> I would like to see the government (at all levels) have more in house capabilities and less absurd degrees of outsourcing.

This would help at all levels.

It's very difficult as a government employee to properly supervise contractors when you have little idea what those contractors are actually doing.

But it's hard to gain that experience when you don't actually ever do those things yourself either.

Empower competent people and the government can still succeed, even today. The issue is that everything seem stacked against the idea of either retaining competence or empowering those who are competent to do their work.

Aside from the very real attempts by people to defang the government by offloading all of its functions to the private sector, government is also undermined by an entirely different coterie of idealist, who believe that all the government needs is more process and coordination.

It's very hard indeed to retain competent personnel when they're needlessly mired in non-value-added process steps that are there simply to provide CYA box-checking.