It's extraordinary how far departments (even large companies) will go to avoid in-sourcing work. $AU96M is a small team of developers hired, paid and pensioned for decades . Anyone rubber-stamping that sort of invoice deserves jail time.
Ok great, in-source the project but we’ve been promised a yearly headcount increase of exactly 0. Any hires above that require the minister to sign off. In your team you have, 3 data scientists that have never worked on a software project, an intern who likes computer games and a PM that used to work in the tax department. This is a 12 month project, everyone needs to also do their own job and if it’s late, they’re c…
That's the silly thing that seems to cause so much trouble. The conversation should be about budget rather than headcount, and the department heads given flexibility on how to manage their budget. There probably is some reasonable amount of budget to bring consultants in for advice on industry practices, but as mentioned elsewhere in the thread, projects like these should generally be managed in-house, and used to build up organisational knowledge, which will be crucial for effective long-term maintenance.
On that note, one of the best uses I've seen of consulting companies, is to have them help define the hiring plan for implementing the project, and sit in on interview panels, to help put in-house leaders in the right mindset of how to assess the competencies that they themselves are lacking.