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Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte

reuters.com

131–140 of 684 posts

Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte

#131

Now the UK should swiftly follow suit in sacking these cowboys. The taxpayer is being charged extortionate rates in some cases for fresh graduates who know effectively nothing at all about what they talk about. At the same time, we should increase salary banding for technical roles to the market rate. We will get the experience we need for much, much less.

I agree. The government could be made hugely more efficient through the use of technology. However, the civil service simply doesn't pay enough to attract the talent it needs. Therefore, we are left with little option but to pay consultants more to deliver these contracts. The total cost to the tax payer is higher; it doesn't make sense! It is reductive to say that we just need to pay more, however. The civil service…

> The government could be made hugely more efficient through the use of technology. However, the civil service simply doesn't pay enough to attract the talent it needs.

They should start by disbanding all government employee unions for GSA workers and eliminating all seniority based promotion criteria.

Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we do waste a ton of money on consultants I bet the median skill of a Deloitte consultant is higher than that of the average government office worker.

Perhaps, but the profit motivation is completely different. One's there to serve and the other to bill hours.

Both are there to collect a check. One can get fired for doing nothing and the other cant.

Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't know if they're actually cutting waste here. DOGE has already had to do a massive climb-down from saving $1000B to saving $105B, but most of that $105B has not been shown to be true. Actual cuts may only amount to a few billion.

> Actual cuts may only amount to a few billion. And that's assuming the cuts don't have any fiscally counterproductive knock-on effects. Which they certainly will.

Do we even have a way of estimating the billions it will cost to resecuritize our infrastructure? What about the cost in lost soft power? The total knock on effect in loss to the economy for not subsidizing basic research, that led to the U.S. being a major power in medicine & pharma? This is the very definition of penny-wise–pound-foolish.

Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have experience in technology and biomedical research. IT consultants, particularly from the large firms, are very overpriced for the value they provide. Blindly cutting NIH grants (even some of the ones that sound silly on paper) and funding for research institutions is doing great harm to progress in modern medicine. Multiple things can be true at once.

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And they got caught by the system already... You can't just snap your fingers, destroy the entire apparatus of academia and get it back again on a whim. It'd be a century or more to rebuild fully if you really did try to start over again.

The impulse to cheat is even exacerbated by thinner funding not fixed by it because you're pressed extremely hard to get results to justify the next grant, and your tenure board in 5 years, and there's basically no grant money for replication and no prestige at all.

Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No chance. The median consultant is a fresh graduate. The median government office worker actually knows something.

I have met plenty of fresh graduates who know more and are much more productive than older people.

I have met many new consultants. Most were less productive than experienced people.

There are exceptions but few.

Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have met plenty of fresh graduates who know more and are much more productive than older people.

I have met many new consultants. Most were less productive than experienced people. There are exceptions but few.

Generally I have been found "experience" to be highly overrated and companies that lean harder on it to be typically legacy/declining/european companies.

Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have experience in technology and biomedical research. IT consultants, particularly from the large firms, are very overpriced for the value they provide. Blindly cutting NIH grants (even some of the ones that sound silly on paper) and funding for research institutions is doing great harm to progress in modern medicine. Multiple things can be true at once.

[flagged]

So two people lied and you wanna get rid of the system that caught them?

Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte

#140
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. The government could be made hugely more efficient through the use of technology. However, the civil service simply doesn't pay enough to attract the talent it needs. Therefore, we are left with little option but to pay consultants more to deliver these contracts. The total cost to the tax payer is higher; it doesn't make sense! It is reductive to say that we just need to pay more, however. The civil service…

> The government could be made hugely more efficient through the use of technology. However, the civil service simply doesn't pay enough to attract the talent it needs. They should start by disbanding all government employee unions for GSA workers and eliminating all seniority based promotion criteria.

Yes because if it’s one thing workers like is removing their bargaining power and relying solely on how future administrations feel about your job.
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