Offshoring key federal government functions????

It seems to me that government must be responsible for its e-government functions, namely its website and citizen services provided online. All in all, I'm usually pretty pleased with the US government's websites. I recently went to the IRS page and used a rather useful calculator to do some planning. The calculator seemed to work fine, but soon things got interesting.

I clicked on a link that promised to explain estimated payments. The information in the window that popped up was not understandable and contained an obvious error, so, good doobie that I am, I reported the problem to the website helpdesk.

When you submit something to the IRS helpdesk, the website helpfully advises you to add irs.gov.website.helpdesk@speedymail.com to your approved email sender list.

Speedymail.com????? Well, boys and girls, we've outsourced the IRS website helpdesk to a company called AFFINA, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Hinduja Group, which was "started in Sind, the cradle of the Indus Valley Civilization, where more than 5,000 years ago, the human race learnt its first lessons in organized business and banking."

Now don't get me wrong: I am not actually opposed to offshoring because it can be efficient for firms and helpful for developing economies. (I am, though, a rather enthusiastic supporter of "inshoring," setting up call centers in poorer parts of the US to provide jobs at home. Besides, those people from Arkansas are so nice!) But to get back to my story . . .

I think of this as simple syllogism:

Government services should be performed by nationals of the country in question (whenever possible).
Government services in the information age include e-government services.
Therefore, e-government services should be performed by nationals of the country in question.

Have we reached the point of our de-development that we do not have enough competent people in this country to handle website customer care for the IRS? Is it really the right choice (I don't mean the cheapest choice, I mean the appropriate choice for a public function) to be outsourced?

Tomorrow is election day in Maryland. Maybe we can get the votes counted in India.

Sigh.