Government Contracting

I tried unsuccessfully to find a link to “Surge in Government Contracts Questioned” in todays Herald Leader. Briefly, the article says:

Competition, intended to produce savings, appears to have sharply eroded.

The most secret and politically delicate government jobs . . . are increasingly contracted out, despite regulations forbidding the outsourcing of “inherently governmental” work.

Agencies are crippled in their ability to seek low prices, supervise contractors and intervene . . . because the number of government workers . . . has remained level.

The most succesful contractors are not necessarily those doing the best work, but those that have mastered the skills of selling to Uncle Sam.

Contracting usually leads to less public scrutiny.

I don’t know - reducing government contracting would endanger one of the sweeter perks in life. While I was a gub’ment employee I knew one contractor that allegedly was making $80k to facilitate meetings by continually repeating what each person said and asking what others though about it. Now that was a SWEET job. I think its called consulting.

The state also tried contracting out child protection services for families involved in a particular program. The sweet thing about their job was that they could turn anything complicated back over to the state workers. Seemed like there was a lot of complications.