Goddard Space Flight Center

This report reviews the impacts of the Goddard Space Flight Center's decision to contract out the operations and maintenance of its plant facilities. GAO compared the cost of the current mixed work force of civil service and contractor employees who do this work with the cost of (1) an all civil service work force and (2) an all contractor work force. GAO also looked at the benefits realized and the problems encountered by Goddard as a result of the contracting decision and the transitioning of some of the functions from a civil service staff to a contractor staff. Finally, GAO obtained information from Langley Research Center, which has a similar mix of contractor and civil service staff doing operations and maintenance work, to see if any lessons could be learned that might apply to Goddard.

GAO found that: (1) converting all positions to contract would be less costly than reverting to all civil service staffing or continuing the current mixed civil service and contractor staffing; (2) Goddard officials expect the costs of an all contractor work force to be further reduced when the contract is opened to competition in 1994; (3) Goddard officials acknowledged that the current mixed work force is disruptive and has resulted in an inefficient distribution of job skills within the total work force; (4) contracting out provided such advantages as making personnel billets available that could be used to hire scientists and engineers, allowing Goddard to support the small disadvantaged business 8(a) program, and providing added flexibility to respond to future work load fluctuations; (5) Goddard stated that the quality of work had not deteriorated since contracting out maintenance services; (6) problems during the transition included lowered employee morale, loss of productivity, poor attendance, leave abuse, insubordination, and employee conflicts; and (7) the current mixed staffing has resulted in ineffective distribution of job skills within the civil service work force and continuing problems associated with the interface of civil service employees and contractor employees doing similar work.