Defense Secretary Takes Aim at Service Contractors Defense Secretary Robert Gates plans to replace 30,000 support-services contractors with government employees over the next five years. As he announced decisions to kill or delay several big-ticket weapons systems, Gates also focused on insourcing work performed by contractors, beginning with jobs he considers “inherently governmental.” He said the department will increase the size of the defense acquisition workforce by 15%, replacing 11,000 contractors with government employees and hiring 9,000 more government acquisition professionals by 2015, beginning with 4,100 in fiscal 2010. “We have to restore a professional acquisition cadre both in the [armed] services and in the department as a whole, and enough people to provide government employees who are overseeing this,” he told Pentagon reporters April 7. He said he agrees with congressional critics who want to stop the practice of “contractors overseeing contractors.”  Asked what functions he considers to be inherently governmental, he replied, “When it comes to acquisition, I think, above all, the oversight of the process is inherently governmental. How far down the chain you go beyond that, I think, is a judgment call.” Over the next five years DOD plans to hire 30,000 new employees to replace service contractors. Gates said that will reduce the number of support-service contractors from the current 39% of the department’s workforce to 26%, the level before the 2001 terrorist attacks. The department will conduct public-private job competitions to determine which jobs will be insourced, DOD spokesman Chris Isleib said. The competitions will take place as contracts expire. Gates’ plan reverses more than a decade of policies aimed at reducing the federal workforce, dating back to the Clinton administration. The Bush administration pushed public-private job competitions to determine whether work performed in-house should be outsourced. Federal employee unions vehemently fought that effort, but federal workers won the vast majority of the competitions. Stan Soloway, president of the Professional Services Council, urged Gates to take a strategic approach to determining a proper balance between contractor and in-house work. “A broad brush approach which assumes that all contractors providing contract support should be ‘insourced’ is unrealistic and unnecessary,” he wrote in a letter to the secretary. “Likewise, while many program offices lack adequate experienced technical staff to evaluate and oversee the work of non-government technical experts, it is also unreasonable to assume that all such contractor support is inappropriate or even undesirable.” Soloway applauded Gates’ effort to rebuild the acquisition workforce, but said the department may have trouble filling those jobs. Hundreds of acquisition positions throughout the government are currently vacant. While Gates’ proposed cuts in big weapons programs will face strenuous opposition in Congress, many members have expressed support for expanding the acquisition workforce.