“there is a strange lack of curiosity about what they really do and how they do it”
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the ‘civil servants’ workforce is supplemented by an army of contractors who do a lot of the serious work that feds do not want to do, or simply cannot do. Most of this shadow workforce goes largely unnoticed by the public.
Bingo.
I witnessed this quite a bit in the military. One of our worst was software that government civilians oversaw that absolutely had to be updated but the GS civilians couldn't get it right for 18 months.
One day we got a heads up that a civilian contractor was coming to the base. The contractor told us, "I don't know who you called as our company NEVER does government work." He was done in three days with the software working perfectly. Three days, one of which was just making sure everyone in that office knew how to use it without all the workarounds.