[therobot24]

Gov job in tech is like any other job, the best employees who can work together successfully to solve problems is best optimized over a wide area (spatially). There are other benefits of strong employee rights and stability in work, ability to transfer to other departments a pretty simple process (which opens the type of work you can do while still being employed so much easier), and good health/retirement packages. These are motivators for people to want to stay with the Gov when already hired in, but to new and existing talent that have more options, the lack of remote and/or telework can be make or break. If we actually want a Gov that can perform, because people do that work and thus would want good people, we should be not artificially constraining ourselves on how to achieve that goal.

[ca_tech]

The civilian government agencies spent 248B on contract services in 2023 [1]. Not all of that was professional services, but I expect that we will see an increase in that number as more services are contracted out and a decrease in direct government workforce; a government contractor can still work remotely.

[1] https://files.gao.gov/multimedia/Federal_Government_Contract...

[tomrod]

The mindset for acquisition is typically anything not core to an agency's mission should be bought on the open market at the lowest price technically acceptable. This tends to select against small businesses who can provide stellar services but can't just cut rates willy nilly for extended delivery time periods.

In effect, government contracting is a large jobs program.