Congress Wants To Know What Happened To Commerce Department Report On Outsourcing Of IT Jobs
- 1092 words

Pointed questions regarding the content, length and timing of a Technology Administration (TA) report on the offshoring by U.S. companies of professional-level jobs in high-tech sectors have been put to Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez in a letter signed by three Democratic members of the House Science Committee.

The report, made public in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by Manufacturing & Technology News (MTN, Oct. 12, p. 1), "reads more like an editorial in a popular magazine than an analytical report, and it resembles in no fashion the normal work product that we have come to expect from the Technology Administration at Commerce," charged the Democrats' letter, dated October 11, 2005.

Its signatories - Rep. Bart Gordon of Tennessee, the committee's ranking minority member; Rep. David Wu of Oregon, the ranking minority member of Science Subcommittee on Environment, Technology & Standards; and Rep. Jerry Costello of Illinois - raised questions about the "vetting process" the report went through, alleging that the document represented by Commerce as the "final report" had been "scrubbed of all information or analysis that might be useful for sound decision-making by Congress."

They characterized the version of the report provided to them, "Six-Month Assessment of Workforce Globalization in Certain Knowledge-based Industries," as having "almost no substantive analysis or data" while noting that it was "just 12 pages in length" and had arrived "overdue."

The congressmen stated that although the report "was due to Congress by June 30, 2004," and "carries a date of June 2004" - and although they had written to Gutierrez on August 3, 2005, requesting its release - they were not supplied a copy before the Commerce Secretary responded, in a "letter dated September 15," to their August letter.

"It took more than an additional year, and our letter, to shake this report out of the Department," they told Gutierrez, adding: "We do not understand your reticence to make this report public."

But a letter signed by Commerce Department CFO Otto Wolff and obtained by Manufacturing & Technology News indicates that the TA assessment had already been sent to Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds the Commerce Department, on September 1, 2005, and had been "shared" before that date with a team from the National Academy of Public Administration now studying the impact of offshoring on the U.S. economy and workforce. The TA report was released to MTN on September 8.

The three Science Committee Democrats told Gutierrez in their October 11 letter that their review of the TA report had led them to request additional information as follows:

1. "What were the number of employee hours involved in preparing the report and its subsequent review?

2. "Please identify the Technology Administration personnel who prepared the report.

3. "What was the vetting process for this report? Please provide specific names and offices of those involved in the review and editing of this report and a timeline for when each office signed off on the report through the final clearance of the report for release. This list should include any offices or individuals outside the [Commerce] Department that may have received the report as part of the broader vetting process or to seek outside advice on the report....

4. "In December 2004, two TA analysts made a presentation to the Association for Computing Machinery based on their work [that] is significantly more detailed and comprehensive than the final report you provided to us. Indeed, the December 2004 presentation comes much closer to addressing the mandate originally proposed by Congress [emphasis in original]. That presentation is also consistent with the type of analytical work typically done by the Technology Administration. We would like copies of the original report produced by the Technology Administration analysts as well as all subsequent revisions made by the Department and other Federal officials so that we can understand how the final report came to be scrubbed of all information or analysis that might be useful for sound decision-making by Congress."