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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

#171

Post by kwertyoowiyop »

cpursley wrote: post #67
yuppii wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are comparing existing, actual waste with your "imaginary" waste that might or might not happen... Go easy on the kool aid.

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.

Rich people get that way because they love money. Loving money means they want more and more and more, no matter how much they get.

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

#172

Post by ForHackernews »

ethbr1 wrote: post #102
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.

>> The pacts "represent non-essential spending on third party consultants" for services Pentagon employees can perform The irony is that they're cutting external solution providers to do more in-house. ... which means more work in-house. ... done by the same teams they just cut the size of. Without looking at government pay bands for specialty talent, I think the Pentagon is going to have a hard time doing this work…

Have you worked with body-shop consultants? I think I'd take my chances with an idealistic E-3.

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

#173

Post by nonethewiser »

ceejayoz wrote: post #122
kcatskcolbdi wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah can't wait until our Nation's Finest are having to use Grok Spectacles to identify enemy combatants.

Eh, that might work out. https://www.theverge.com/news/617799/elon-musk-grok-ai-donal... > Elon Musk’s OpenAI rival, xAI, says it’s investigating why its Grok AI chatbot suggested that both President Donald Trump and Musk deserve the death penalty. xAI has already patched the issue and Grok will no longer give suggestions for who it thinks should receive capital punishment.

What do you mean?

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

#174

Post by jimbob45 »

aqme28 wrote: post #46
yuppii wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are comparing existing, actual waste with your "imaginary" waste that might or might not happen... Go easy on the kool aid.

I'm no fan of the Pentagon and certainly think it's a money sieve, but why are you asserting that this $5.1B is "actual waste" and also not imaginary?

Deloitte and Accenture would be considered the worst US companies if Monsanto/Bayer and Nestlé didn’t exist. Their work is always waste.

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

#175

Post by pjc50 »

whimsicalism wrote: post #160
azemetre wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You cannot ultimately chain people to their desks. What you either get is a "soft" withdrawal of labour (people refuse to take the job if they have any other choice available, as we're discussing upthread, so you get dregs), or the whole thing explodes into "illegal" strikes. Which are harder to resolve, because you made sure there's no one organisation to negotiate with.

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

#176

Post by 1024core »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #156

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 somethin…

The Government _can't_ be streamlined because the right incentives are not in place, and human beings respond to incentives.

For example: if a bureaucrat does not use up their budget, it is (often) reduced proportionately in the next iteration. So these people have an incentive to use up the entire budget, if they want to have any hope of getting their requests next year. As a result, they will often do wasteful spending. I know this from experience, because in my previous life as code monkey in a small-ish government contractor, my boss had made it an art form to figure out who had extra money left over near the end of the fiscal year and pitch them ideas. A few 100K here, a few 100K there and the company was making decent money just mooching off of the leftovers from Federal budgets.

If you want to fix the Federal government, you have to incentivize the officials to be rewarded for saving money.

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

#177

Post by whimsicalism »

rtkwe wrote: post #152
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…

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…

i think we are approximately 30T beyond "slow and thoughtful approach to cutting". if you want your program to be considered carefully, pass it with the necessary tax increases to fund it. don't just punt the tax receipts problem to the next guy.

of course, if Trump is doing this all so he can pass his tax cuts as seems almost certain, he is no better. but frankly yes, the US needs deep cuts and concordant tax receipts increases to maintain a sustainable debt trajectory and price stability/productivity for the middle/working class.

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

#179

Post by ceejayoz »

nonethewiser wrote: post #173
ceejayoz wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, that might work out. https://www.theverge.com/news/617799/elon-musk-grok-ai-donal... > Elon Musk’s OpenAI rival, xAI, says it’s investigating why its Grok AI chatbot suggested that both President Donald Trump and Musk deserve the death penalty. xAI has already patched the issue and Grok will no longer give suggestions for who it thinks should receive capital punishment.

What do you mean?

I thought that was pretty clear; I mean that Grok's "unbiased" training seems to align it with anti-Musk positions pretty regularly. As such, I'm not super fearful of it being picked to run the US government right now.

Further examples: https://decrypt.co/310771/elon-musks-grok-ai-is-turning-agai...

> For instance, if you ask Grok: “Who is the biggest spreader of misinformation on X?” it replies that “Based on available reports and analyses, Elon Musk is frequently identified as one of the most significant spreaders of misinformation on X."

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

#180

Post by cbsmith »

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.

One of the great things about arbitrarily breaking contracts is that you save money in the short term, and signal future contractors that they need to charge even more exorbitant rates in future government contracts because you can never be sure if/when you will get paid.
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