Political Morsels and Other Droppings

I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with the world of government contracting. (and please don’t ask me what I do or who I work for… I won’t answer.) However, I am, since I’m one of them. that practically every agency and department of the federal side of the government has contracts with different companies to do some of their work.  Now, the timeframe for any contract can range from as little as a year to even ten years that include option years. (Option years are when the government agency/department can opt to keep the company on the contract without a re-compete or renewal.)  For most contracts that the government tries to fill, they have a competition, where they allow a bunch of companies to turn in proposals that include manpower, an SLA (which is a service level agreement), and an overall bid as to how much the company is going to charge for the contract.  The government side takes a look at a series of factors when deciding on who will win the contract. However, money plays a big role (from my understanding). In the end, the best fit wins that contract.  

However….. in some cases like… oh… say… one that Dick Cheney had ties with… there are no-bid contracts, where, for whatever crazy reason, some companies have been handed contracts without having to go up against other companies.  I’ve never experienced it, but I have heard of it and from my understanding, the no-bids make decent bank out of it. 

Now, in recent years, some agencies and organizations have reduced their government manpower by offering early retirement, etc. and the contracting of work has increased.  Some have felt that by outsourcing the work, the government doesn’t have to pay as much money for the workers. (Because the companies are the ones that deal with retirement stuff and not the government.) However, I’m not really sure how that works, because contractors typically get payed a bit more for their work than government workers who do the same job.  

Apparently, President Obama has noticed that  quite a bit of money is being wasted through contracts and signed a memorandum to overhaul the system.  Seeing what I have, there’s a lot of money being wasted and I don’t think he’s out of line. Others would disagree with me and that’s fine. However, at the same time, I’ve seen quite a few government workers, in prior positions, that have spent their entire days sitting back reading the newspaper.  It’s hard to fire a government worker. It’s pretty easy to get read of a contractor who is not performing. It would be nice if something could be done about that as well. The American taxpayer would save even more money if more checks were put into place on all government workers to ensure that under-performance does not take place on our dime.  Just a thought.

Filed under: political morsel Tagged: | contract, no-bid contracts, President Obama