US Gov't Pays IT Contractors Twice As Much As Its Own IT Workers

bdcny7927 writes "The U.S. federal government pays outside IT contractors nearly twice as much for computer engineering services as it pays its own computer engineers, and 1.5 times more for IT management work, according to a non-profit watchdog group. 'The study points out that IT specifically "is widely outsourced throughout the federal government because of the assumption that IT companies provide vastly superior skills and cost savings." The Project on Government Oversight says its salary comparisons prove that those cost savings are not being realized. However, the comparisons do not address any cost savings that might be achieved through the skills, processes or systems that private IT services companies might deliver. The POGO researchers say that the federal government itself does not know how much money overall it saves or wastes with its sourcing decisions and has no system for doing so.'"

Comments

Really?

[ccguy]

People having life time jobs make less than people willing to work on a day-by-day basis, with twice the hours, triple the productivity, working in any location the job requires? Really?

I hope this is the first of a series of articles called 'real life eye openers'. To be distributed among public workers worldwide.

Re:Really?

[GameboyRMH]

Do you have any first-hand experience with this? Because I do, and in my experience the contractors are pampered telecommuters who only physically pop in a few times per week.

In fact we had a big issue a few years back where we had to replace a bunch of contractors with full-time government workers because they are that much more expensive and an accountability nightmare.

And since I've already stated where I work, I was one of the people who replaced a contractor. I take in somewhere between a third and a half of what the contractor did and you bet your ass I get more done as a full-time employee, even on just the 1 or 2 duties that the contractor had vs. the many more I also have now.

Worth every penny

[GlobalEcho]

I am guessing that in about half these cases, at the individual level, the contractors are former government employees who weren't getting paid their fair market value by the public sector. Given that a good IT worker is worth about 5 times a medioce one and 20 times a bad one, they're probably a much better value, on average, than those "left behind". Consulting budgets and the like also let huge bureaucracies get necessary work done that is internally impossible because it is "not in the budget".

The other half these cases, I am also guessing, will prove to be unnecessary wastes of money even worse than typical government IT initiatives.