The Forest Service’s mission includes sustaining the nation’s forests and grasslands, managing the productivity of those lands for the benefit of citizens, conserving open space, enhancing outdoor recreation opportunities, and conducting research and development. To help fulfill its mission, the Forest Service devotes considerable resources to suppressing wildfires. To coordinate the firefighting efforts of the Forest Service and other federal land management agencies, the interagency National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) was established. This group adopted an interagency incident command system (ICS) and firefighting standards for responding to wildland fires. Federal employees in the land management agencies assume specific roles within the ICS, a command structure used at all levels of government and organized around five primary functional areas: command, operations, planning, logistics, and finance and administration. There are about 80,000 federal employees and retirees who mobilize to assist state and local organizations to fight fires and respond to national emergencies as needed. These employees must receive standardized training and be certified in specific ICS duties (e.g., communications, aircraft management, and dispatch) before being available to respond to wildfires and other emergencies. Approximately 30,000 permanent Forest Service employees are ICS- certified, with 10,000 to 12,000 of these employees holding fire-related positions. The remaining 18,000 to 20,000 employees are part of the “Forest Service militia.” These are employees who are ICS-certified to fight fires but for whom the militia duty is a volunteer, collateral duty. These militia members will often leave their primary work duties and travel to the incident scene to provide assistance. A militia member may typically spend between 1 to 3 weeks each year fighting wildfires and responding to emergency situations. Militia teams that assisted the Federal Emergency Management Agency following Hurricane Katrina logged as many as 60 to 90 days of duty. As part of their militia duties, Forest Service employees often perform activities related to their regular work duties. For example, when responding to a wildfire, an employee whose regular duties involve IT support might provide this support at the scene of the fire. Employees may also perform militia duties that are unrelated to their regular work duties. For example, an IT employee who is ICS-certified in logistics might be responsible for providing food, supplies, and equipment at the scene of a fire. The federal government has had a long-standing acquisition policy that, when permissible and cost-effective, agencies are to rely on the private sector to perform activities that are regularly performed in the commercial marketplace, such as IT, maintenance and property management, and logistics. This policy was laid out in OMB’s 1966 Circular No. A-76, which was last revised in 2003. The circular’s stated goal is to obtain maximum value for taxpayers’ dollars by taking advantage of competitive forces. This policy, described in the 2001 President’s Management Agenda as competitive sourcing, is one of five governmentwide initiatives intended to improve the federal government’s management and performance so that resources entrusted to the federal government are well managed and used wisely. In addition, the circular provides agency management with a structured process to compare the public and private sector costs of performing an activity and to select the lowest cost provider through competition. This comparison may result in outsourcing federal jobs to the private sector. The first step toward competitive sourcing is identifying work activities that are suitable for competition. The FAIR Act, as implemented by the circular, requires federal agencies to annually inventory all of the activities that federal employees perform—the FAIR Act inventory. For the inventory, activities are classified as inherently governmental or commercial. Specifically: Inherently governmental activities are those activities that are so intimately related to the public interest that they require performance by federal government employees. The circular exempts these activities from competition. Commercial activities are those that are not inherently governmental and could be performed by the private sector. Commercial activities listed in the FAIR Act inventory are subject to the competition process detailed in the circular, unless they are placed in a subcategory of commercial activities that are exempt from competition. Core-commercial activities are those in a subcategory of commercial activities that are identified to be essential, or “core,” to the agency’s mission. The circular allows agencies to exempt these activities from competition with sufficient written justification. To determine whether federal employees or private sector organizations should perform commercial activities, the circular establishes the following three-stage competitive process (referred to as an A-76 competition): A precompetition planning stage that, among other things, determines the scope of the competition. In this stage, the agency determines the commercial activities to be competed and the precompetition cost to perform that activity. It also appoints competition officials who will be in charge of developing, for example, the performance work statement (PWS), which specifies the work to be performed by the winning bidder. In addition, agency officials unaffiliated with the PWS create the MEO, which is generally a smaller, streamlined version of the government organization that is currently doing the work. A competition stage that begins with a public announcement of a competition and ends with the selection of the competition’s winner. During this stage, an agency develops and issues a solicitation, receives offers, and follows a process to select the winning bidder. A postcompetition accountability stage that involves such activities as monitoring and reporting on the winner’s performance, whether that winner is the MEO or a private sector organization. The circular also directs agencies to designate a competitive sourcing official (CSO) with responsibility for implementing the circular who, with certain exceptions, may delegate those responsibilities to other officials in the agency. USDA designated its Chief Financial Officer as its CSO. He and his office, the Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO), provide oversight to USDA and its agencies, including the Forest Service. In 2002, the Forest Service established the Competitive Sourcing Program Office (CSPO) in its headquarters. The CSPO oversees the preparation of the FAIR Act inventory and provides written guidance to employees throughout the agency. In 2003, competitive sourcing responsibilities were further centralized in the CSPO to include oversight of A-76 competitions and postcompetition reporting. Supporting the CSPO are regional, national forest, and district office staffs. OMB requires that agencies develop a strategic plan—known as a Green Plan—for implementing their competitive sourcing programs. OMB’s guidance on how to develop a Green Plan describes it as a long-range plan to ensure that competitive sourcing is a carefully and regularly considered option for improving the cost-effectiveness and quality of an agency’s commercial activities. According to the guidance, agencies should include in the plan a description of how they are going to take timely and effective advantage of competition, a list of activities being announced for competition, an overview of their decision-making process, and a strategy to limit potential constraints on competition. The guidance also requires that agencies update their plans as organizational conditions change. To comply, the Forest Service has periodically submitted its Green Plan to USDA for incorporation into the department-level Green Plan, which is then presented to OMB for approval. Since December 2003, the Forest Service has submitted at least five versions of its Green Plan to USDA. The Forest Service’s most recent OMB-approved Green Plan was issued in December 2005 and covers fiscal years 2005 through 2009. In its Green Plan, the Forest Service proposes conducting a series of competitive sourcing feasibility studies before holding A-76 competitions. Feasibility studies enable an agency to first examine the practicality of subjecting activities to a competition before committing to one. OMB recognizes the value of this step and has recommended in its guidance that agencies conduct feasibility studies to streamline the competitive sourcing process. The OCFO issued guidance in May 2004 on conducting feasibility studies that outlined USDA agencies’ responsibilities and specific procedures to be followed during a feasibility study. The Forest Service typically assembles a team of six to eight employees to conduct a feasibility study. Each study usually involves one or more requests for data from field offices, which may require information from several hundred Forest Service employees. In addition to recommending whether to proceed with an A-76 competition, a Forest Service feasibility study can make other recommendations, such as to reorganize the way in which the Forest Service performs the activity being studied without engaging in an A-76 competition. When the feasibility study is completed, the Chief of the Forest Service reviews the study team’s report and recommendations and decides on the best course of action, which may or may not be an A-76 competition. In fiscal years 2004 through 2006, the Forest Service completed three A-76 competitions (see table 1). The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2004, requires executive agencies, such as USDA, to report to Congress on their competitive sourcing activities for the prior fiscal year, including the total number of competitions announced and completed; the incremental costs directly attributable to conducting these competitions; and the total savings actually, or estimated to be, derived from such competitions. As an agency within USDA, the Forest Service must report this information to USDA for inclusion in USDA’s report to Congress. Congress also limited the Forest Service’s funds available for “competitive sourcing studies and related activities” in each year’s appropriations act for fiscal years 2004 through 2007, because of concerns about how the Forest Service had implemented its competitive sourcing initiative. Specifically, the spending limitations were $5 million (fiscal year 2004), $2 million (fiscal year 2005), $3 million (fiscal year 2006), and $3 million (fiscal year 2007). The Forest Service lacks a realistic strategic plan and adequate guidance to help ensure that it can effectively and efficiently implement its competitive sourcing program. Specifically, the Forest Service’s Green Plan proposes to subject all commercial activities to feasibility studies without identifying the personnel and funding resources that are likely to be available for the studies.