First Federal Employee Ownership Privatization Initiative

The Clinton administration promised to give a high priority to privatizing government operations through employee ownership. The first such effort is now underway for the Office of Federal Investigations (OFI) in the Office of Personnel Management. The OFI performs personnel background checks for federal agencies.

If the office is privatized to employees, it could employ several hundred people and could compete for doing background checks for the private sector as well. Employees at the office are not enthused about being privatized, but seem to prefer to do it through employee ownership if there is no other choice.