Last month, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) proposed new "inherently governmental" guidelines, which determine how federal agencies outsource services to private contractors, and asked for feedback from the public on the proposed measures. OMB Watch has collaborated with CREDO Action to spur public participation in the comment process through a petition drive. In addition to advocating for a broader definition of inherently governmental, the comment we suggest for submission targets the outsourcing of certain functions to private security contractors.

An article published Wednesday by ProPublica examines a recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on the government's insurance coverage of overseas contractors. Known as the Defense Base Act (DBA), the program is also the only tool for the government to keep track of contractor deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. As ProPublica notes, the number of contractor deaths over the last six months is staggering, but, because DBA chronically undercounts fatalities, the true total is unknown.

On Wednesday, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) proposed new guidelines for outsourcing government work to contractors. The proposed policy letter attempts to clarify the thorny issue of what exactly constitutes an inherently governmental function, or a task that only a government employee should perform. This guidance is long in coming, as the president's memorandum on contracting directed OMB to release a plan late last summer.

Yesterday morning, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) held a press conference to announce the reintroduction of legislation to phase out the government's use of private security contractors in war zones. The Stop Outsourcing Security Act, which Schakowsky and Sanders originally introduced in 2007, seeks to prevent contractors in war zones from performing "mission critical or emergency essential functions," including security, military and police training, interrogation, and intelligence.