Gee, as a result of Bill Clinton’s “Reinventing Governmnent” initiative, basic functions of government were outsourced, things like supervising contractors.

The common sense descrption of this is letting the fox run the henhouse.

Case in point, the FAA :

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration isn’t properly monitoring costs and potential ethical violations in contracts related to improvements in the nation’s air-traffic systems, an audit found.

Practices for selecting and overseeing contracts awarded since 2010 for work related to the so-called NextGen project are “not sufficient,” the Department of Transportation’s Inspector General said in a report released today.

The seven contracts examined, awarded to companies including Boeing Co., CSSI Inc., ITT Corp. and General Dynamics Corp., are valued at as much as $7.3 billion, the largest cumulative award in FAA history, according to the report. The contracts are for technical and professional support of new systems to let the FAA track aircraft using satellite navigation instead of radar.

The agency didn’t verify labor rates charged in five of seven contracts, according to the report. The FAA overestimated the labor hours required, the auditors found.

Basically, if you use contractors, and you don’t watch them like a hawk, they will do whatever they legally can to maximize profits.

The you can call this “capitalism”, or you can call it “maximizing shareholder value”, but it’s what managers are supposed to do.