Private meets public.

• Author: Howley, Kerry
• Position: Soundbite - Interview with Stephen Goldsmith and William Eggers - Interview

As mayor of Indianapolis in the 1990s, Stephen Goldsmith pioneered the privatization and decentralization of city services. Now a Harvard professor of government, he and William Eggers, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, have written Governing by Network (Brookings) to help other leaders enact similar reforms-and to avoid some common pitfalls. Assistant Editor Kerry Howley interviewed the authors last January.

Q: Where is federal privatization headed?

Eggers: Every year, more and more of the federal government relies on private firms and consultants to deliver goods. It dramatically increased under Bill Clinton, it's increasing under George Bush, and it will increase under the next president. In Iraq during the first Gulf War, there were 50 soldiers to every contractor. In the last war, it was one contractor to every 10 soldiers. They've become embedded in just about every aspect of warfare.

Q: Wasn't that part of what led to problems at Abu Ghraib?

Eggers: There weren't enough contract managers over there involved in this. There is really no doubt about that, for how large some of these contracts were and how many contractors there were.

But you need to look at what we have been able to accomplish. The technological capability that we showed during Operation Iraqi Freedom would never have been possible without this new...