“It’s close enough for government work,” the old joke goes. Actually, much “government” work these days is not done by government employees but by contractors. That’s because, over the years, the belief grew that the government employed too many people.

We could save money by contracting work to what many believed were more efficient business models, so the idea went.

However, the reduction led to backlogs for some agencies, like the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration.

In addition, as the The New York Times (January 3, 2014) pointed out: “ . . . the current practice of contracting out vast swaths of government work indefinitely . . . has created a bloated federal-contractor sector in which the public good is often subservient to profit.”

The outsourcing of work can seem unfair, for example, if a contract worker in a war zone makes a much higher salary than a soldier for Uncle Sam serving in the same area.

No one supposes government employees are all sterling characters. Oversight is required. However, they are generally hired for a particular job function. Unlike contractors, they are not there to make as much money as possible off the taxpayers.

When I worked in a U.S. embassy overseas as a career government employee, I cooperated with the information tech contractors who came to install new computer systems in the embassy. They were nice guys (all males, as I remember) and as far as I could tell did an adequate job with the new systems.

They went back to their hotel at five in the afternoon, followed by an evening out. I usually stayed another hour or so, taking advantage of the quiet to finish work.

If an American citizen called in with an overnight emergency, I came in and worked as long as necessary to find some resolution for the problem.

I had my job, and the contractors had theirs. Contracting makes sense in areas where the need for the work increases for a limited time or requires unusual expertise.

Certainly, U.S. government employees have been guilty of shoddy work, or worse, betraying their country. They take an oath, however, to obey the laws and Constitution of the United States and often develop pride in what they see as serving their country.

With the number of contractors in recent years found guilty of misusing their access to government documents, that sense of pride should not be lightly dismissed.