DIA General Counsel: Green Badgers as Unreliable Employees

In a letter to the editor of the Washington Post last Friday, the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Lt. Gen. Michael Maples responded to the WaPo story that the DIA was outsourcing a record $1 billion.

Gen. Maples writes:

The proposal is a consolidation of more than 30 existing contracts into a single contract vehicle that can be more effectively managed. Hence, this posting is not a "record" in outsourcing intelligence activities; rather, it is a better way of aggregating existing requirements.

Now it's a clever defense that the contract is not record-setting since these services are already outsourced--we're not doing anything eye-popping--we did that a long time ago; it's just that no one was looking.  Given the Beltway love of word parsing, it is also worth noting that no where does the general claim that that $ 1 billion of current contracts are being canceled or replaced.  We have no idea as to the size of the 30 existing contracts that will be folded into the new contract vehicle.

One real question it raised for me was in the statement, "DIA contractors currently represent about 35 percent of our workforce."  It's a tough one to reconcile with an unclassified presentation at a conference in May by the Office of the General Counsel of the DIA included this enlightening slide:

 

Now can anyone help me understand this?  If it's true that contractors make up only 35% of the workforce of the DIA, why are they 51% of the personnel in DIA office space?  Is the DIA that generous with its office space?  Or are we perhaps looking at yet another case of numbers parsing to minimize the real issue?

Call me naive, but I'm guessing the DIA *loves* to share its office space with green badgers, wanting them to feel comfortable in big, roomy offices where they can exercise their "fiduciary duty to their employer only," while applying their "profit motive" to do the DIA's work to "diverse and different standards".... 

Now I'm guessing the same thing is going on at Headquarters where those blue badger government employees with their "taxpayer funded salaries" are probably doing everything they can to provide comfortable, generous office space to their green badger workforce.  Perhaps yet another way for the blue badgers to fulfil their "fiduciary obligation to serve the public good" through their "universal and strict conduct standards" might be requiring all blue badgers to use public transportation so that the green badgers don't have to deal with the hassle of the current parking crunch at Langley.  We can't forget, green badgers are part of the public those blue badgers serve.  At the very least, the blue badgers could move to the back of the parking shuttle and let the green badgers sit in the front.  After all, as the General Counsel of the DIA points out, "contractor can reassign employees from one contract to another at whim," so it makes sense to give green badgers unobstructed access to the nearest exists...

Perhaps DIA leadership should have consulted its own General Counsel before contracting out $1 billion of intel services with the goals of adding "greater flexibility to realign government resources, improve oversight and be more responsive, with potential savings in cost and manpower."  This slide suggests that the Office of the General Counsel might not be in agreement.

It could very well be that outsourcing some DIA intel services could be a good thing, but before doing so, many issues need to be resolved.  Given the difference between government employees and contract employees as viewed by the Office of the General Counsel of the DIA itself, the real question the press, Congress and the public should  be posing to Generals Maples and Clapper and others at the Pentagon is: 

• Why do they intend to increase their number of contract employees when they recognize such inherent problems with the employment model? 
• Can the DIA afford $1 billion of staff who are paid a "private business salary" when it's own government staff receive "taxpayer funded salaries"? 
• Can the DIA really afford $1 billion of staff who do not have a fiduciary duty to the DIA, but to another entity? 
• Can the DIA afford $1 billion of staff who have "diverse and different standards?"  Can the DIA afford $1 billion of staff who contractors can "reassign from one contract to another at a whim"? 
• And can the DIA afford the coming green badger morale crisis when those current contract employees who occupy 51% of DIA office space get squeezed to wedge in the new $1 billion of green badger staff?  Could it be they're counting on their blue badgers to feel the squeeze, do their "fiduciary obligation to serve the public good" and suck it in even more.

Happy Labor Day.

Comments

[Steve Jones]

So, contractor employees are making a private business salary by working for a corporation on contract with the government, and their salary isn't taxpayer funded? How many hands does it have to pass through to become NOT taxpayer funded? Just the one?

Blue badge or green, it's all taxpayer funded.

Happy Labor Day, RJ, and the rest of you, whatever color your badge.

[R J Hillhouse]

Steve,

I think the big question with intel outsourcing is: how many hands does it have to pass through so that legal restrictions upon the government don't apply? Just one?

RJH

[Steve Jones]

You're right, R J, that is the big question. The DIA general counsel's answer to both our questions is yes, just one.

Thank you for keeping this very informative weblog. I've learned a lot.

[Jeff Carr]

Considering the recent IG report on the failure of the DHS ADVISE program (4 years of development, $43 million spent, and it still doesn't work), I'm confident that there are some sound benefits that can be derived from the privatization of intelligence, HOWEVER, what really worries me is if the same people who are building these boondoggles like ADVISE are resigning from the IC only to re-sign with a contracting company. If that's the case, we'll just wind up paying more money for the same FUBAR'd processes.

[Brian Drake]

My friend turned me on to this blog of your RJ. I think you raise some very thought provoking questions. You are right to point out the inconsistency of the contractor statistics (35% vs. 51%). Obviously, the DIA General Counsel's Office is neither the Acquisition Executive Secretariat of DIA nor DIA Public Affairs. This is unfortunate, since both OPA and AE probably have better data at their disposal than the lawyers. Especially since the lawyers indicate on their slide that the data is over 2 years old. In that time, we've had a new Director for DIA who has made an effort to reduce the contractor workforce and put more warfighters into the defense intelligence cycle.

[R J Hillhouse]

Thanks, Brian,

Great to hear the blog is being discussed at the INSA/ODNI Analytic Transformation Conference!

Also good to see that the Fingar email memo drummed up a few attendees. I'd love to hear how it's going and what stakeholders outside the IC have been located and who are attending.

Whereas the efforts to reduce contracted workforce might have been there, it's very difficult to imagine that such a significant drop in the contracted workforce could have occurred in such a short time frame--especially when current anecdotal evidence and evidence in the form of the current $1 billion RFP seems to point elsewhere.

Any idea what contracts/functions have been reabsorbed by the DIA?

RJH

[Retired]

The comment "...put more warfighters into the defense intelligence cycle." is kind of intriguing. Does this refer to uniformed intelligence personnel, or actual combat arms types?

[Ralph Hitchens]

That DIA slide is complete nonsense. Government employees and contractors alike are paid what the market will bear. The government seldom has much problem filling its ranks, and if the General Schedule prescribes salaries below what functionally-equivalent contractors make, there are usually reasons why the fed jobs don't go begging -- better job security & benefits, for starters. "Diverse and different standards" for contractors? Nonsense. Every departmental manual governing classified activities in my agency (DOE) has a Contractor Requirements Document that spells out what our responsibilities are, and gosh, they seem to be pretty much identical to those of the feds. Anyone who thinks a contractor can reassign staff members "on a whim" is living in a dream world. Theoretically, perhaps, but not in real life. I have to ask, who benefits from this sort of thing, pitting feds against contractors? If you keep calling us mercenaries, eventually we will start acting like mercenaries in stead of the dedicated de facto civil servants that we are.

[Jay]

After several computations, revisions and nights without sleep, this is the definitive explanation: those contractors are bigger and fatter, needing more office space than the government employees.
Why are they fatter? Do they getter fatter bonuses? Are the government employees just slender, slim secretaries (while the big guys are out to combat) and the contractors desk-jockeys? Or do the contractors only eat junk food but the employees Vietnam-war left-over C-rations?
More research needs to be done - this deserves a comprehensive study. Expect results earliest around March 2008.

[Pat Quinn]

To someone without any knowledge of this topic, the answer of why there are more contract employees in office space seems obvious (and not very controversial). They probably contract secretarial, cleaning, and similar office work activities. Field work and other more technical matters would be handed by employees.

[maynet]

Every departmental manual governing classified activities in my agency (DOE) has a Contractor Requirements