Pentagon Will Soon Count Contractors – At a Cost

The Defense Department has a tough time counting the number of service contactors it employs because it contracts for the service, not for personnel, Comptroller Robert Hale told a hearing of the Senate Budget Committee Wednesday.

Hale said Defense pays for roughly 700,000 service contractors today, and at the request of Congress will soon develop a system to identify how many people work on each of its contracts.

Counting all those contractors will “cost money,” Hale said, though he did not specify exactly how much.

Does this mean the well-compensated vendors will charge the Pentagon to count their workforces? If so, maybe they could offer it up as a freebie to help Defense save money.