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Everyone needs their cut. The original contracting company's probably charging $100+ an hour. They sub it out to another company for $75/hr. Eventually it gets to someone who actually does the work for $55/hr or less. They think they're getting a good deal, meanwhile everyone's getting screwed, from the employee to the government agency, due to all these middlemen.

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The problem are the procurement rules. You want to make procurement as 'fair' as possible, but this makes the process lengthy, slow and costly. The only option or deal with this form the administration perspective is to to occasional big support contracts with generic terms, which then call in specific expertise when it's needed. The administration knows it's overpaying and getting 2nd rate service, but the alternative is to wait 2 years to launch a procedure and get a contract with hopefully the right guys. But the right guys rarely apply as the procurement rules are too complex to handle for any organisation that isn't specialised in handling procurement.

> Eventually it gets to someone who actually does the work for $55/hr or less.

In my observation, after 5-10 layers of indirection, it eventually ends up overseas with a young foreign national who makes $3 an hour and absolutely does not have the required security clearance.

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