I think the contracting model (which has it's place!) is really at the root of the problem. The time for contractors is when you need something that is very rar

I think the contracting model (which has it's place!) is really at the root of the problem. The time for contractors is when you need something that is very rare in the world or you need a large temporary expansion of capacity. A lot of government contracts are the kind of work that will be consistently taking place over decades and can be done by any of hundreds of thousands of similarly competent people. Imagine if you didn't even need to write a contract, didn't need a bidding process, that could be substantial time and money saved on its own. Then with FTEs minor initiatives like finding interesting internal libraries to open source can just happen. What I'm saying isn't a new idea (really it's an old idea) and I very much admire those who are actually taking the risk to make this kind of thing happen because the failures can be very visible and successes sometimes aren't.