state employees and prohibitions intended to deter the misuse of public office for private gain. The weaknesses in state ethics policies are demonstrated in the examples summarized here: State ethics provisions applicable to a limited number of employees. Oregon has provisions restricting the employment activities of former state employees. However, these restrictions apply only to a limited group of former state employees who held positions specifically listed in the law and not to the full range of positions that may involve contracting. (Or. Rev. Stat. 244.045 (1997)) State postemployment restrictions have gaps.