A report from the Senate Appropriations Committee on a spending bill for DHS expresses concern that the department is relying on contractors to perform functions "more appropriate for in-house federal employees or to perform functions closely supporting inherently governmental functions. Without stronger oversight, the risk of Government decisions being influenced by, rather than independent from, contractor judgments increases."
The report said that when the department was first established in 2003, relying on contractors to assist in the merger was expected. But it cited a GAO report finding that the department continues to rely heavily on contractors to fulfill its mission needs with little emphasis on assessing the risk and ensuring management control and accountability.
The report said that for departmental operations, the number of contractors exceeds the number of federal employees (approximately 1,400 to 1,340).
"The Department’s reliance on contractors has also created a void of in-house programmatic experts and institutional knowledge that is critical to meet current and future challenges. The cost of a large contractor workforce also places a significant fiscal burden on departmental operations," the report said–in the Office of Intelligence, for example, a contractor costs 60 percent more than a federal employee.
The report said that DHS should strategically address workforce deployment and determine the appropriate role of contractors in meeting its mission and required a briefing by no later than March 30, 2009, on efforts to meet these objectives, including conversions of contract to in-house work achieved and projected by fiscal year.
