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Insourcing
Decisions in Washington have consequences that are often different than what those who made them thought they would be. An example of this is the Obama Administration’s policy of insourcing. This is transferring work that had been done by the private sector into the public sector. One reason given
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Date:
7/13/2012
For the past three and a half years I have been trying to figure out why the Department of Defense has exhibited an increasingly hostile attitude towards the private sector. What President Eisenhower had once referred to as the "military-industrial complex" has rapidly become the Hatfields and
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Date:
6/28/2012
When is it a good idea to use private contractors to perform tasks that are or could be done by government employees or personnel in uniform? Under the Clinton and Bush Administrations there was a push to outsource a broad range of activities and services supporting both the Department of Defense
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Date:
6/15/2012
If there was any doubt that the Democratic Party views government workers as a core constituency it should be dispelled by a recent letter by 24 Democrat senators to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. Even as the military is set to cut more than 100,000 uniform personnel and private sector defense
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Date:
5/7/2012
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is about to release guidance to the entire federal government on what approach or methodology it should employ when conducting business case analyses (BCAs) to determine whether to use the private sector or government workers to perform a task. At a time
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Date:
4/5/2012
Over the past year, the credibility of the Department of Defense’s (DoD) acquisition system has been shaken repeatedly by disputes regarding the costs associated with a wide range of programs. First there was the report that the life cycle costs for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter -- that is the costs
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Date:
3/22/2012
For the past three years I have been arguing on this site and elsewhere that the Obama Administration’s campaign of insourcing, which is taking work done for the government by the private sector and turning it over to government employees and facilities, was misguided. I believe that insourcing
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Date:
10/7/2011
The sad truth is that even when the 600 pound gorilla in the room tries to behave properly it is just so big and takes up so much space that the practical consequences of its actions often limit the freedom of those around it. So it is when the Office of Federal Procurement, a part of the Office
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Date:
9/14/2011
Over the past two years, the Obama Administration’s plans to improve the economy by taking contracts and jobs away from the private sector and insourcing them to government workers has suffered a number of setbacks. This has particularly been the case when the Pentagon went on an orgy of insourcing
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Date:
8/17/2011
Many U.S. companies trying to open businesses in China have learned the hard way what it is like to deal with state-sponsored capitalism where the rules constantly change and the only real goal of the Chinese is to gain access to technology, capital and markets. Since Deng Xiaoping opened up his
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Date:
7/26/2011
Most of the discussion of the problems associated with the Pentagon’s campaign to take work away from the private sector and give it to government employees and facilities, what is termed insourcing, has focused on the impacts on large corporations. Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman have
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Date:
7/5/2011
The relationship between the private defense industrial base and the Department of Defense can be as close as a long-standing marriage and as difficult as a war zone. Senior defense officials like to say over and over again that the department produces nothing and is dependent on the private sector
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Date:
6/29/2011
The current fight over the Obama administration’s efforts to shift private sector work into the federal government has focused to a large extent on people, or as the government calls them Full Time Equivalents (FTEs). After an enthusiastic beginning, the process has come to a halt, at least with
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Date:
5/27/2011
For the past two years the Department of Defense (DoD) has been pursuing a mirage. This false vision is that the Pentagon can both save money and perform better by replacing a significant fraction of its private contractor workforce with government employees. The Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates,
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Date:
5/19/2011
Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn claims that the Department of Defense (DoD) is taking a long-term view of its defense industrial base, one that seeks to ensure that the private sector remains profitable. According to an
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Date:
5/12/2011
When Democrats took control of the White House in early 2009, they immediately set about reversing the Bush Administration's efforts to outsource federal work. The Democrats believed that Bush had been too willing to contract out functions that were "inherently governmental" in nature, regardless
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Date:
3/7/2011
The Department of Defense is on a crusade to reduce its costs and shift resources from overhead to procurement. Two weeks ago, Secretary of Defense Gates announced some $158 billion in savings of which some $78 billion was being reinvested. Much of this savings came from closing unnecessary, duplicative
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Date:
1/24/2011
One way that the Department of Defense (DoD) is attempting to reduce the costs of overhead and support activities is by bringing into the government work done by private contractors. Over the past two years, the military services have repeatedly cancelled well-performing contracts with private companies
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Date:
11/12/2010
One of the consequences of the big Republican election victory yesterday could be the creation of a roadblock to ongoing DoD and intelligence community efforts to reduce service and support contracts and insource work done by the private sector. One of the clear messages to emerge from election night
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Date:
11/3/2010
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev came to Silicon Valley in an effort to bring the world of modern technology and economics to his country. If he wanted to take a trip back in time and see what it might have been like in his country under Stalin he could have visited the Department of Defense (DoD).
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Date:
6/30/2010
One of the Obama Administration’s most significant policy initiatives has been to reduce the role of private contractors in providing support to the federal government. The administration is concerned that private contractors were performing jobs that should be done only by government employees
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Date:
6/21/2010
Performance Based Logistics (PBL) is getting a bad rap in Pentagon and Congressional circles. PBL is an approach to acquiring services and support based on the totality of the requirements rather than just price. PBL bundles the activities associated with maintaining a weapons system or major component
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Date:
6/15/2010
Faced with essentially flat defense budgets, increasing personnel costs and the need to recapitalize an aging force structure, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has a plan to save $100 billion over five years. Two-thirds of the savings are supposed to come from reducing overhead and one-third from
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Date:
6/9/2010
The global trend is clear: privatization of government functions is the way to lower costs, reduced budget deficits, improve efficiency and have a better standard of living. The Greek bailout carried with it stringent European Union and International Monetary Fund conditions which amounted to reduced
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Date:
5/13/2010
There are all kinds of stories told about the Pentagon. But until now it has never been said that the building was haunted. It has been three and a half years since Robert Gates became Secretary of Defense. Last week, something amazing happened. He became his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld. This is
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Date:
5/11/2010
There is a lot of truth behind the old joke that an elephant is a mouse built to government specifications. So it should not be a surprise to discover that only a year after Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced a plan to replace thousands of private contractors with permanent government employees
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Date:
5/6/2010
The anti-private sector ideology of the current administration is nowhere more in evidence than in the efforts to take away jobs performed by private contractors in support of the federal government and turn them into government positions, called insourcing. The idea is to ensure that those activities
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Date:
4/6/2010
The evidence is overwhelming that Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) work and that they provide benefits to both the public and private defense industrial bases. Whatever the temptations there may be to consolidate logistics, sustainment and repair work in the organic base, what is often called
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Date:
3/4/2010
For more than a decade, the Department of Defense (DoD) has pursued a deliberate strategy of trying to better integrate the public and private industrial bases supporting military needs. The centerpiece of this strategy is the creation of public-private partnerships (PPPs) and the implementation
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Date:
2/22/2010