Outsourcing National Security Initiative

The culture of contracting has become so pervasive that it risks blurring the boundaries between who is the government and who is the contractor.

Largely beyond public awareness, the Clinton and Bush (43) administrations have revolutionized the U.S. government’s means of governing. This is especially pronounced in the realm of national security where the government's toolbox has been shifting from the public sector into the private. Corporations daily stand in for the government in making policy and performing “inherently governmental functions,” de facto becoming the government. The contracting out of policy making itself highlights issues that go to the core of the government’s raison d'etre and raises the question of who is running whom -- the contractors or the government. 

The Outsourcing National Security Initiative, funded in part by the Ford Foundation, examines the outsourcing of U.S. national security policy with an eye toward the implications for the government’s capacity to act in the national and public interest. The Initiative focuses on the three primary agencies responsible for national security and foreign aid policy: the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of State’s U.S. Agency for International Development. 

The Initiative aims to create and inform public discussion on a core set of vital issues. It will critically examine the long-held assumptions surrounding national security contracting: (1) that “inherently governmental functions” are retained in house and that outsourcing is motivated by efficiency concerns; (2) that contracts are awarded through competitive, transparent processes; and (3) that government officials oversee the work that is contracted out.

It will also explore the arenas in which government is losing its monopoly on making public policy; the opportunities for the privatization of information and the fusions of state and private power that are being created; and the affects of the present model of outsourcing on national security capacities. Finally, the project seeks measures that might be taken to remedy shortcomings in these practices.

The Outsourcing National Security Initiative is directed by New America Foundation Fellow Janine Wedel.