WAPO story on Army's deputy assistant secretary for procurement, Edward Harrington.
The government's contracting out for services is nothing new, as Harrington's office notes. Its "Contractors on the Battlefield" chart outlines the number of contractors compared with the number of soldiers since the American Revolution. Back then, the ratio of contractors to soldiers was 1:6. World War I, 1:20. Vietnam, 1:6. Gulf War, 1:60. Iraq, 1:1. Afghanistan, 2:1.
An evolution toward SysAdmin operations that has created a rule-set gap:
These days, Harrington points out, the job is tougher because the government's workforce to write, manage and oversee the contractors has shrunk dramatically. The office estimates that as the workload has increased 1,000 percent since 1987, the government's contracting workforce has decreased by 25 percent.
It's why I believe it inevitable that a new bureaucratic center of gravity is created between Defense and State--the Department for Everything Else notion.
It's a serious requirement that's yet to be treated seriously in a bureaucratic revamp.