Robert Reich The White House announced yesterday the troubled website for logging onto Obamacare would be fixed by the end of November. What went wrong? The contractors who designed it are busy blaming each other (when they’re not blaming the government). Meanwhile, the National Security Agency’s contractors aren’t doing much better. Those now building the NSA’s huge Utah Data Center are plagued by electrical failures. The NSA contractor (Booz Allen Hamilton) that hired Edward Snowden failed to uncover Snowdens past security violations at the CIA. And we all remember Halliburton. While federal government employment keeps shrinking (the government has fewer employees today than it’s had since 1966), contractors are doing ever more. According to the Washington Post, close to 30 percent of the workforce in the intelligence agencies is now contracted out, as is a growing portion of military operations, information technology, research, and large projects like the Obamacare website. It’s been a bonanza for private, for-profit contractors along with their armies of lobbyists and consultants. But as the mounting scandals reveal, the privatization of government has not been particularly good for the public. Contractors are blissfully unaccountable to anyone – except their shareholders.
Posted on: Sun, 27 Oct 2013 13:29:55 +0000
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