i honestly could not find any root cause analysis in that article that i agree with. it is not a problem of “too few bureaucrats”, it is that the contract procurement process is not competitive, nor is literally any other process on the government side, including meta processes like the bureaucrat hiring and selection process. the entire govt side system top to bottom has evolved in a world where money does not matter and the contractors have simply evolved to the constraints of that interface to get at the money the way a plant grows towards the sun.
... i actually considered becoming a "civil servant" after this experience to try to help (on either the govt side or private side), but I could not see a viable way to actually make a difference, even a small one. Everything is so jammed up and deadlocked with outrageous anti-competitive regulation —go learn what is "IDIQ" "SPARC" "8(a) STARS II" "GSA IT Schedule 70"—that it's not actually possible for a startup to bid these contracts without partnering with the 800 lb gorillas and therefore becoming a part of the thing that you are trying to destroy. "Disruption does not come from within"
Because of the existence of [1] FedRAMP and other compliance initiatives that are blanket applied to everything even though 90% of SaaS contracts do NOT need it, and [2] past performance being predominantly the #1 factor for evaluation, contracting itself is an enforced oligopoly.
You need to be a big-ish company to enter, and will have to kiss the feet of existing oligarchs.
