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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

#521

Post by FloorEgg »

kmijyiyxfbklao wrote: post #495
FloorEgg wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but what was fair and effective in 1970 might not be anymore, right? Do you agree that these processes need to evolve over time? And if so, what if they haven't been evolving as fast as the rest of the world and have fallen behind? What is a leader to do, when many processes no longer are in anyone's best interest other than the people who maintain them and those have learned to exploit them? The government…

Yeah, structural changes don't happen slowly and by the rules. What people don't like is what they think the new system is going to look like. But we don't know what that is going to be because Trump seems to be better at destroying than at building. It will depend on his successor(s) being good at building institutions. Or it may fail and the old system regenerates.

This seems accurate to me. They are destroying many US institutions, and what replaces them may be better or may be worse. I am not sure anyone can tell right now.

This wouldn't be happening if everyone was happy with the status quo, if the US was in a golden era, but it wasn't. Many things clearly weren't working. Sometimes it's easier to tear something down and rebuild it than fix it (not always, but sometimes).

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

#522

Post by polski-g »

LunaSea wrote: post #376
whimsicalism wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

workers are allowed to bargain against the government, as in “i will not take the job at the pay you are offering.” both private companies and workers should not be allowed to band together to deny the government all contracts until they get the one they want.

> workers are allowed to bargain against the government, as in “i will not take the job at the pay you are offering.” In the same way that someone is allowed to not breath underwater. A lot of people don't have the luxury of choosing.

Unemployment is currently 3.5%.

Every sector of the economy is looking for more workers.

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

#523

Post by criddell »

krainboltgreene wrote: post #391
saagarjha wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but sometimes you do actually want the $500k Googlers.

I promise you never want that.

Matt Cutts went from Google to the US Digital Service and did some amazing work. Maybe he’s an outlier, but I don’t think so. There are a lot of supremely talented people willing to take a massive pay cut to do good, meaningful work.

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

#524

Post by nonameiguess »

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…

The greatest reason they need to use contractors in general, not just "consultants," is that hiring a civil servant is opening a position forever. The federal government certainly can downsize, as we're seeing now, but they rarely do, and they don't hire people for six-month contracts. They hire them permanently, and would then need to go through a layoff process to reduce staff.

So if they have a project that needs 100 people to do and is expected to take two years, they have two choices. Hire 100 people, hoping you can find something else for them to do in two years, or you can offer a two-year contract to a private company, letting them deal with the problem of figuring out what to do with the 100 people once the project is completed.

The contraints of the GS pay scale aren't real constraints. The federal government already has special bonuses paid to medical doctors to make their pay commensurate with rates in private industry, in spite of the fact that those rates are way the hell higher than anything on the GS scale. They could easily do the same for engineering labor. What they can't easily do is hire people for six months guaranteed with only conditional renewals after that, because very few people would agree to that unless you're paying them far more than they'd get in normal industry.

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

#525

Post by nonameiguess »

Taikonerd wrote: post #388
leguminous wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> they can't actually pay enough to hire senior developers directly I had the impression that it was also easier to fire contractors. (Well, not to renew their contract.) If a developer who works directly for the government is underperforming, their boss has to jump through many, many hoops to fire them.

This is close to what I wrote myself, but the problem here isn't being able to fire people because they underperformed. The problem is what to do about temporary jobs that finish. They performed exactly as expected, maybe even exceeded expectations, but when the work is finished, you still need to get rid of the position, and they can't do that with permanent civil servants.

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

#526

Post by mywittyname »

wonderwonder wrote: post #260
QuantumGood wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

96 of 301 projects complete, 58 in progress • https://www.project2025.observer/

Whether you support it or not, for government, that's really some incredible efficiency. almost 1/3 complete in 100 days

It's easy to destroy things - especially when no heed is paid to laws or down stream effects.

I mean, carpet bombing New York City would demonstrate "incredible efficiency" - as it would probably take much less time than demolishing a single building in the city following the laws.

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

#527

Post by reciprocity »

BoingBoomTschak wrote: post #158
muttonhead wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you might be misunderstanding op's comment. "Because the amoral drive for extreme wealth doesn't stop at a certain level of wealth" is a statement that I read on its face. One does not need to reach for "conspiracy" as a way to explain the behavior of people faced with an opportunity to acquire more money: just look at the 5-6 posts making the same point in this very sub-thread. Did you miss those or did you mean to post this reply somewhere else? Money is a huge motivator for many people.

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

#528

Post by nitwit005 »

rel2thr wrote: post #14
jpgvm wrote: post #2

Finally they actually cut something that should be cut.

A correlary to the Gelman effect, with govt spending , it all sounds important and reasonably priced unless the spending is in your circle of expertise

I don't see that in practice. The headlines have historically been pretty blunt on a lot of wasteful spending. They openly discuss obvious waste in congress: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/01/28/pentagon-tell... https://reason.com/2025/01/12/materiel-loss/

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

#530

Post by fallingknife »

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…

Sounds like the richest and most powerful organization on Earth should start paying market salaries for its engineers. Not sure why that is so difficult.
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