Contractor Civil Service Movement

(MoneyWatch)  As in the last post I wrote about the former civil servant being convicted of fraud for creating a contract job demonstrates there is a lot of movement between civil service and contractors. A good example of this is that President-elect Obama has hired a former Clinton appointee, Martha Johnson, who worked at the General Services Administration (GSA) in the 90's to be the head of his GSA transition. As FCW.com reports Ms. Johnson is currently a Vice President at Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC).
Companies hire former and retired civil servants as they often are the only people with the knowledge and skill required to do the job. They also hire them as they continue to have contacts in the places where they used to work which aids marketing. This is why retired military officers, especially senior ones, are also quickly hired. One of the major issues of this is that like in the case referenced above contract fraud can occur. Jobs and contracts may be created to benefit the newly retired government worker or their company. That is one of the reasons it can take a while to award a contract as there should be several steps of review; one of which is to prevent this from happening.