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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

#431

Post by t-writescode »

grandempire wrote: post #419
tclancy wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By whom?

This comment by saying it will be disastrous. Remember all the twitter predictions?

Underfunding and breaking of, for example, unemployment benefits systems causes real harm, real loss of medication, real loss of house, etc.

But that won't make the news in any meaningful way, and the destitute will often be too busy to make loud noises. And the populous at large will sigh and shake their head and say "what a shame", but the loss can be *enormous*.

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

#432

Post by jrochkind1 »

In some departments (say Social Security) they want to switch from in-house staff to contractors, and in others they want to switch from contractors to in-house staff?

The US government has been moving to privatized contractors in most of it's work for some time, across many administrations and both parties.

Based on what I know of Trump, I'd have expected that to continue. Maybe it is everywhere except for special treatment for DoD? Or maybe this is just a fake and it won't be this way for DoD either. I don't have much idea what is going on.

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

#433

Post by NegativeK »

leguminous wrote: post #279
heisenbit wrote: post #217

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…

Part of the reason the US government needs to use consultants is because they can't actually pay enough to hire senior developers directly due to the constraints imposed by the GS pay scales. Often times the top levels of the pay scale aren't even available because there is some rule about how people can't be paid more than someone else. So instead they pay for consultants and all of their overhead. (Of course there…

Pay is a common one from the employee's side.

From the manager's side, it nearly takes an act of fucking god to open up a new position. Citizens pay attention to the number of employees, and they get mad about it. You really don't want to be the one to cause citizens to angrily call elected officials if you're in an appointed government position (i.e., an at-will employee.)

I have an unsexy government job. I've seen the leader of a pretty well funded government org get mad at IT for asking for three new positions one year. The IT group was roughly 100 positions, and it was acknowledged that it was understaffed in some key areas. One group with an annual software license budget higher than their employee budget asked for and was denied a single new spot.

Instead, that org's IT asked for and received budget for contractors. Contractors definitely cost more and can absolutely produce lower quality work. Their knowledge is gone when their contract is done -- so, best case, it's a multi-year contract that's similar to just hiring the damn person, but it ends up being way more expensive.

My current employer is even stricter.

In a similar vein, I've some friends who worked at a hush hush defense facility. The vast majority of the people at the facility are hired through a contractor. The employees are unionized, have a pension, and when a new contractor wins the bid, they have to agree to keep the staff in their current positions. I'm sure that weirdness is due to a mix of pay scales, hush hush reasons, and probably other reasons that I'll never know.

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

#434

Post by EasyMark »

jimmydoe wrote: post #7
jpgvm wrote: post #2

Finally they actually cut something that should be cut.

I'll believe it when they cut Palantir contracts

This right here tells you everything you need to know. Follow the money. Which companies pay the most in lobbying/trips and Venn diagram that with those who got cut and you won't find much overlap. I'm not sure why reporters aren't tapping into these stories that write themselves. Also Thiel is in tight with this administration

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

#435

Post by idrios »

Anecdotally, a friend of mine works for a state department of transportation and has been trying to get a developer and a DBA to replace some people who've recently left.

He's been having an insanely hard time finding anyone for the role, and not because of salary requirements. He's required to vet candidates through approved sources and so his department uses a recruitment firm that keeps sending him resumes from people who are substantially lying about their experience and maybe also their identity. I tried recommending someone I knew who I knew had a lot of db experience and was job searching, and he said he wouldn't be able to interview the guy because he wasn't from an approved source.

His best recent hire was a woman who understood the system well enough to create her own firm, get it govt approved, and then get herself hired as a consultant.

Bear in mind I'm just recounting what my friend told me so I may have inaccuracies in this story.

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

#436

Post by abakker »

PeterStuer wrote: post #394
heisenbit wrote: post #217

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…

You have to understand consultancies in IT are just brokers. They buy in "inventory" of "profiles" at as low a cost as possible, and sell that inventory to their customers for as much as possible. So you've got your CS graduate which you recruit and pay $40/hr, slap a badge on them and rent them out for $120/hr. Once in a while you fall short and need to hire some freelancers for $60/hr. That's it. As your gov agency…

I think it is important to distinguish between Consulting, Staff Augmentation, and Managed Services. Many of the large integrators/consultancies do all of these options, but the objectives, contract sizes, and durations of the contracts are all expected to be different.

Consulting - best though of projects, governance, and on-demand expertise. There are definitely junior resources in play, but the objective is to build on the IP of the consulting firm and to create a external channel for problem solving or delivery that is not dependent on or hampered by internal inertia.

Staff Augmentation - a lot of time this is just billed hourly, and you really are looking at paying a premium for a non-committed spend - if FTEs are "reserved instances" then staff aug contracts are the opposite. You pay a premium for the lack of long-term commitment and to make this look like variable OpEx. my opinion is that this model is over used in most businesses.

Managed Services - longer term commitments to deliver services. Generally the good advice is to contract on "what you want done" rather than the detailed "how you want it done", though that is more philosophical than practical. The expectation is that the service delivery will improve, and that those process improvements, automations, training, and provider IP/Tools will deliver decreasing unit prices for "resource units" over time.

Thinking of consultancies as pure brokers is certainly a mental model you can use, but is not the most nuanced model. I think it tends to be better to acknowledge that there are structural reasons why all of these models are present in organizations and rather to think about how they should be governed.

(disclaimer, my employer is an advisor on how to contract for these kinds of services. My work is not related to contracting, but research about this market)

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

#437

Post by jasode »

reaperman wrote: post #342
adamgordonbell wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theoretically, there's some sort of arbitrage happening. There is some department in the government that's very unsexy and has a very real problem that could be solved by a smart finance MBA student diligently working on it. But there's no way that diligent young employee would want that job. Nor no way if he had it that anyone would take him seriously and put his changes in place. He doesn't want to work for that un…

Only place this falls apart is that Accenture / Deloitte are really not sexy. Like being a federal employee at a similar pay scale would actually be more sexy. McKinsey/BCG maybe this makes sense.

>Accenture / Deloitte are really not sexy. [...] McKinsey/BCG maybe this makes sense.

Those happen be 2 different types of consulting categories.

Accenture/Deloitte are more "professional services" type of consulting. Things like IT technology integrations and business process reengineering with software. So installing a multi-million dollar ERP software package like Oracle Financials or SAP and helping the client company migrate to the new accounting system. Also a lot of "staff augmentation" type of work. E.g. a lot of USA Homeland Security contracts for Accenture were IT services related: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22homeland+security%22+awar...

McKinsey/BCG is "management consulting". E.g. the CEO is considering opening a new international subsidiary but needs some research on various "strategies". So McKinsey consultants taps their vast network of other companies in the industry, creates spreadsheets of scenarios, writes up reports, etc.

The "professional services" category may be on a lower tier of prestige than "management consulting" but in general, most college graduates who prioritize career advancement will still prefer the (typically higher salary) job offer from Accenture/Deloitte rather than a government office such Veterans Affairs. Where government jobs often win candidates is the "no travel lifestyle" if it's a local office. Consultants can get quickly burned out by commuting on airplanes every week.

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

#438

Post by EasyMark »

stackedinserter wrote: post #250
aqme28 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which USAID spending? I haven't seen anything that I would say is both wasteful and significant.

It's hard to track, because it's all nice websites with generic messages like "we make life better" and pictures with obligatory diversity faces. E.g. $4.5 billion here chemonics.com. Or $3 billion here devalt.org. Where did these money go? How can we measure the ROI? USAID is a corrupt wasteful sinkhole, good riddance to it.

That was DOGE's job to tell us why and what, and they did none of that. Why is cutting millions to starving people in 3rd world countries a good thing? Why is cutting AIDs funding for similar situations a good thing? save millions now, pay billions later as these situations destabilize and make new terrorists and wars.

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

#439

Post by grandempire »

t-writescode wrote: post #431
grandempire wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment by saying it will be disastrous. Remember all the twitter predictions?

Underfunding and breaking of, for example, unemployment benefits systems causes real harm, real loss of medication, real loss of house, etc. But that won't make the news in any meaningful way, and the destitute will often be too busy to make loud noises. And the populous at large will sigh and shake their head and say "what a shame", but the loss can be *enormous*.

> Underfunding and breaking of, for example, unemployment benefits systems causes real harm, real loss of medication, real loss of house, etc.

I thought we were talking about firing IT consultants? Let me know when that happens.

> But that won't make the news

I think that would make the news immediately. The media is very interested in DOGE and its shortcomings.

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

#440

Post by EasyMark »

Smeevy wrote: post #345
miltonlost wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USAID looking for an ROI???? THat's NOT the purpose of aiding other countries. You don't need to look for a return on an investment. USAid was feeding children in places. You're looking for an ROI on saving human lives. Learn empathy.

Empathy seems to be in rare supply these days. I've made the mistake of talking to these people about the human collateral of these decisions and it's waved off like I'm bringing up an unpleasant experience in a checkout line.

Musk has said empathy is why democratic western countries are failing.
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