Vacancies at the Pentagon

Interesting story here of the number of high-level vacancies in the Obama Defense Team at the Pentagon. It would have been nice to see how this level compares to other recent administrations, but my Spidey-senses tell me this is a bit slower than usual. Part of the problem might be getting people to go through the increasingly onerous process of confirmation, part of the Bloodsport that is Washington DC. And part of it might be the rules that Mr. Obama has put in place, rules that on one hand starve the system of superior talent and insight by excluding lobbyists, while on the other hand sending the message that leaving a financially rewarding private sector job to work in the Administration will render you largely unable to return that life due to ethics restrictions.

There is also a capacity issue. The Administration has taken on a large number of ambitious policy initiatives simultaneously, and I get the feeling that even if there were sufficient capacity left at the White House to push/call/cajole the right members into moving forward, there is increasingly little excess capacity on the legislative end of Pennsylvania Avenue to respond.

DOD's got another issue that it is working through right now, and that is the "in-sourcing" question. Secretary Gates is pushing hard to reduce the number of contractors at the Pentagon and replace them with full-time government employees. Even under the best of conditions, the civil service system moves slowly; but there is a huge slug of reclassification/new position requests moving through the system all at the same time, and it will not be quickly ameliorated. Add to this the problem senior government defense executives are having in attracting the kind of talent they desire to newly classified GS-13/14/15 jobs (currently contractor positions filled by highly paid ex-Captains and Colonels) and you can see the conditions forming for the same kind of capacity gap forming in the "ranks" at DoD as there is now in the leadership.


Bryan McGrath