Second Order Effects Premise of Article:
President-Elect Trump has proposed restricting government employees that are involved in government contracting from ever taking jobs with government contractors. At this point, there aren’t any details about what President-Elect Trump is proposing. For the sake of this article, we will assume the most restrictive policy that we can imagine and then propose policies that would actually work.
Background:
President-Elect Trump stated that “he would make it illegal for anyone that made or was involved in the selection of a company for a contract to ever work for any government contractor”. For anyone that has worked in government acquisition, this statement lacks some specificity and so we will add that in the following:
- If an employee ever works in an acquisition career field or is ever on a source selection team they will never be allowed to work for any company that has or even bids on a US Government contract.
- The policy isn’t retroactive, employees working on source selections started before the effective date of the policy are exempt
With these assumptions, the people that could be effected are:
- Acquisition Officials — These are the high level Government Officials that approve large procurements
- Contracting Officers and Procurement Officers — Every contract the government creates has to have a contracting officers approval
- Procurement Technical Evaluation Staff — These are the engineers and scientists that evaluate proposals on source selection teams
- Functional personal that are on a source selection team — If your buying an Airplane it is likely that a number of pilots will be involved in the source selection team
There are existing rules that restrict a government employee from cashing in on the contacts that they develop toward the end of their employment. Click here to see a summary of these rules.
Most government employees are experts in some area that the government has an interest. So it is normal when the employee leaves for them to leverage their respective skills to get a job with a company that needs their expertise. As an example, when a pilot leaves they go to work for the Airlines as a pilot. The problem with the president-elect’s proposed policy is that if the pilot ever worked on a procurement for anything, he could never go to work for any of the major airlines. All of the major airlines have contracts to carry US government employees. Based on the proposed rules above that pilot would be barred from working as a pilot.
Potential Second Order Effect:
There would be a lot of resignations and retirements on or before the effective date of the new policy. In addition, it would next to impossible to compel government functional employees to have any role in any procurement. If government employees would rather resign than work on a procurement, the whole system would grind to a complete halt. This would effect every aspect of delivering government services. The proposed policy would be as effective at shutting down the government as congress not passing a budget.
Potential Ways Forward to minimize Second Order Effects:
It is unlikely that the President-Elect really wants to shut the government down. As a good capitalist, he would understand that individuals can make chooses that would be in their best interest and that the policy that he stated is exceptionally broad and he would modify his position.