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You might find this Washington Monthly article interesting as it echoes your point: "Fire the Contractors" https://washingtonmonthly.com/2025/01/05/fire-the-con

You might find this Washington Monthly article interesting as it echoes your point: "Fire the Contractors" https://washingtonmonthly.com/2025/01/05/fire-the-contractors/ https://washingtonmonthly.com/2025/01/05/fire-the-contractor... "Voters are right to want a less bloated and wasteful government. But Elon Musk’s plan will fail because the most inefficient parts lie outside it. ... That’s because Trump and his DOGE sidekicks both misunderstand the nature of the problem and risk undermining the government services that their base depends on. The primary source of government waste and inefficiency isn’t what they say it is: a bloated civil service insufficiently “loyal” to the president. Rather, as writers for this magazine ... have tried to explain, the problem is the opposite. Federal agencies have too few civil servants with the right expertise to manage the contractors who increasingly deliver the federal government’s services. The key to reducing waste and increasing efficiency is for the government to hire more high-quality government employees and shrink the number of contractors. And there’s even a huge opportunity here of bringing in the technology and people skills to remake government so it’s ready for the challenges of the future."

fireflash38 2y ago
100% And it's like 10 to 1 of contractors vs civilians that work for the gov. You'll find a hell of a lot of casual corruption there too -- companies bribing the civilians who select contracts to pick them. It cuts across public & defense spending.
- joquarky 2y ago
  Or collaborating with government decision makers to word the contract to ensure that they are the only company that can meet all of the criteria. TYL
dustingetz 2y ago
i honestly could not find any root cause analysis in that article that i agree with. it is not a problem of “too few bureaucrats”, it is that the contract procurement process is not competitive, nor is literally any other process on the government side, including meta processes like the bureaucrat hiring and selection process. the entire govt side system top to bottom has evolved in a world where money does not matter and the contractors have simply evolved to the constraints of that interface to get at the money the way a plant grows towards the sun.
- dustingetz 2y ago
  ... i actually considered becoming a "civil servant" after this experience to try to help (on either the govt side or private side), but I could not see a viable way to actually make a difference, even a small one. Everything is so jammed up and deadlocked with outrageous anti-competitive regulation —go learn what is "IDIQ" "SPARC" "8(a) STARS II" "GSA IT Schedule 70"—that it's not actually possible for a startup to bid these contracts without partnering with the 800 lb gorillas and therefore becoming a part of the thing that you are trying to destroy. "Disruption does not come from within"
  - cuuupid 2y ago
    Because of the existence of [1] FedRAMP and other compliance initiatives that are blanket applied to everything even though 90% of SaaS contracts do NOT need it, and [2] past performance being predominantly the #1 factor for evaluation, contracting itself is an enforced oligopoly. You need to be a big-ish company to enter, and will have to kiss the feet of existing oligarchs.
cuuupid 2y ago
Contractors are hired by civil servants, these are not independent things. I don’t think DOGE will fix this because the solution is easy but very counterintuitive — we would need around 30% raises to all federal employees at GS-12 and higher, to match market rates. Right now they cannot hire civil servants that are skilled due to being unable to compete on comp; instead they have to reach to private sector, which will charge them 600 a head, while paying each contractor 200. Because GS only affords 120-130 for those positions, it becomes necessary to reach for contractors. PWS contracts are the biggest suck on budget; eg there are more PWS contractors manning what would normally be FTE positions at Dept of State than total FTEs. Unfortunately, it is so backwards to actually spend more and raise payscales to save money that I don’t think DOGE will land there as a strategy.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

fireflash38 2y ago

100% And it's like 10 to 1 of contractors vs civilians that work for the gov. You'll find a hell of a lot of casual corruption there too -- companies bribing the civilians who select contracts to pick them. It cuts across public & defense spending.

joquarky 2y ago
Or collaborating with government decision makers to word the contract to ensure that they are the only company that can meet all of the criteria. TYL

dustingetz 2y ago

i honestly could not find any root cause analysis in that article that i agree with. it is not a problem of “too few bureaucrats”, it is that the contract procurement process is not competitive, nor is literally any other process on the government side, including meta processes like the bureaucrat hiring and selection process. the entire govt side system top to bottom has evolved in a world where money does not matter and the contractors have simply evolved to the constraints of that interface to get at the money the way a plant grows towards the sun.

dustingetz 2y ago
... i actually considered becoming a "civil servant" after this experience to try to help (on either the govt side or private side), but I could not see a viable way to actually make a difference, even a small one. Everything is so jammed up and deadlocked with outrageous anti-competitive regulation —go learn what is "IDIQ" "SPARC" "8(a) STARS II" "GSA IT Schedule 70"—that it's not actually possible for a startup to bid these contracts without partnering with the 800 lb gorillas and therefore becoming a part of the thing that you are trying to destroy. "Disruption does not come from within"
- cuuupid 2y ago
  Because of the existence of [1] FedRAMP and other compliance initiatives that are blanket applied to everything even though 90% of SaaS contracts do NOT need it, and [2] past performance being predominantly the #1 factor for evaluation, contracting itself is an enforced oligopoly. You need to be a big-ish company to enter, and will have to kiss the feet of existing oligarchs.

cuuupid 2y ago

Contractors are hired by civil servants, these are not independent things. I don’t think DOGE will fix this because the solution is easy but very counterintuitive — we would need around 30% raises to all federal employees at GS-12 and higher, to match market rates. Right now they cannot hire civil servants that are skilled due to being unable to compete on comp; instead they have to reach to private sector, which will charge them 600 a head, while paying each contractor 200. Because GS only affords 120-130 for those positions, it becomes necessary to reach for contractors. PWS contracts are the biggest suck on budget; eg there are more PWS contractors manning what would normally be FTE positions at Dept of State than total FTEs. Unfortunately, it is so backwards to actually spend more and raise payscales to save money that I don’t think DOGE will land there as a strategy.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]