WASHINGTON – A US Congress commission is to consider whether private contractors such as Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater, should be allowed to continue to provide armed security for convoys, diplomatic and other personnel, and military bases and other facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq. The bi-partisan commission will over two days cross-examine 14 witnesses from academia, government and the companies themselves.
"Some security tasks are so closely tied to government responsibilities, so mission-critical, or so risky that they shouldn't be contracted out at all," says Christopher Shays, a former Republican member of congress from Connecticut.
Shays is the co-chair of the Commission on Wartime Contracting (CWC), a body created in early 2008 to investigate waste, fraud and abuse in military contracting services in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The commission is expected to reveal results from a seven-day fact-finding trip to Iraq last month in which spot checks on four military bases turned up a contracting company hired to protect a military base that had not been vetted even though they had dispatched hundreds of employees. At another base, individual security guards were identified who had not undergone proper background checks.
The thorny question of what is "inherently governmental" and what can be turned over to contractors was singled out for attention by President Barack Obama in March 2009, when he ordered the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP), a department within the White House's Office of Management and Budget, to come up with an answer.
By some estimates, as many as half the staff members at US government civilian agencies are temporary and even long-term specialists from the private sector, a trend that accelerated in the past decade. For example, a controversial program known as A-76, begun by the administration of former president George W Bush, forced selected government agencies to prove that they were more efficient than the private sector or "outsource" the work.
The Pentagon caught the outsourcing bug when former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered that the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 be conducted with no more than 150,000 troops. Almost by default, the military turned over as much as it possibly could to private contractors, with little guidance on how to do so.
Today, every US soldier deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq is matched by at least one civilian working for a private company. All told, about 239,451 contractors work for the Pentagon in battle zones around the world – of which roughly one in five is a US citizen, two out of five are from the country at war and the remaining workers are from third countries, according to a census taken by the Pentagon's Central Command in the first quarter of 2010.
While this workforce is mostly made up of legions of low paid workers from South and Southeast Asia who do menial tasks such as cooking and cleaning up after the troops, the protection of senior diplomats and supply convoys as well as military bases and reconstruction projects is also handled by men (and a few women) with guns who work for private companies with exotic names like Four Horseman and Blue Hackle.
The Commission on Wartime Contracting estimates that 18,800 "private security contractors" work in Iraq and some 23,700 in Afghanistan.
Basic questions
The Commission on Wartime Contracting public hearings on June 18 and 21 will attempt to take a step back and ask some very basic questions about whether using private armed security is a good idea at all or how it should be done better.
Some technical guidance has been forthcoming from the Obama administration. In late March 2010, Daniel Gordon, the head of OFPP, issued a draft memo on "inherently governmental activities" that suggested applying a "nature of the function'' test to ask agencies to consider whether the direct exercise of sovereign power is involved, that is, committing the government to a course of action.
Michael Thibault, the other co-chair of the commission and a former deputy director of the Defense Contract Audit Agency, told Federal News Radio recently that part of the problem is that the government has been hiring the "lowest price technically acceptable" contracting.
Eventually, Thibault said, contractors will "get up to speed but it's going to take a lot of time and it's silly. Why would you do that? And should they be doing that?"
Others say that the problem is lack of proper regulation. "Armed private security contractors always pose some risk to civilians but factors that increase risk such as a more dangerous environment, jobs that require movement, and poor oversight make the use of private security more suspect," said Deborah Avant, a professor of political science at the University of California (Irvine), and author of Private Security: The Market for Force, told Inter Press Service.
Avant will be one of the six witnesses who will testify before the commission on Friday together with Allison Stanger, professor of international politics and economics at Middlebury College, Vermont, and author of One Nation Under Contract.
In a recent publication for the Washington, DC-based Center for a New American Security, Stanger wrote: "We do not need in-sourcing; we need smart-sourcing that can restore proper government oversight while harnessing the energy and initiative of the private sector for the public good."
Also testifying will be John Nagl, a retired US Army officer who is best known for his book Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counter-insurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam.
Non-governmental expert Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, and two former government officials who now work in private industry have also been invited to testify: Allan Burman, the former administrator of OFPP who is now president of the Jefferson Solutions consulting firm, and Stan Soloway, former US deputy under secretary of defense for acquisition reform, who is now president of the Professional Services Council, an industry lobby group.
On June 21, the Commission on Wartime Contracting will hear from government officials on the same subject as well as representatives of four companies: DynCorp International, Aegis Defense Services, Triple Canopy; and Torres Advanced Enterprise Solutions.
The question of whether war zone private security is an inherently governmental function is not black and white, a panel of academics, federal watchdogs and industry officials testified on Friday. A host of factors, including cost, agency competency and risk, influence whether guard work is best left to federal employees, witnesses told the congressionally chartered Commission on Wartime Contracting.
The panelists agreed that while some private security work should be brought back in-house, labeling all the functions as inherently governmental — and therefore prohibited from outsourcing — would unnecessarily strip agencies of decision-making authority and create budgetary problems for the Obama administration.
"While there appears to be a rough consensus that there are some functions so intrinsic to the nature of American government that they should never be outsourced, there is little or no consensus about precisely what those functions are," said John Nagl, president of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank.
In March, the Office of Management and Budget's procurement policy division published a proposal for drawing distinctions among functions that are inherently governmental, close to inherently governmental, or critical, and defined as jobs in which at least a portion of the work "must be reserved to federal employees in order to ensure the agency has sufficient internal capability to effectively perform and maintain control of its mission and operations." The draft regulation also asked for public comment on how to classify guard jobs.
Allan Burman, former administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy and author of 1992 inherently governmental guidelines, argued it would be prudent to designate security as critical, allowing agencies to decide for themselves the best path forward based on internal capability and resources, while ensuring the work is subject to enhanced management oversight.
"There needs to be a judgment made rather than taking an all-encompassing position across the board saying 'this is or is not inherently governmental,'" said Burman, who now serves as president of the consultancy Jefferson Solutions.
At this point, the issue is little more than a theoretical exercise. More than 40,000 private security guards support U.S. operations in Southwest Asia, predominantly in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Defense Department has acknowleged it does not have the personnel or the resources to perform these functions, including guarding convoys, embassies and personnel. The State Department's Diplomatic Service — whose mission most closely mirrors that of private security contractors — has even less capacity with fewer than 2,000 agents overseas.
"There was, and today still is, no realistic way for the U.S. or coalition forces to provide the necessary levels of force protection for the thousands of projects and tens of thousands of American, Iraqi, and third-country personnel performing the reconstruction and development missions," said Stan Soloway, president and chief executive officer of the Professional Services Council, an Arlington, Va., contractor trade association.
The witnesses fought back attempts from the commissioners to classify specific functions, such as convoys or personal security, as inherently governmental, preferring to implement a nuanced approach that bases the decision on a host of potential risk factors.
For example, Allison Stanger, a professor of international politics and economics at Middlebury College in Vermont, argued guards who protect personnel or convoys on the move are performing inherently governmental work, while those who are static could be contractors.
But Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a federal watchdog group, said the inherently governmental distinction should be based on whether there are laws in place to manage, oversee and punish private security contractors.
"Whether the security is mobile, static, or some other type shouldn't play a role," Brian said. "Providing security to government personnel, facilities and property in areas that are under the rule of law may be done by contractors. Providing such security in areas that are not under the rule of law may not."
Deborah Avant, a political science professor at the University of California, told the commission it should avoid simplistic definitions for inherently governmental that operate in a vacuum irrespective of real-word implications.
"Instead, this judgment should be made by examining the risk factors, including the threat environment, characteristics of the job and level of command and control, that elevate or lower the threat the service poses to private individuals, to the U.S. mission and policy, or to both," Avant said.
The commission's examination of security guards will continue on Monday, with witnesses from the Defense and State departments and the U.S. Agency for International Development expected to testify. A second panel will include executives from four private security firms. http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0610/061810rb1.ht…
One-size-fits-all rules and definitions that direct all agencies on what jobs are, in fact, inherently governmental functions don’t work, experts say.
* By Matthew Weigelt
* Jun 18, 2010
Members of a panel of experts told the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan that the concept of an "inherently governmental function" is unclear and, thus, one-size-fits-all rules and definitions that direct all government officials on what jobs are inherently governmental functions don’t work.
“You don’t want to be boxed in” when making these decisions, said former congressman Christopher Shays, co-chairman of the contracting commission.
An inherently governmental function refers to a job that only a federal employee should do, nor should it be outsourced. For example, only a federal employee can sign a contract on the government's behalf that obligates the expenditure of tax money.
Related stories
'Inherently governmental' defies quick definition
Workforce balance boomerangs toward insourcing
Senators press for broader definition of 'inherently governmental'
Experts say a contractor in an inherently governmental function might be able to unduly influence the government toward a course of action.
The commission’s June 18 hearing centered on answering the question of whether private security contractors are performing inherently governmental functions when they are in or outside a war zone. Similarly, some experts have asked whether agencies should keep from outsourcing information technology systems and IT services because they are critical to whether an agency meets its mission.
Al Burman, former administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) inside the Office of Management and Budget and now president of Jefferson Solutions, said agency officials should decide whether a job is an inherently governmental function based on the circumstances.
As for security contractors in war zones, the government should use government employees if the agency has them, several members of the panel said. Outside those situations, the security jobs can be outsourced, as they often are.
“Everything is different in an active combat zone,” said Stan Soloway, president of the Professional Services Council.
For security work and other jobs where the definition of inherently governmental is questionable, agencies should ask whether the work is a "critical function," another new concept, Burman said.
Currently, OFPP officials are working on clarifying the concept of inherently governmental function, as they proposed a policy letter in March. The proposal offers questions for agency officials to ask when faced with figuring out if a job is inherently governmental. OFPP also offered two other terms: “closely associated with an inherently governmental function” and “critical function.” Each is another step further away from the government employee-only positions.
These closely associated and critcial functions have become important as they help government officials decide where they should focus their employees. Federal agencies are working to build up their workforces so they don't rely so much on contractors to accomplish their mission.
About the Author
Matthew Weigelt is acquisition editor for Federal Computer Week.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LF18Ak01…
Armed Contractors in Firing Line
Asia Times
18 June 2008
By Pratap Chatterjee
WASHINGTON – A US Congress commission is to consider whether private contractors such as Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater, should be allowed to continue to provide armed security for convoys, diplomatic and other personnel, and military bases and other facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq. The bi-partisan commission will over two days cross-examine 14 witnesses from academia, government and the companies themselves.
"Some security tasks are so closely tied to government responsibilities, so mission-critical, or so risky that they shouldn't be contracted out at all," says Christopher Shays, a former Republican member of congress from Connecticut.
Shays is the co-chair of the Commission on Wartime Contracting (CWC), a body created in early 2008 to investigate waste, fraud and abuse in military contracting services in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The commission is expected to reveal results from a seven-day fact-finding trip to Iraq last month in which spot checks on four military bases turned up a contracting company hired to protect a military base that had not been vetted even though they had dispatched hundreds of employees. At another base, individual security guards were identified who had not undergone proper background checks.
The thorny question of what is "inherently governmental" and what can be turned over to contractors was singled out for attention by President Barack Obama in March 2009, when he ordered the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP), a department within the White House's Office of Management and Budget, to come up with an answer.
By some estimates, as many as half the staff members at US government civilian agencies are temporary and even long-term specialists from the private sector, a trend that accelerated in the past decade. For example, a controversial program known as A-76, begun by the administration of former president George W Bush, forced selected government agencies to prove that they were more efficient than the private sector or "outsource" the work.
The Pentagon caught the outsourcing bug when former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered that the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 be conducted with no more than 150,000 troops. Almost by default, the military turned over as much as it possibly could to private contractors, with little guidance on how to do so.
Today, every US soldier deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq is matched by at least one civilian working for a private company. All told, about 239,451 contractors work for the Pentagon in battle zones around the world – of which roughly one in five is a US citizen, two out of five are from the country at war and the remaining workers are from third countries, according to a census taken by the Pentagon's Central Command in the first quarter of 2010.
While this workforce is mostly made up of legions of low paid workers from South and Southeast Asia who do menial tasks such as cooking and cleaning up after the troops, the protection of senior diplomats and supply convoys as well as military bases and reconstruction projects is also handled by men (and a few women) with guns who work for private companies with exotic names like Four Horseman and Blue Hackle.
The Commission on Wartime Contracting estimates that 18,800 "private security contractors" work in Iraq and some 23,700 in Afghanistan.
Basic questions
The Commission on Wartime Contracting public hearings on June 18 and 21 will attempt to take a step back and ask some very basic questions about whether using private armed security is a good idea at all or how it should be done better.
Some technical guidance has been forthcoming from the Obama administration. In late March 2010, Daniel Gordon, the head of OFPP, issued a draft memo on "inherently governmental activities" that suggested applying a "nature of the function'' test to ask agencies to consider whether the direct exercise of sovereign power is involved, that is, committing the government to a course of action.
Michael Thibault, the other co-chair of the commission and a former deputy director of the Defense Contract Audit Agency, told Federal News Radio recently that part of the problem is that the government has been hiring the "lowest price technically acceptable" contracting.
Eventually, Thibault said, contractors will "get up to speed but it's going to take a lot of time and it's silly. Why would you do that? And should they be doing that?"
Others say that the problem is lack of proper regulation. "Armed private security contractors always pose some risk to civilians but factors that increase risk such as a more dangerous environment, jobs that require movement, and poor oversight make the use of private security more suspect," said Deborah Avant, a professor of political science at the University of California (Irvine), and author of Private Security: The Market for Force, told Inter Press Service.
Avant will be one of the six witnesses who will testify before the commission on Friday together with Allison Stanger, professor of international politics and economics at Middlebury College, Vermont, and author of One Nation Under Contract.
In a recent publication for the Washington, DC-based Center for a New American Security, Stanger wrote: "We do not need in-sourcing; we need smart-sourcing that can restore proper government oversight while harnessing the energy and initiative of the private sector for the public good."
Also testifying will be John Nagl, a retired US Army officer who is best known for his book Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counter-insurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam.
Non-governmental expert Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, and two former government officials who now work in private industry have also been invited to testify: Allan Burman, the former administrator of OFPP who is now president of the Jefferson Solutions consulting firm, and Stan Soloway, former US deputy under secretary of defense for acquisition reform, who is now president of the Professional Services Council, an industry lobby group.
On June 21, the Commission on Wartime Contracting will hear from government officials on the same subject as well as representatives of four companies: DynCorp International, Aegis Defense Services, Triple Canopy; and Torres Advanced Enterprise Solutions.
Comment by headjundi — Friday, June 18, 2010 @ 8:18 AM
Guard work defies easy labels
By Robert Brodsky rbrodsky@govexec.com June 18, 2010
The question of whether war zone private security is an inherently governmental function is not black and white, a panel of academics, federal watchdogs and industry officials testified on Friday. A host of factors, including cost, agency competency and risk, influence whether guard work is best left to federal employees, witnesses told the congressionally chartered Commission on Wartime Contracting.
The panelists agreed that while some private security work should be brought back in-house, labeling all the functions as inherently governmental — and therefore prohibited from outsourcing — would unnecessarily strip agencies of decision-making authority and create budgetary problems for the Obama administration.
"While there appears to be a rough consensus that there are some functions so intrinsic to the nature of American government that they should never be outsourced, there is little or no consensus about precisely what those functions are," said John Nagl, president of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank.
In March, the Office of Management and Budget's procurement policy division published a proposal for drawing distinctions among functions that are inherently governmental, close to inherently governmental, or critical, and defined as jobs in which at least a portion of the work "must be reserved to federal employees in order to ensure the agency has sufficient internal capability to effectively perform and maintain control of its mission and operations." The draft regulation also asked for public comment on how to classify guard jobs.
Allan Burman, former administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy and author of 1992 inherently governmental guidelines, argued it would be prudent to designate security as critical, allowing agencies to decide for themselves the best path forward based on internal capability and resources, while ensuring the work is subject to enhanced management oversight.
"There needs to be a judgment made rather than taking an all-encompassing position across the board saying 'this is or is not inherently governmental,'" said Burman, who now serves as president of the consultancy Jefferson Solutions.
At this point, the issue is little more than a theoretical exercise. More than 40,000 private security guards support U.S. operations in Southwest Asia, predominantly in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Defense Department has acknowleged it does not have the personnel or the resources to perform these functions, including guarding convoys, embassies and personnel. The State Department's Diplomatic Service — whose mission most closely mirrors that of private security contractors — has even less capacity with fewer than 2,000 agents overseas.
"There was, and today still is, no realistic way for the U.S. or coalition forces to provide the necessary levels of force protection for the thousands of projects and tens of thousands of American, Iraqi, and third-country personnel performing the reconstruction and development missions," said Stan Soloway, president and chief executive officer of the Professional Services Council, an Arlington, Va., contractor trade association.
The witnesses fought back attempts from the commissioners to classify specific functions, such as convoys or personal security, as inherently governmental, preferring to implement a nuanced approach that bases the decision on a host of potential risk factors.
For example, Allison Stanger, a professor of international politics and economics at Middlebury College in Vermont, argued guards who protect personnel or convoys on the move are performing inherently governmental work, while those who are static could be contractors.
But Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a federal watchdog group, said the inherently governmental distinction should be based on whether there are laws in place to manage, oversee and punish private security contractors.
"Whether the security is mobile, static, or some other type shouldn't play a role," Brian said. "Providing security to government personnel, facilities and property in areas that are under the rule of law may be done by contractors. Providing such security in areas that are not under the rule of law may not."
Deborah Avant, a political science professor at the University of California, told the commission it should avoid simplistic definitions for inherently governmental that operate in a vacuum irrespective of real-word implications.
"Instead, this judgment should be made by examining the risk factors, including the threat environment, characteristics of the job and level of command and control, that elevate or lower the threat the service poses to private individuals, to the U.S. mission and policy, or to both," Avant said.
The commission's examination of security guards will continue on Monday, with witnesses from the Defense and State departments and the U.S. Agency for International Development expected to testify. A second panel will include executives from four private security firms.
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0610/061810rb1.ht…
Comment by headjundi — Friday, June 18, 2010 @ 4:39 PM
http://fcw.com/Articles/2010/06/18/what-exactly-i…
When is a position inherently governmental?
One-size-fits-all rules and definitions that direct all agencies on what jobs are, in fact, inherently governmental functions don’t work, experts say.
* By Matthew Weigelt
* Jun 18, 2010
Members of a panel of experts told the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan that the concept of an "inherently governmental function" is unclear and, thus, one-size-fits-all rules and definitions that direct all government officials on what jobs are inherently governmental functions don’t work.
“You don’t want to be boxed in” when making these decisions, said former congressman Christopher Shays, co-chairman of the contracting commission.
An inherently governmental function refers to a job that only a federal employee should do, nor should it be outsourced. For example, only a federal employee can sign a contract on the government's behalf that obligates the expenditure of tax money.
Related stories
'Inherently governmental' defies quick definition
Workforce balance boomerangs toward insourcing
Senators press for broader definition of 'inherently governmental'
Experts say a contractor in an inherently governmental function might be able to unduly influence the government toward a course of action.
The commission’s June 18 hearing centered on answering the question of whether private security contractors are performing inherently governmental functions when they are in or outside a war zone. Similarly, some experts have asked whether agencies should keep from outsourcing information technology systems and IT services because they are critical to whether an agency meets its mission.
Al Burman, former administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) inside the Office of Management and Budget and now president of Jefferson Solutions, said agency officials should decide whether a job is an inherently governmental function based on the circumstances.
As for security contractors in war zones, the government should use government employees if the agency has them, several members of the panel said. Outside those situations, the security jobs can be outsourced, as they often are.
“Everything is different in an active combat zone,” said Stan Soloway, president of the Professional Services Council.
For security work and other jobs where the definition of inherently governmental is questionable, agencies should ask whether the work is a "critical function," another new concept, Burman said.
Currently, OFPP officials are working on clarifying the concept of inherently governmental function, as they proposed a policy letter in March. The proposal offers questions for agency officials to ask when faced with figuring out if a job is inherently governmental. OFPP also offered two other terms: “closely associated with an inherently governmental function” and “critical function.” Each is another step further away from the government employee-only positions.
These closely associated and critcial functions have become important as they help government officials decide where they should focus their employees. Federal agencies are working to build up their workforces so they don't rely so much on contractors to accomplish their mission.
About the Author
Matthew Weigelt is acquisition editor for Federal Computer Week.
Comment by headjundi — Sunday, June 20, 2010 @ 2:01 AM