The True Size of Government

Abstract

Chapter 2 provides detailed estimates of the total number of employees who work within the government-industrial complex. The estimates show the changing distribution of federal, contract, and grant employees between 1984 and 2015: the total government-industrial headcount held steady from 1984 to 1995, dropped sharply from 1995 to 1999, and accelerated to a forty-year high in 2010 before falling sharply by 2015 and holding steady in 2017. These patterns form the basis for detailed histories of the five administrations in office during the period and ends with an early snapshot of the Trump administration’s policy. The history compares inaugural promises with the eventual effects of each administration. The chapter also examines the key decisions that produced the rise, fall, rise, and then fall again in the true size of the government-industrial complex. The chapter ends with a history and assessment of the major personnel caps, cuts, and ceilings used to constrain federal employment between 1940 and 2017. This section ends with a discussion of the impacts of each action.

Agile Corps - A Public Service-Learning Program Part I

“…This large group of contractors doing most of the federal government work is called the contractor shadow government. When departments use an acquisition process involving contractors or vendors to build software technology instead of hiring internal talent to do it, the contractor shadow government grows [48][49] .…”

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“…All these entrepreneurial objectives, reforms, and activities in public management have significant critical implications for its public accountability. For instance, market‐driven competition and individualistic customer choice may weaken collective people's power and public interest (Romzek, 2000); result‐based performance management can diminish procedural and hierarchical accountability (Martin, 1997); excessive deregulation of service delivery may create potential for public sector corruption (Therkildsen, 2001); and multi‐stakeholder governing structure may generate confusion about who is accountable to whom (Light, 1999).…”