There has been a long-standing policy, codified in the U.S. Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR), that functions intimately related to the public interest should only be performed by federal civil servants. Typically, these types of inherently governmental functions require either the use of discretion or the making of value judgments to apply government authority.
A formal governmentwide policy stating this notion has been in place since 1992, reinforced in law by the 1998 Federal Activities
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