The massive $410 billion spending bill that President Obama signed into law on Wednesday will make it harder for competitive sourcing to stay alive. The legislation includes a provision prohibiting the use of federal money to study or hold public-private job competitions for the remainder of this fiscal year that ends on Sept. 30.

Although the bill puts a temporary halt to job competitions, it does not officially kill competitive sourcing. Nevertheless there are plenty of restrictions in the legislation that are likely to hurt outsourced contracts or agency plans to use them. Among them, the bill requires civilian agencies to review current contracts and come up with guidelines on whether the work could be performed in-house instead of by outside contractors.

Obama has repeatedly said he wanted to scale down outsourcing and bring more jobs back into the government. He said that would be cheaper and more efficient than outsourcing. And the administration estimates that it could save $40 billion in federal costs.

 For more on contracting policies:
 - check out this nextgov.com article