[noobermin]

It really is one of the dumbest things in government work. Politicians want to "shrink government" so they don't want many actual employees that would probably be well paid, stable, but someone needs to do the work. Thus, enter the I-too-want-to-shrink-the-government politicians who agree but then farm it out to contractors, some whom they might work for one day (or even come from in some cases in the US!). And so the actual government employees are few and far in between while everything else is farmed out to contractors, some who are good and many who do fly by night jobs on grants and have no incentive to do better otherwise.

[pydry]

Dumb? Who did you think owned these companies that the work gets contracted out to?

"Shrink government" shouldnt be taken at face value.

[eru]

Do you think projects run and implemented by people directly employed by the government have a better track record?

[raesene9]

For the sake of debate, lets assume an equal level of incompetence between contractor run projects and government run projects.

In that case at least

a) There's no need to pay extra for the profit margins of the contractor companies (and the inevitable sub-contractors they use)

and

b) The incentives of the people doing the work are likely to be closer to the original project, in that the people doing the work are in the same organization as the project.

For me, outsourcing makes sense if the organization doesn't have enough of the specific type of work to have a fully staffed internal team, so specialist services, or if they are obliged to get an external opinion (e.g. auditing/pen testing). Otherwise you're just adding more layers of profit seeking middle-people...

[eru]

Profit is a small part of costs. See https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost...

I'm not so sure about incentives. The incentives aren't necessarily great in either situation. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice

[jvanderbot]

"Overhead" is a large part of costs, and profit is often contractually limited in government contracts. But much of the profit is hidden in the markup, which can sometimes be 50%, meaning you pay $1.50 for $1.00 of supplies, labor, etc.

[jvanderbot]

To add to this, the gov requires that all the markup is broken out, so it can be audited. I think usually contractors are allowed things like R&D budgets, salary (maybe not bonuses?) etc. I'd love someone more knowledgeable than I am to chime in.

[eru]

Yes, though government departments also have overhead.

[noobermin]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11

[chha]

Not sure what you're trying to say with this.

The Apollo program was run by NASA, who had lots of government employees, but at the same time all the hardware and much of the software was built by contractors. The Apollo program was behind schedule and over budget for most of the project period.

NASA originally estimated the cost to somewhere between 7 and 12 billion USD; NASA Administrator increased this to 20 billion USD in 1961, but it ended up costing more than 25 billion USD in 1973 dollars.

[eru]

Believe it or not, the Space Shuttle was an even worse disaster in terms of bang for buck.

[chha]

I know, and they also failed on the primary goal of the project.

[jon-wood]

When allowed to do the job well, yes. The UK’s Government Digital Service led the way in this, and have massively improved the online experience of everything from finding information about the current Parliament to booking vaccinations. Their entire approach is focused on “what does the user need” as opposed to “what does the thousand page spec doc say”. The USDS was founded on the same basis and from what I’ve heard are similarly impressive.

[eru]

That's heart-warming to hear, but alas cherry-picking examples won't sway anyone much?

Have a look at eg the outsourced Danish firefighters. Seems to work just fine, but would be unthinkable in most countries, including the US. (Btw, Americans have more firefighters per capita than about anywhere else.)

[QuarterReptile]

Let me offer an alternative version of why people take the presumably-government roles and do them as private contractors: avoidance of byzantine requirements and cynical implementations of laws aimed at preventing fraud, waste, and abuse (FWA). People drastically overestimate FWA because they commonly describe or conceive as FWA government projects which they don't like. A couple examples:

It's relatively hard to get any work done at my job during the month of April, because about half the building is 85-88F (in a temperate mid-atlantic climate). That means that people will work in other cooler offices (problem when no one carries a cell phone) or just find reasons to leave early. I used to battle about this, but then I learned that it was for the unmovable ideal of economizing. Unfortunately, I'm a victim of economizing a 1970s building with huge plate glass windows that don't open.

Second example:office supplies. A supervisor asks me to have a room set up for a meeting. After determining that what I need is not kept on hand, I try to buy them through the government catalog as I'm supposed to. My internet connection fails, so I reboot my desktop (roughly 20-30 minutes). When it fails again, I lament that I probably have a dozen faster computers at home, ranging from 10 year old tablets to a raspberry pi, and with that I take the opportunity to step away from my office (low 80s in the summer, when this takes place, because the AC can't keep up.) I go down to my car where I can use my own air conditioning and my phone to look at the same website. The supplies aren't on the catalog, so I just order them for $10 on Amazon. Fast forward one week, when my supervisor asks how I have it ready so soon, and I get criticized for buying the supplies outside of the supply system with my own money. I place too high a value on my sanity, apparently.

Edit: I should mention that most people at this office are paid quite well relative to the area

[noobermin]

This isn't an alternative version, this is what I mean about the horrible requirements which are aimed at FWA but just off-loading it to a contractor doesn't make it disappear.

[lotsofpulp]

It is also nice to have an entity to throw under the bus if necessary.

[eru]

And that's actually a benefit for the tax payer!

It's notoriously hard to fire public servants, or shut down underperforming departments.

It's comparatively easier to shut down an outsourced project, or switch suppliers.

(Alas, not easy enough; and the organizational skills required to win government bids are different from those required to actually deliver quality.)