U.S. Representative

By David Saleh Rauf

The chairman of a House oversight subcommittee pledged Tuesday to continue pushing for the Office of Personnel Management to hand over control of USAJobs.gov to a private company.

Office of Personnel Director John Berry's performance in front of the House federal workforce subcommittee apparently did little to soothe concerns among some lawmakers who think the federal government's hiring site would be in better hands with the private sector.

Subcommittee Chairman Dennis Ross (R-Fla.) told POLITICO after Tuesday's hearing examining OPM's history of IT failures that he is still not comfortable with the agency's ability to run the site. He signaled more congressional scrutiny of the USAJobs.gov debacle could be coming and said "we have to definitely consider the outsourcing of this particular function of OPM."

"We have to take it a step further," he said. "You're looking at an entity in the private sector that is in a competitive environment with resources well beyond what OPM has, with technology well beyond what OPM has and expertise well beyond what OPM has. That is something that applicants for federal employment deserve."

Meanwhile, OPM's internal watchdog plans to launch two formal audits of the website relaunch.

Patrick McFarland, the inspector general for OPM, told the panel his office is already in the planning phase for the first audit, which will examine IT security. A second audit will follow and is supposed to focus on "investment management, requirements managements, testing, project oversight and risk management."

Lawmakers pressed McFarland for his insight into what went wrong with the USAJobs system and whether the previous contract holder, Monster.com, was better suited to run the site.

McFarland had no answers on those points, but said OPM never indicated it had any problems with its previous contract under Monster. Monster officials testifying before the committee also said OPM never raised any concerns before terminating the contract.

But Berry, who fielded questions from lawmakers for roughly an hour, said a pair of cyberattacks against Monster in 2007 and 2009 played a major role in the decision to bring the system under government control.

One of the Monster breaches resulted in some 146,000 federal résumés being compromised, lawmakers said. And Berry called protecting the info in those résumés a "core government responsibility" that OPM can handle better than any private firm.

That argument fell flat with Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.), who hammered Berry and challenged the agency chief's assertion that USAJobs.gov is a "hybrid" system because Microsoft provides servers.

"The federal government has a hard time keeping secrets, just look at WikiLeaks," he said. "I don't think that the people feel that secure knowing that you're holding all the information."

Mack also endorsed the idea of outsourcing the website to the private sector, which he said has more incentive to provide a state-of-the-art IT system.

"You think you're under pressure, how about free market pressure," Mack said. "If these companies don't perform they go out of business. If you don't perform, you come to Washington and ask for more money and try to make changes."

Berry used the hearing to issue a second public apology for the bungled USAJobs relaunch. He defended the site's progress over the last couple of weeks, citing various data points that he said show clear progress.

"Pick any metric you want," he said. "They're all moving in the right direction."

Democrats on the panel were less aggressive in their criticism on OPM's handling of the website. But they weren't sympathetic either.

Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, said it's still too early to determine if the USAJobs fiasco is indicative of larger "systemic" problems with the agency's ability to handle complex IT systems.

"But the early indications are not good," he said. "I have a bit more patience than some of my colleagues but not much more."

And Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said he's still not sure whether the private sector would handle the USAJobs site better and cheaper.

"If the site continues to perform below par and OPM does not realize the savings it projected, then it could be reasonable to outsource it in whole or part," he said in a statement. "OPM clearly needs to demonstrate the cost savings that it expects from insourcing."