Contractors now are performing tasks that require specialized skills, as well as mission critical functions and daily program management and support roles, the report stated. At the Defense Department alone, the number of contractors has jumped from 21 percent of the Pentagon's workforce to 39 percent during the last eight years.
The goal of insourcing efforts, FAIR advised, should be to ensure the federal government possesses the organic capabilities necessary to meet its many missions. In addition to more carefully defining the term "inherently governmental" and keeping those job functions in-house, agencies should work to identify and build core competencies, the report stated. FAIR cited systems engineers at Defense as an example of a core competency, pointing out that a lack of federal systems engineers to oversee and assess contractors' work could lead to high-profile failures and waste, fraud and abuse.
When identifying those important skills, Sharma said the goal is not to restrict a wide swath of jobs from being outsourced, but to delicately determine the right balance of government workers and contractors, so federal employees can oversee and interpret the work of contractors. As difficult as agencies have found it to settle on a feasible definition of "inherently governmental," identifying and retaining core competencies is likely to be even more challenging, Sharma said, because it will occur on an agency-by-agency, program-by-program basis.
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