The "competitive sourcing" initiative has fallen short of U.S. President George Bush's goals both in scope and cost savings, The Washington Post reported Friday.

Under the program, private contractors were invited to bid on some 425,000 federal jobs considered "commercial" in nature.

The federal workers then had to prove that they could do their jobs better and more cheaply than the private contractors in a program the General Accounting Office estimated cost $4,800 per job.

"The competitive sourcing initiative did little to improve management, produced a ton of worthless paper, demoralized thousands of workers and cost a bundle," Paul C. Light, a professor of government at New York University, told the Post.

Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union says "from a legacy perspective for the president, I think this will be seen as a costly failure on his part."