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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

#211

Post by Symbiote »

whimsicalism wrote: post #182
pjc50 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

the US has at-will employment, save it with the hyperbole. There are plenty of non-unionized jobs people would love to have. Collective bargaining against private actors is fine. There should be no collective bargaining against the democratic will of the people, any more than some random group of federal workers has veto power over law passed bu congress. It is simply not how democracy works.

> There should be no collective bargaining against the democratic will of the people

Presumably this also rules out any company or non-profit from negotiating a contract with the government, or suing the state.

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

#212

Post by arbor_day »

franktankbank wrote: post #191
_JamesA_ wrote: post #161

The big 3 get hired to protect managers. Hire a smaller consulting firm and the project goes sideways you both get fired. Hire a big firm and it goes sideways they get fired - until the next project.

Sounds like the contracts are not written correctly then.

Yup, sort of the whole point. There's a lot of cost plus contracts floating around here, which is a terrible incentive.

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

#213

Post by andbberger »

next_xibalba wrote: post #108
mikeocool wrote: post #75

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]

the rank and file just wants to do some science and have a place to lay their weary head. what's wrong with you man

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

#215

Post by Aurornis »

ibejoeb wrote: post #21

Kinda amusing that the general sentiment so far, in a forum filled with technology expertise, is that there is certainly waste in these budgets. But, when discussing the overall trend of cutting programs in other fields where the majority doesn't have that expertise, the conclusion is the opposite.

The internet comment section “pick a side and deride the other” doesn’t work on these situations.

Two things can be bad at once. The IT consulting can be too expensive. Cutting it all at once with no other plan can have disastrous consequences.

Rash moves like this are things politicians and corporate ladder climbers alike love to do, but then they run far away from the consequences. They know they can convince enough people that their bold move was a good thing and that the consequences will diffuse throughout the years on to other people.

This very well could become more expensive to cancel abruptly when you consider the second and third order effects.

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

#216

Post by giarc »

ForHackernews wrote: post #168
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.

At least that's cutting out the middleman -many big consulting firms are whitelabelling AI nonsense already.

Agree - train your employees to properly use a $200 ChatGPT subscription rather than rely on a $700/hr consultant doing the same thing.

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

#217

Post by heisenbit »

Consultants are misused if employed on a constant basis instead of employing enough senior staff directly. There are well known drivers on both sides that tend to promote such an unhealthy setup. What is concerning at the US government is not cutting consulting but at the same time cutting staff and on top creating a hostile environment for senior staff. This is unprecedented and is not something one would do in the private sector except the most dire circumstances.

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

#218

Post by timschmidt »

axpy906 wrote: post #70
bena wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Pentagon will never pass an audit. Some of that money goes into things the auditors do not have clearance for.

Didn’t they at one point fail to account for Trillions of dollars in their budget? How do you do that? The scale for me is unimaginable.

"September 10th, 2001 then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged to the American public that Pentagon can't account for 2.3 trillion" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FWFAs9ffGk

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

#219

Post by azemetre »

whimsicalism wrote: post #182
pjc50 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

the US has at-will employment, save it with the hyperbole. There are plenty of non-unionized jobs people would love to have. Collective bargaining against private actors is fine. There should be no collective bargaining against the democratic will of the people, any more than some random group of federal workers has veto power over law passed bu congress. It is simply not how democracy works.

Poppycock. Being able to collectively bargain against the government is more than legal, it should be encouraged.

They don't have veto power over Congress, it's about allowing workers to dictate the terms they seem fair for themselves against the US government. If Congress and the executive branch can't agree with labor terms with workers at the table, that's bad.

Not having unionized federal workers is way way way worse.

One thing I am curious about, how do you feel about police unions?

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

#220

Post by Angostura »

bitmasher9 wrote: post #145
aantix wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Salary banding doesn’t attract the talent you need. Maybe, good enough? E.g. Who would contribute to open source, speak at conferences, write blog articles, go above and beyond to outwardly contribute, only to be grouped with others to make the same? Terrible deal.

You can solve this by either having wide bands or by preferentially promoting those that make extra contributions. Just increasing the salary band would do a lot to attract more talent, which is a good-not-perfect solution. Last time I checked going to work at a federal job would have cut my total compensation in half, but if it was just a 20% cut I would have looked deeper.

Certainly within the NHS, except for exceptional circumstances you start at the bottom of the band, irrepective of talent/experience - moving up throught the band purely on time-served. Depressing
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