Federal Contracting

The Washington Post Fed Page had an interesting article about federal contracting where they discuss how the federal contract workforce has grown quite a lot over the years and is operates a "shadow government" workforce. As a federal contractor myself this article was very relevant. One of the trends in the federal library community is to contract out part of the library staff or the entire library itself. One of my hopes for the Obama administration is to improve the federal hiring processes and work culture and to cut down on the contracting and outsourcing. I feel that there is an unfortunate stereotype of civil service vs. contract worker. Both can be well-meaning individuals who are working hard in their chosen profession. Civil service employees are negatively sterotyped as lazy workers while contractors are viewed as overcharging the government for services and not really caring about the mission. I believe that both of these views are generally false. I personally know federal and contract workers that are very dedicated to their jobs. It just happens to be very difficult to enter into the career federal workforce at this time. It is my sincere hope that the new administration will make some lee-way to improving both the federal hiring process and contract oversight.