For example, DoE should competitively award its management and operating contracts to the greatest extent possible and link the contractors' goals to DoE's strategic goals. However, it may take several years of continued implementation before tangible results can be documented and sustained. The fundamental reforms needed to correct these problems have not yet been formulated, much less instituted by DoD and the Congress. In addition, the managed care program suffers from excessive payment rates to HMOs and HCFA's weak oversight of the HMOs it contracts with. That wrongdoers continue to find ways to dodge safeguards illustrates the dynamic nature of fraud and abuse and the need for constant vigilance and increasingly sophisticated ways to protect against gaming the system.
Corruption is to contracting out what peanut butter is to jelly.
If the expenses incurred by the American taxpayers because of waste, fraud, and abuse are counted as costs of contracting out, then in-house performance of government services becomes even more clearly the superior option. Two prominent experts on contracting out have observed that corruption is built-in to contracting out and that contracting out cannot occur without corruption. If there is a lesson, it is that the incentives for a public servant who hires a contractor are inherently different from the incentives for a private entrepreneur who hires a contractor. The entreprenuer is interested in performance and nothing else. The public servant may trade performance for a personal gain.