The Homeland Security Department needs to rebalance its contractor-to-federal employee ratio, but the department shouldn't do anything until it thoroughly studies how many contractors it needs, the Professional Services Council (PSC) said today in a letter to lawmakers.

At a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing last month, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the department has about 200,000 contractors — a roughly 1-to-1 ratio with civilian employees. That prompted an outraged reaction from Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., the committee chairman, and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the ranking member, both of whom said that was too many. Lieberman called the numbers "shocking and unacceptable."

PSC's letter to Collins and Lieberman cautioned against DHS making any significant cuts until it studies its contracting needs.

"There's more rigorous analysis that needs to be done," Alan Chvotkin, executive vice president of the industry group, said in an interview. "What's the right number? The department doesn't know yet."

Chvotkin acknowledged that the department might be too reliant on contractors, particularly in areas of what he called "staff augmentation" — using contractors for acquisition management or human resources, for example. Lieberman and Collins also focused on those areas during recent congressional hearings.

"The sheer number of DHS contractors currently on board again raises the question of whether DHS itself is in charge of its programs and policies, or whether it inappropriately has ceded core decisions to contractors," Lieberman and Collins wrote in a letter to Napolitano last month.

Chvotkin said DHS would continue to need a substantial number of contractors, particularly for ambitious information technology projects like the SBInet "virtual fence" along the Mexican border and for the Coast Guard's Deepwater modernization program.

PSC also said prime contractors should give the department more detailed information on their subcontractors. Elaine Duke, the department's undersecretary for management, said in an interview earlier this year that DHS often doesn't know exactly how many contractors it has — because prime contractors won't divulge their subcontracting arrangements.

Chvotkin said that information should be available to the department when there's a compelling need for it, like when DHS needs to issue security credentials to contractors.

"We've never been a big fan of counting just for the sake of counting heads," Chvotkin said. "It's appropriate for the department to have visibility of who's doing the work ... but the numbers don't tell you anything; the number is going to change every single day."

Recent reports have documented a number of problems with contracts at the department: An inspector general report released last week, for example, found that DHS often doesn't follow federal procedures for awarding noncompetitive contracts. Napolitano said last month that the department plans to hire several hundred new acquisition managers to bulk up its procurement staff.