The Defense Department will get nearly 20,000 new civilian and military billets in 2011 to perform work now done by contractors.

The White House budget calls on the department to cut its reliance on contractors via insourcing — particularly in the area of acquisition support. It is unclear how many contractor employees do the work that eventually will be done by those additional 20,000 personnel.

Nearly 5,000 of the 20,000 insourcing positions will perform contract support services, according to the budget. Those 5,000 positions will be part of an overall 10,025-person increase in the department's acquisition workforce.

Defense also intends to improve oversight of contracting operations that support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. To do this, the department has committed to keeping filled 98 percent of the positions at the Joint Contracting Command for Iraq and Afghanistan and 85 percent of contracting officer representative positions in Iraq and Afghanistan, to ensure contractor-performed work is properly overseen.

Other departments are similarly promising better performance in their acquisition programs. The Homeland Security Department, for example, intends to increase the number of projects that are not exceeding 10 percent of their cost, schedule or performance objectives. The department has vowed to increase the number of projects meeting cost, schedule and performance objectives from 45 percent of major acquisitions to 60 percent of major acquisitions.

An acquisition performance goal was also set for the Small Business Administration, which helps small firms obtain government contracts. The Office of Management and Budget wants SBA to take the lead in increasing small-business participation in federal contracting by promoting federal contracts to small-business owners. Outreach will help the executive branch meet its congressionally mandated 23 percent small-business contracting goal.