RD170 - Biennial Report on the Competitive Government Act


Executive Summary:
[This report was replaced on 10/12/05.]

The Governor and his administration remain committed to serving the needs of Virginia's citizens through a state government that provides services in the most efficient and effective manner possible. Executive Order 5 established the Governor's Commission on Efficiency and Effectiveness on January 15, 2002, within three days of his inauguration. The administration has conducted many initiatives and implemented several enterprise wide business function re-engineering projects that are achieving increased efficiencies and cost reductions. All have included public-private partnerships and outsourcing to private entities in accordance with the Virginia Public Procurement Act.

The Commonwealth of Virginia delivers its services in a variety of ways, including state employees, outsourcing, public-private partnerships, or a combination of these. House Bill 1043defined state employees as all persons employed by the Commonwealth to provide services, including both salaried and wage employees, and all persons engaged to perform work for or to provide services to the Commonwealth. This report reflects the delivery of services by the Executive Department of state government for fiscal year 2005.

In implementing the provisions of this legislation, the Governor directed the Secretaries of Administration, Finance, and Technology to (i) develop a methodology for updating the inventory of commercial activities previously developed by the Commonwealth Competition Council; (ii) provide guidance in determining functions that should be performed by state employees because they are inherently governmental in nature, and those that may be suitable for cost comparison analyses; (iii) determine which commercial activities are suitable for consideration for outsourcing at the agency level and which should be the subject of enterprise-wide approaches; (iv) provide guidance to agencies and institutions in making realistic and fair cost comparisons for contracting with the private sector; and (v) recommend such other actions as may be necessary and appropriate to procure the services, and develop the required reports.

In addition, in keeping with the requirements of the legislation, the Governor identified the following three enterprise wide initiatives for 2005: fleet operations and maintenance, seat of government mail operations and services, and real estate operations and services.

The information presented expands upon the 205 commercial activities identified in the inventory compiled by the Commonwealth Competition Council and includes all activities of the Executive Department of state government. The former commercial activity topics will now be identified as service areas. This conforms to the naming structure for the state budget.

During the 2005 fiscal year, there were in excess of 650 services being provided for Virginia's citizens by the Executive Department. Removing the 143 services that are considered pass-through grants, there are 526 services that contain some form of commercial activities. Efforts are underway to determine which of these services, or portions of these services, are considered inherently governmental, meaning that only the state workforce should deliver the service. The General Assembly and Governor have authorized over 107,000 classified 'employees in the Executive Department to provide its services. Recognizing that in many cases there is need to supplement the Executive Department workforce, over 33,000 individuals have been employed by the state agencies and institutions as wage employees during the 2005 fiscal year (excluding the eight decentralized colleges and universities). In addition, the Commonwealth spent in excess of $7 billion in contractual services.

Details on the analyses done to develop the list of services and the delivery mechanisms for the Executive Department are reflected on the attached five reports:

Report 1: Delineates the services of the Executive Department of state government that contain some form of commercial activities. This is a more comprehensive listing of services provided than in the 1999 inventory. Once the decision is made to study the service in depth and the outcome is known and implemented, it is intended that the activity will be moved to a completed list of services. As services are studied, the inherently governmental aspects of each will be identified and moved to a list of inherently governmental services. These two additional lists will be included in the information available on the web.

Report 2: Lists the pass-through grant funding services which have been removed from the activities of state government identified in Report 1.

Report 3: Arrays expenditures in salaried and wage information for the 2005 fiscal year.

Report 4: Arrays salaried and wage employment statistics and contractual services for the 2005 fiscal year. It is important to note that the employee statistics do not include the decentralized colleges and universities, the Economic Development Partnership, and the Virginia Tourism Authority.

Report 5: Reflects expenditures in contractual services for the 2005 fiscal year.

This information will be available on the web sites of the Department of Planning and Budget, http://www.dpb.virginia.gov and the Commonwealth Competition Council at http://www.egovcompetition.com.