11 ms·

Nearly everyone who does real work like this for the government is a contractor anymore. The government employees manage the contracts.

DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
> The government employees manage the contracts. How long before that's outsourced to Accenture too?
- nerbert 5y ago
  No no, the companies executing the contracts are the experts, they know what’s best to put in them. It comes as free consult. Edit: if only this was a joke.
jvanderbot 5y ago
"Industry can handle it better"
dragonelite 5y ago
paying double if not triple if they would be internal worker.
joe_the_user 5y ago
Sure, the states of the world have decided that security isn't one of their core competencies - computer security, yes, but the point remains. I find this mind-boggling but that's how it is.
noobermin 5y ago
It really is one of the dumbest things in government work. Politicians want to "shrink government" so they don't want many actual employees that would probably be well paid, stable, but someone needs to do the work. Thus, enter the I-too-want-to-shrink-the-government politicians who agree but then farm it out to contractors, some whom they might work for one day (or even come from in some cases in the US!). And so the actual government employees are few and far in between while everything else is farmed out to contractors, some who are good and many who do fly by night jobs on grants and have no incentive to do better otherwise.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  It is also nice to have an entity to throw under the bus if necessary.
  - eru 5y ago
    And that's actually a benefit for the tax payer! It's notoriously hard to fire public servants, or shut down underperforming departments. It's comparatively easier to shut down an outsourced project, or switch suppliers. (Alas, not easy enough; and the organizational skills required to win government bids are different from those required to actually deliver quality.)
- eru 5y ago
  Do you think projects run and implemented by people directly employed by the government have a better track record?
  - noobermin 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11
    - chha 5y ago
      Not sure what you're trying to say with this. The Apollo program was run by NASA, who had lots of government employees, but at the same time all the hardware and much of the software was built by contractors. The Apollo program was behind schedule and over budget for most of the project period. NASA originally estimated the cost to somewhere between 7 and 12 billion USD; NASA Administrator increased this to 20 billion USD in 1961, but it ended up costing more than 25 billion USD in 1973 dollars.
      - eru 5y ago
        Believe it or not, the Space Shuttle was an even worse disaster in terms of bang for buck.
hereforphone 5y ago
Exactly. They also get the credit and retirement checks.
sandworm101 5y ago
I'm a government employee. I work with a few dozen people across multiple locations doing actual work. Not one of us is a contractor. Zero contactors are involved in any real work. The few we have are in support positions. We have some contracted IT people who manage some of our computer systems but don't have any access to what those computers actually do. We have contacted security guards at the front gate. And I think the cleaners are contracted out but as they have NEVER cleaned my office I don't see them much. I think there is some observational bias going on in this thread.
- JackFr 5y ago
  When I was a defense contractor it always struck me as weird that the guardhouse at USMC HQ at the Navy Annex was staffed by $12/hr private security guards. On the other hand the commander of the group I was doing work for pointed out that a fully trained Marine private was far to costly an asset to waste checking visitor ids.

DaiPlusPlus 5y ago

> The government employees manage the contracts. How long before that's outsourced to Accenture too?

nerbert 5y ago
No no, the companies executing the contracts are the experts, they know what’s best to put in them. It comes as free consult. Edit: if only this was a joke.

jvanderbot 5y ago

"Industry can handle it better"

dragonelite 5y ago

paying double if not triple if they would be internal worker.

joe_the_user 5y ago

Sure, the states of the world have decided that security isn't one of their core competencies - computer security, yes, but the point remains. I find this mind-boggling but that's how it is.

noobermin 5y ago

It really is one of the dumbest things in government work. Politicians want to "shrink government" so they don't want many actual employees that would probably be well paid, stable, but someone needs to do the work. Thus, enter the I-too-want-to-shrink-the-government politicians who agree but then farm it out to contractors, some whom they might work for one day (or even come from in some cases in the US!). And so the actual government employees are few and far in between while everything else is farmed out to contractors, some who are good and many who do fly by night jobs on grants and have no incentive to do better otherwise.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
It is also nice to have an entity to throw under the bus if necessary.
- eru 5y ago
  And that's actually a benefit for the tax payer! It's notoriously hard to fire public servants, or shut down underperforming departments. It's comparatively easier to shut down an outsourced project, or switch suppliers. (Alas, not easy enough; and the organizational skills required to win government bids are different from those required to actually deliver quality.)
eru 5y ago
Do you think projects run and implemented by people directly employed by the government have a better track record?
- noobermin 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11
  - chha 5y ago
    Not sure what you're trying to say with this. The Apollo program was run by NASA, who had lots of government employees, but at the same time all the hardware and much of the software was built by contractors. The Apollo program was behind schedule and over budget for most of the project period. NASA originally estimated the cost to somewhere between 7 and 12 billion USD; NASA Administrator increased this to 20 billion USD in 1961, but it ended up costing more than 25 billion USD in 1973 dollars.
    - eru 5y ago
      Believe it or not, the Space Shuttle was an even worse disaster in terms of bang for buck.

hereforphone 5y ago

Exactly. They also get the credit and retirement checks.

sandworm101 5y ago

I'm a government employee. I work with a few dozen people across multiple locations doing actual work. Not one of us is a contractor. Zero contactors are involved in any real work. The few we have are in support positions. We have some contracted IT people who manage some of our computer systems but don't have any access to what those computers actually do. We have contacted security guards at the front gate. And I think the cleaners are contracted out but as they have NEVER cleaned my office I don't see them much. I think there is some observational bias going on in this thread.

JackFr 5y ago
When I was a defense contractor it always struck me as weird that the guardhouse at USMC HQ at the Navy Annex was staffed by $12/hr private security guards. On the other hand the commander of the group I was doing work for pointed out that a fully trained Marine private was far to costly an asset to waste checking visitor ids.