There are something like 1.8 million actual fed civil service employees, but 14 million people who actually do the work of the US Government.
For
many fed jobs, there is no lack of applicants these days- so the lowest qualified individual may in fact be very suitable for the position. Folks with Masters degrees are applying for jobs that require only high school- just to get their foot in the Fed door. So in a room full of Doctorates lowest qualified might still be able to cure cancer.
If you are quoting a contractor and not a Fed employee then that's ok as long as they meet the terms of their contract.
The Fed is doing away with Time-in-Grade on March 9th so now experience from outside the Fed can be taken into account for hiring, promotion and the like should be an interesting change for the Federal service.
As for National Comm Centers and the Federal service, the one that comes to mind that, in the past,
had a less than stellar reputation was the FPS Mega-Centers which at one point were staffed by private security personnel who replaced local FPS dispatchers. Here is a recent
solicitation.
I do not know the current status of this and have not heard anything in some time.
On that note, those positions were likely done away with legally but replaced with a questionable personal service contract.
By law, The Federal Government must protect civil service and is not allowed to enter into any personal service contract (unless specifically allowed by statute-very rare) where the job is performed ANYWHERE else in Fed Civil Service, where the person will be working in the agency's core mission, or where budget limitations prevent hiring an FTE and can not supervise or formulate policy. So there are lots of potentially non-kosher personal service contracts out there I guess.
