In an article in The Washington Post this week with the headline "Report Faults Pentagon's Reliance on Contractors" discussed a GAO report released last week entitled "Army Case Study Delineates Concerns with Use of Contractors as Contract Specialists".

In the report, GAO auditors "found that the Pentagon relies too much on contractors who often work alongside their government counterparts, cost more and sometimes take on responsibilities they are not supposed to".

The reality is that federal agencies have incredible difficulty in hiring the quality and number of employees needed for it to support the expanded level of spending.

With federal employment flat and discretionary spending up 50% over the past five years, the math is pretty simple: agencies must either staff up or contract out to support the spending increase. The increase in contractors reflects the bias that Republicans in general have to contracting out government functions that are not inherently governmental. A Democratic President could bring forth a notable shift in that bias to bringing on more government employees. However, such a task would not be easy without a substantial change in government human capital policy leading to increased pay and a change in public perception.

I, for one, am very interested to hear the perspective of OPM Director, Linda Springer at INPUT's upcoming Federal MarketView 2008 Conference on April 24, 2008.