Performance based contracting versus counting contractor employees

According to a recent summary, the early markup of the FY 2010 National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 2647 for those scoring at home) includes provisions to convert 11,000 contractor positions to DOD civilian personnel positions and will require, if passed,

“DOD to include contractor employee data for service contracts in annual budget documents...” and to “...report on how it plans to achieve its insourcing (using civilian employees for new work or work that is currently being performed by contractors) goals.”

This seems to go against the goals of performance based service procurements where the desired results were all that was important. Who cared how many people the contractor used (except installation commanders that needed to know how many people needed access to the post and its related services)? If the end result of their work was the correct and desirable one, that was the entire issue and the contractor got paid.

So now we need to count contractor employees for all our service contracts. That leaves us with two other questions. First, is the Contractor Manpower Report acceptable? Second, do they mean bodies (including part time employees) or do they want to count full time equivalents (FTEs)? For those services that do not need a full time employee year ‘round, do we need to hire one?

We will have to stay tuned.