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

reuters.com

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

#151

Post by aerostable_slug »

ijustlovemath wrote: post #89
itsoktocry wrote: post #57

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.

Based on my personal experience and that of many others I know, that's about as wrong as one can get. A great many government workers are there to collect a paycheck and go home (just like many other people working for many other employers). Their commitment to 'the mission' hovers near zero.

Just ask them.

Where do people get these crazy ideas about government employees? There are some wonderful people in public service, but it's not some Wonkaland of saints who toil just to help others and do the right thing.

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

#152

Post by rtkwe »

Ekaros wrote: post #58
jghn wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the scale is a huge part of it. If some program has a $1mil budget and you were to tell me that 25% of it was wasted. Well who cares? $250k in the US budget is a rounding error on a rounding error. But if you were to tell me that 25% of the Pentagon's budget was waste? That's a big deal. Yet somehow a certain segment of our population tends to focus on the small fries.

25% waste on single million is not bad. 25% waste on all millions spend is very bad... And that 25% is likely under estimated in many cases. Or at least some more from 75% is inefficiently used. I admit probably not 25% of all millions is wasted. But even if that is half that would be 12.5% wasted... Or fourth 6.25%. Fixing of which would still be huge long term effect. So my take is that this needs to be fixed on al…

There's ways to do that that aren't the mindless slash and burn that's happening right now. If it were done thoughtfully I'm sure there's places that some fat could be trimmed. (And if you're looking for places to do that look at the Pentagon who hasn't passed an audit in living memory...)

Would it be worth the extra hurdles required to actually catch that waste/fraud though? My bet is on probably not, it's like the many many attempts to drug test welfare recipients, they all wind up costing far more than they save because the actual rate is pretty low so catching those is far more expensive than what you save.

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

#153

Post by burkaman »

itsoktocry wrote: post #57
NickC25 wrote: post #8

All fine and dandy until one realizes that the pentagon's budget is measured in the trillions, and this sort of deal probably doesn't even deal with mission critical stuff. That said, we do waste a ton of money on consultants, and the pentagon needs to trim its budget. Should also be noted that Pete Hegseth is a fucking moron, and some of these cuts probably hurt our national security readiness.

> 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.

Why? That seems completely wrong, based on my experience with both of these groups.

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

#154

Post by jedberg »

toolz wrote: post #29
mythz wrote: post #6

On the face of it cutting huge IT govt contracts sounds like a good choice to reduce waste, but with this administration I'm expecting any savings to be funneled to Grok/xAI/Elon.

Which isn't ideal, but easily better than the pentagon that has literally never passed a full audit since they started auditing them in 2018. I'm a huge fan of musk's company's, but I don't want my public tax dollars ever choosing winners/losers

Musk's companies fail their audits too. Tesla can't account for $1.4B of government money they received.

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

#155

Post by whimsicalism »

sepalous wrote: post #98
callamdelaney wrote: post #64

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 problem is there is literally no incentive to make sure you are hiring the right people in government. nobody is sacked if you dont make your numbers, xyz.

higher salary bands are a neccessary but not sufficient condition to get competent operators.

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

#156

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

I thought the interesting thing was this quote from Hegseth:

> The contracts "represent non-essential spending on third party consultants" for services Pentagon employees can perform, Hegseth said in the memo released late on Thursday.

I obviously don't know the details of these specific contracts, but the general sentiment that qualified federal employees can do better than overpriced private contractors is something I agree with, at least in broad brushstrokes.

But, that said, this would appear to be in direct opposition to DOGE and the Project 2025 playbook - here is a recent article, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/03/30/doge-pr....

This is why I hate what DOGE is doing. I could definitely get behind a coherent effort to streamline the federal government and save money - BTW, this was done rather successfully by Clinton and Gore in the 90s, who eliminated a huge portion of the federal workforce, they just didn't go on stage with chainsaws to promote it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Partnership_for_Reinv.... But now it's just "throwing bombs", and the overt corruption of the administration leaves me little faith that government will actually become more efficient with this current kakistocracy.

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

#157

Post by rahimnathwani »

rtkwe wrote: post #135
next_xibalba wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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…

What do you mean 'they were caught by the system already'?

Claudine Gay is still employed by Harvard. According to her Wikipedia page, she is the "Wilbur A. Cowett Professor of Government and of African and African-American Studies at Harvard University".

And she wasn't exposed by folks in academia, but by people outside that system.

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

#158

Post by BoingBoomTschak »

muttonhead wrote: post #82
cpursley wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't totally trust this DOGE crew and think we should keep a hawks eye on them but the whole "they are cutting waste so they can funnel the money to themselves!" conspiracy theories making the rounds are pretty bizarre... And to what end, aren't many of these people already extremely wealthy? I sure hope I'm wrong.

Because the amoral drive for extreme wealth doesn't stop at a certain level of wealth

If you have to explain your conspiracy theory with "the majority of these people suffers from the same special kind of neuroticism", I suggest you get back to your whiteboard.

Or you can keep living in a Disney reality where uncle Scrooges are the norm and not the exception.

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

#159

Post by rtkwe »

jghn wrote: post #63
Ekaros wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

25% waste on single million is not bad. 25% waste on all millions spend is very bad... And that 25% is likely under estimated in many cases. Or at least some more from 75% is inefficiently used. I admit probably not 25% of all millions is wasted. But even if that is half that would be 12.5% wasted... Or fourth 6.25%. Fixing of which would still be huge long term effect. So my take is that this needs to be fixed on al…

Sure. But the point is that the people who advocate cutting the waste never propose going after the big wins first. Instead we cut all the little things that actually helps people and use arguments to the effect that the waste was adding up in the aggregate. OR, we could just not spend a trillion dollars on the military.

And/or they decide on cuts by ^F "diversity" or "transition" cutting of programs like the US seed vault which stores a lot of different crop seed varieties so we can restart our agriculture if there's a blight that knocks out our massive monocultures but it's getting axed now because it protects crop _diversity_... and that's suddenly a kill word for funding because we're being run by ideologues and idiots.

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

#160

Post by whimsicalism »

azemetre wrote: post #140
koolba wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

unions should not be able to negotiate against the collective will of the people and seniority based leveling has been a disaster for the government in the US, at least.
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