Editorial: The real debate
As people fret about perceived ethical issues, what they are really concerned about it whether the government is over outsourced.
In this place in our previous issue, we talked about the ethics frenzy that seems so pervasive. We want to reiterate that we do not discount the importance of ethics. But we are still concerned that the frothiness about ethical issues has detracted from a healthy debate about competitive sourcing.
As an example of this debate’s absurdity, we turn to the New York Times’ June 25 column by Frank Rich, titled “The Road From K Street to Yusufiya.” In that column, Rich painted just about everyone with the broad brush of corruption and unethical behavior.
He argued that homeland security grant cuts for New York and Washington, D.C., were somehow tied to a contract that the Homeland Security Department has with Booz Allen Hamilton because, of course, the company “now just happens to employ Greg Rothwell, who was the department’s procurement chief until December.”
In fact, Rothwell does not work on DHS projects at Booz Allen. Furthermore, Rothwell is hardly the poster child for the revolving door. The government was not simply a pit stop on the way to a higher-paying job. He came to the company only after a long career as a fed.
Such broad accusations of corruption are unfair.
The rising fury of accusations coincides with the increase in outsourced government work. Combined with the ballooning number of federal employees who are eligible for retirement or are leaving government for salaries at market value, the climate is ripe for ethics accusations.
The primary concern, it seems, is the Bush administration’s competitive sourcing initiative, which Rich described as “a plan to outsource as much of government as possible by forcing federal agencies to compete with private contractors and their K Street lobbyists for huge and lucrative assignments.”
By Rich’s assessment, competitive sourcing has resulted in “low-quality services at high cost: the creation of a shadow government of private companies rife with both incompetence and corruption.”
In reality, industry is doing more work because of the federal government’s workforce issues. And in most competitions between the K Street lobbyists and federal employees, the feds win. Competitive sourcing is worth debating. But the conversation should weigh facts rather than smear the people working to make a difference.