Contractors, Friends or Foes?

The Bush Administration made a big push for contracting out government services in an effort to scale down government agencies. I can see how that might make sense on some levels. Government should do the things only government can do like making policy and enforcing laws but it doesn't mean that contracting everything else out like HR, communications stuff, defense stuff, jails, training, and much, much more will improve the quality of those things. Contracting out government work creates some interesting issues. For example, it creates administrative burden. Yes, I have to spend several hours each month reviewing invoices and reconciling what the contractor was supposed to do with what they say they did and what I think they did. And somehow contracting stuff out is supposed to make me as a bureaucrat better able to conduct my government work because they are doing some it? I am not sure. Right now it feels like coordinating that contract uses all of my "attention to detail" and "ability to multi-task" skills that I used to sell myself and get hired by the agency leaving me little energy left over to do the stuff that my experience and education suggested I would be doing. Okay, okay. Enough belly-aching. The other thing about working with contractors that is unfortunate is that we spend a lot of time working together and we rarely see each other face to face and we don't get to know each other, at least not very easily. Today I spent at least half of my day with contractors or exchanging emails with them on a couple of projects. At 7PM tonight it was me and a contractor working together over the phone. Not me and a staff member. Yes, if they were in the same city, we could go out for a beer, but they aren't. And the culture of the contract world, I assume, is different. Are they all happy-go-lucky 6-digit wage earners? No, I expect many of them work the same hours as me for the same peanuts but it's weird because in some ways you feel like they are your colleagues and teammates and in some ways you feel like they have a different attitude. Are they worried each budget season when the agency puts its budget forward or the Congress decides on a budget cut like we feds are? Why shouldn't they be? In many cases its their contracts that shrink. Still, it seems they are more insulated. Maybe the price we pay for feeling the sting of politics is that we have our GS security and our TSP.