Could the federal government operate without contract employees? Short answer: Probably not.

Should the federal government operate without contract employees? Short answer: Probably not.

Contractors have been part of the federal establishment since the Revolutionary War. Providing services for Uncle Sam became a big deal during the Civil War and even bigger since World War 2.

Originally, most contractors worked for the War (later Defense) Department. Now they are doing all sorts of jobs, from collecting taxes to sorting mail and even reviewing the work of contractors, for the government.

There are slightly more civilian contract employees, than uniformed military personnel, currently in Iraq.

In many federal agencies, except for the color of the ID badge, it is hard to tell a contract employee from a full-time civil servant. It is even harder for outsiders. People who don’t work for the government often can’t/don’t/won’t distinguish between a sworn civil servant and a contract employee.

Takes the State Department… Please!

When the news about passport snooping broke, the media went into an understandable feeding frenzy. Visions of a new “Watergate” scandal surely visited many reporters and editors. First it was revealed that Sen. Barak Obama’s personnel data had been perused. Later it was learned that the unauthorized (and one would hope illegal) snooping extended to the personal data of Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain. All three just happen to be presidential candidates. They’ve been the story de jour for months.

The passport data included information like birthdates and Social Security numbers. All you need to have an all-expense-paid weekend anywhere by charging it to Johnny McCain or Barry Obama.

Much of the media, both TV, radio and the print press, reported that three State Department employees (at least) were involved. When I heard it, I assumed they were civil service or foreign service. But what the media meant, but rarely got it right, was that the three individuals were “contract” employees. That’s a technical detail to some.

CNN and the Associated Press were careful, high up in their stories, to identify the snoopers as contract employees, not feds. But in many, if not most, other reports (especially the headline news on TV and radio) it sounded like the naughty snoopers were State Department employees. Period.

So, does it really matter if the public, and maybe some of the candidates, confuse contract employees with civil servants?

Consider: Sometime around the year 2000 a respected research group asked Americans to name four federal government employees. And the top four were:

Monica Lewinsky

Cliff Claven

Linda Tripp

Newman

Lewinsky was a White House intern. You’ve probably heard of her.

Tripp worked with Lewinsky, and was in fact a fed. She has since retired from the government.

Newman and Claven were regulars on the TV sitcoms, Seinfeld and Cheers. Both played postal workers. They were very, very funny but not the image the USPS likes to project.

But the famous four were the best-known “government” workers according to a national survey.

Is that funny, or sad?

Nearly Useless Factoid

Why it’s hard to keep a secret from a moose: turns out their antlers act like natural hearing aids.

To reach me: mcausey@federalnewsradio.com

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