Florida Outsourcing

Charlie Crist has appointed Alex Sink, Jim Zingale and Holly Benson to review Florida's outsourcing contracts.

Crist appointed Sink and three other state officials to the new "council on efficient government," which was created by the 2006 Legislature. The council's first task will be a review of three large and troubled "outsourcing" projects left by Gov. Jeb Bush — the "People First" privatization of personnel services with Convergys, the MyFloridaMarketplace purchasing contract with Accenture and the Project Aspire contract that was until recently handled by BearingPoint.

"The review will serve as a starting point for evaluating how to reap the most value from the system, whether privatization has merit — if it does, we should use it, if it doesn't, we should not," Crist said at a news conference with Sink.

Jeb Bush's own inspector general Bill Monroe has been unable to prove that outsourcing has saved the taxpayers money.

The outsourcing has also been filled with corruption. Accenture made the felon list that had to be scrapped because of incompetence. It is easy to see why they got the contract.

Before the 2002 election, Accenture gave $25,000 to Florida Republicans and none to Democrats, according to a Florida Division of Election records.

The review of the outsourcing is a good start. I applaud Crist and Sink for doing it.