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contracting
Feb. 5th, 2007 11:33 amhttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/04/washington/04contract.html (may require free login)
About all I can say is 'Yep.' The use of contractors by US government stems almsot entirely from pressure for 'smaller government' that comes at the same time as calls for more and broader services from government. The result is not small or less government, of course, but government that is less accountable and less open and, ultimately, more expensive and less motivated to act in the public interest. Despite having spent many years working in various government contracting firms (or perhaps because of it), I feel that everyone would be much better served by making the government workforce *larger*, restricting contracting to smaller and much more short-term projects, and providing realistic incentives for youn people to consider government service as a career. Government service should not be a sinecure, but it should be remunerative, and it should be seen as a valuable and contributive role in society.
It should also be tough to get into. I've seen a lot of incompetence blandly accepted, especially but not exclusively at lower levels, because it was acknowledged that a government job was 'all that some people can get'. Sorry, but no. Providing government services to fellow citizens should be a fuilfilling job and it should be one with standards.
I also think that we in the US need to look hard at ways to push government down to the lowest levels possible. What services can be carried out by state agencies that are currently done by federal ones, and what by local authorities that are done by state ones? I am not a great believer in the federal system (by which I mean having a single nation composed of semi-autonomus states witht heir own separate legal and tax structures), but since we've got it and it isn't likely to go aawy, let's make better use of it.
About all I can say is 'Yep.' The use of contractors by US government stems almsot entirely from pressure for 'smaller government' that comes at the same time as calls for more and broader services from government. The result is not small or less government, of course, but government that is less accountable and less open and, ultimately, more expensive and less motivated to act in the public interest. Despite having spent many years working in various government contracting firms (or perhaps because of it), I feel that everyone would be much better served by making the government workforce *larger*, restricting contracting to smaller and much more short-term projects, and providing realistic incentives for youn people to consider government service as a career. Government service should not be a sinecure, but it should be remunerative, and it should be seen as a valuable and contributive role in society.
It should also be tough to get into. I've seen a lot of incompetence blandly accepted, especially but not exclusively at lower levels, because it was acknowledged that a government job was 'all that some people can get'. Sorry, but no. Providing government services to fellow citizens should be a fuilfilling job and it should be one with standards.
I also think that we in the US need to look hard at ways to push government down to the lowest levels possible. What services can be carried out by state agencies that are currently done by federal ones, and what by local authorities that are done by state ones? I am not a great believer in the federal system (by which I mean having a single nation composed of semi-autonomus states witht heir own separate legal and tax structures), but since we've got it and it isn't likely to go aawy, let's make better use of it.
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