Almost two-thirds of the workforce at the Business Transformation Agency, a Pentagon shop slated for the chopping block, is made up of contract employees, according to figures obtained by Federal Times under the Freedom of Information Act.
Of 1,124 workers, 725 are contractors, 375 are civilian and 24 are military personnel, the figures show. In announcing his decision to close BTA within the next year, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last month that the agency employed “approximately 360 people.” Gates was apparently referring only to government civilian employees.
Federal Times filed the FOIA request after repeated attempts to obtain the workforce information from Gates’ office went unanswered. So far, no response from a Pentagon spokeswoman this afternoon on the contractor ratio.
Although BTA was created several years ago to modernize DoD’s business practices, Gates said at the Aug. 9 news conference that its focus had shifted more “to day-to-day oversight of individual acquisition programs, a function that can be performed by a number of other organizations.”
