The Good Rabbi's Blog

Ever since I started working at a certain government agency that you interact with every April 15th, I've been amazed at the sheer and utter incompetence of many government people. The funny part is that the government has an army of contractors (like me) that they use to do their work (see you never really want to tell a government person that they have to finish their coffee break, lunch hour, etc. They get particularly ornery about that sort of thing). It's gotten unbelievably bad lately, in that there are a gazillion contracting firms there.

This allows the government to say they've cut the federal work force, even though they really haven't. The true cost of government projects is staggering as a result, since most contractors have an incentive to develop systems about 75% of the way, and then they have the government agencies by the balls to finish and/or support their system. Private companies (or even public ones for that matter) are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, and are able to get around just about every rule that was put in place.

So managing all these contracts with all these governmental agencies is a major pain to do, albeit necessary. So how does the government evaluate contractors' performance, making sure that they don't screw over the "great American People" and continue to provide some degree of value? Well, believe it or not, they don't (wait for it). They (wait for it) do what makes sense in this situation (wait for it): they hire a contractor to do it.

Only the government is stupid enough not to see the inherent conflict of interest that arises from having a company evaluate its competitors. The government is allowed to hire contractors to perform duties that are not "inherently governmental." That's about as inherently governmental as it gets, and they can't be bothered to do even that effectively. It's high time that they stop worrying about things like "diversity" (yeah, I said it. Diversity is not a goal - equality is. Having a Black/Latino/Asian/etc. on your staff simply because they're Black/Latino/Asian/etc. is just as demeaning as NOT hiring them because they're Black/Latino/Asian/etc.) and start worrying about how to effectively govern and take care of "the peoples' business."