Haft of the Spear

U.S. lawmakers have taken the strongest steps yet in recent years to rein in federal contracting.

In bills to authorize the Defense Department and intelligence agencies, House and Senate lawmakers have called for a three-year ban on outsourcing Defense Department civilian jobs, new boundaries on what work can be outsourced, and new curbs aimed at preventing conflicts of interest when contractors assist agencies with their procurements.

“Contracting oversight and accountability issues remain a concern,” said Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

No kidding.

The sign in my barber’s shop reads: “Haircuts: Good, Fast, Cheap – Pick Two.” What no one in Congress seems to realize – or care enough to act on – is that if you limit what can be contracted you are left with raising the staffing ceilings at the agencies or you force certain missions to be dropped (alternately, the same missions get done, they are just done poorly). Of course, raising staffing ceilings means “creating big government” but I would submit to you that given the priority national security should have on our political agenda, a bigger Pentagon, CIA and FBI could be offset by, say, a smaller HHS or DOEdu. Of course I’m not a politician so dream on.

• Simplifying contracting law and regulation. Forget water boarding; force detainees to read the FAR and watch them crack like eggs. Contracting would be a lot cheaper if the back-end overhead workforce didn’t have to be as large as it is just to deal with excessively complex paperwork.
• Identify and codify in law what is “inherently governmental.” Maybe this has been done already, I don’t know, but identify for me the job in the defense and intelligence business that isn’t contracted out – from collection, analysis, interrogation, even shooting bad guys – and I have to wonder what got left off the list. When you know what can’t be farmed out, then you can actually – you know – plan for the proper size federal workforce.
• Oversight requires more people on staff who know the contracting business; the fact that contractors can end up overseeing what other contractors (read: competition) do is nuts on its face. Boosting the CO and COTR/COR ranks would reap two benefits: greater oversight from non-biased professionals and allowing technical/functional professionals to get back to doing what they enjoy instead of managing contractors.