Outside Line

Should government be putting sensitive calls in the hands of contractors?

When the telephone rang last month, I picked up to find a gentleman wondering whether I would answer some questions about a friend of mine who's in line to be nominated for an ambassadorial post. I asked for evidence of credentials, and the caller said he would come in person to display them and to conduct the interview. Along the way, I asked whether he was an employee of the State Department. The answer was no, he was retired from State and working as a contractor for its diplomatic security service.

Most background checks now are outsourced. But still, I wondered whether State should be relying on an outsider to conduct a sensitive investigation with security implications.

As our cover headline implies, reliance on contractors for sensitive work is fast on the rise. John Negroponte, the government's new intelligence czar, might "end up presiding over a network of official agencies and outside analysts," writes Shane Harris. The CIA has orders from President Bush to increase its analyst workforce by 50 percent as soon as possible-with outsourcing, already common among intelligence agencies, a likely means of meeting the goal.

A presidential commission studying intelligence failures in Iraq recommended last month that the government rely more on private analysts focusing on open source information. Manhattan-based Eurasia Group is one firm already conducting sophisticated geopolitical forecasting, Harris reports. An important question is whether federal analysts will accord open source analysis the kind of credence they now attach to information stamped "Top Secret."

Outsourcing also is an issue in Shawn Zeller's story on government call centers. These operations, which handle millions of calls, comprise a success story, with government centers earning higher marks than private sector counterparts. Clever use of technology and good training contribute to high satisfaction rates among veterans and clients of Education Department programs, for example. But agencies relying on outsourcing haven't had such positive reactions and are left with the hope that time and experience will bring improved service.

Capitalization of asset-intensive agencies remains a huge problem. In this issue, Denise Kersten describes the government's ragtag firefighting air force, whose air tankers (operated by contractors) average 50 years old. And Katherine McIntire Peters reports on concerns that the Coast Guard's Deepwater program won't fund its capital needs at a time when, according to Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, "Coast Guard assets are failing at an alarming rate."

Congress, meantime, isn't in a generous mood. At the end of April, House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., noted with approval the House Budget Committee's tight cap of $843 billion on fiscal 2006 discretionary spending, which assumes a 1 percent cut in domestic programs. "I think this is a budget that our members will be able to move forward with and feel good about," he said.