Federal Times is a real niche publication. It bills itself as "The one-stop news and information service for Federal Managers," and its media kit claims "BPA AUDITED CIRCULATION of more than 40,000 government executives." So if you're not a government executive, you probably don't read Federal Times; and if you are, you do.

This matters because it gives some weight to the informal polls that Federal Times runs on its website. And these polls really are something. For example, it's one thing to complain about government waste in the abstract, but it is wholly another when 74 percent of government executives responding say that their offices' spending "could be trimmed through greater efficiencies and better planning without it hurting performance." Just look at the results:

How much of your office's spending do you think could be trimmed through greater efficiencies and better planning without it hurting performance?

Pretty amazing, no?

And take a look at this one:

Do you think your agency is wasting money sponsoring or sending employees to conferences?

And here's one more:

How often do you take sick leave when you are not really sick?

To sum up, 74 percent of government executives say that their offices could cut spending significantly with no impact on services, even with cuts of more than 20 percent; two-thirds of government executives can identify wasteful trips to conferences; and almost half of government executives play sick to take off of work.

The good news is that there's so much room for improvement; the bad news is the same. From a policy perspective, we wonder that competitive sourcing wouldn't address the lax and wasteful budgeting and work procedures behind these poor results. The basic idea is that government workers compete with private-sector entities in submitting bids for the functions that they now perform. This makes sense especially when the functions are not inherently governmental, such as: trash collection and recycling programs, janitorial services, facilities management, motor vehicle service and repair, operation of prisons and jails, data processing, park maintenance, etc. Why shouldn't private firms do these tasks, at lower costs to taxpayers and often far greater efficiency than government workers?

Of course, government workers' unions are dead set against their members having to compete for work. (After all, isn't that part of why they joined the government to begin with?) And the unions have had some success in slowing the spread of competitive sourcing. But Federal Times has some good news on that front, too:

Are federal employee unions losing their clout?

Nice.