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Someone Is Waging a Secret War to Undermine the Pentagon’s Huge Cloud Contract

defenseone.com

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Re: Someone Is Waging a Secret War to Undermine the Pentagon’s Huge Cloud Contract

#91

Post by pc86 »

zero_intp wrote: post #62
scrumper wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This applies just as much to private sector RFPs too. If you're a vendor and you get an RFP out of the blue, you're not going to win it. RFI process is usually far more open.

My first job in the '80s was doing RFI/RFP shotgunning for a mom & pop (my mom & pop) defense consulting firm out of the GSA register. We would essentially cold-respond to everything in our domain. From that experience I learned that there were some genuine requests with no fix in.

There definitely are! However if it's an established contract (most of my experience) or a big contract, the odds of it going to an unknown entity are slim to none. But it's certainly possible to break into it as a small unknown firm, you just have to start by picking up the scraps.

Re: Someone Is Waging a Secret War to Undermine the Pentagon’s Huge Cloud Contract

#92

Post by thaumasiotes »

closeparen wrote: post #90
thaumasiotes wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The practice is called "single-sourcing". It's pretty clearly an example of corruption; the entire purpose of single-sourcing a contract is to defeat the RFP, or bidding-out, process. A decision is being made by someone who isn't supposed to have the authority to make it.

Do you drive the cheapest contraption that could technically haul you from A to B? Did you type this on the cheapest thing capable of making HTTP requests? Do you live in the cheapest structure capable of maintaining its interior at a non-life-threatening temperature? I submit that lowest-bidder rules are patently absurd. People who have to deal with something day in and day out ought to have the authority to select…

If lowest-bidder rules are patently absurd, how does that stop bypassing them from being "corruption"? You have a job and you purposefully cheat at it by doing something you're explicitly prohibited from doing. It's just as corrupt whether you think the results are good or bad.

Re: Someone Is Waging a Secret War to Undermine the Pentagon’s Huge Cloud Contract

#93

Post by closeparen »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #92
closeparen wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you drive the cheapest contraption that could technically haul you from A to B? Did you type this on the cheapest thing capable of making HTTP requests? Do you live in the cheapest structure capable of maintaining its interior at a non-life-threatening temperature? I submit that lowest-bidder rules are patently absurd. People who have to deal with something day in and day out ought to have the authority to select…

If lowest-bidder rules are patently absurd, how does that stop bypassing them from being "corruption"? You have a job and you purposefully cheat at it by doing something you're explicitly prohibited from doing. It's just as corrupt whether you think the results are good or bad.

The contract is not "the job," but a means to some other end. Corruption is not a synonym for rule-breaking. It implies a subversion of legitimate purpose, serving the wrong master, prioritizing the wrong interest.

Rigging a bid in a way that compromises the real task at hand in order to personally enrich yourself is clearly an example of corruption. Rigging a bid in (what you think is) the interest of the task at hand, but in violation of contracting rules, is rule-breaking and insubordination but not corruption.

Re: Someone Is Waging a Secret War to Undermine the Pentagon’s Huge Cloud Contract

#94

Post by derefr »

ohthehugemanate wrote: post #14

Well... To be fair, it's an AWS spec sheet reworded as an RFP. Other cloud providers - even Google and Microsoft - can't meet the requirements, because they don't have the same marketing jargon. For example, there's a requirement in the RFP for a "ruggedized" storage product. That's a made up word that Amazon uses to describe AWS Snowball, so no other company satisfies the requirement. Some other AWS-only requirement…

> "ruggedized" ... [is] a made up word that Amazon uses

I'm pretty sure "ruggedized" is a common term for pseudo-milspec computer hardware. You see it on the marketing of regular ol' external USB hard disks quite a lot. If Microsoft and/or Google had a product of the same type, they'd very likely use the same adjective to describe it.

Re: Someone Is Waging a Secret War to Undermine the Pentagon’s Huge Cloud Contract

#95

Post by derefr »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #67
guiomie wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is right. Not sure if it's called corruption tho. No one is getting paid on the side.

The practice is called "single-sourcing". It's pretty clearly an example of corruption; the entire purpose of single-sourcing a contract is to defeat the RFP, or bidding-out, process. A decision is being made by someone who isn't supposed to have the authority to make it.

To turn that around, RFPs themselves are an example of populism, where a meta-decision (the algorithm to choose the winner) has been drafted to play well to voters' ears, rather than to actually accomplish anything. The decision-making process has been corrupted by political pandering.

"Defeating an RFP", then, is frequently (behind closed doors) agreed to be in the best interest of good government. A chosen expert—despite the bad optics—can do better (usually much better) than the RFP process.

I'm not sure "corruption" is the right word for this, since the goal here isn't to line anyone's pockets, but actually to choose the consequentially optimal, highest-ROI option. It's not quite "two wrongs making a right"... maybe "three lefts making a right?"

Re: Someone Is Waging a Secret War to Undermine the Pentagon’s Huge Cloud Contract

#96

Post by joncrane »

bhouston wrote: post #57
joncrane wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even necessarily corruption. The company they're wiring the bid for may indeed be the best option, they are just trying to minimize inefficiency. Having said that, just as often, it's due to cronyism.

> Having said that, just as often, it's due to cronyism. The line between cronymism and efficiency is in the eye of the beholder.

If you look at some of the protests that have been filed, the protesters are often worse than the awardee.
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