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Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte
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Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having observed and been part of contracts involving these companies, it would take a lot to convince me that at least 80% of them don’t cost an order of magnitude (or more) more than they should. It’s not usually the type of work, it’s the specific commercial model and mode of engagement with them that’s generally at fault, often aided and abetted by procurement processes.
they're a order of magnitude higher for some reasons though. I work in consulting, and occasionally larger enterprises approach our firm. We almost always decline because their requirements from vendor screening, to change review boards, to just the amount of sheer meetings it takes to enact a change to a title change on the website home page - its not worth it. A couple times we made the mistake of giving a 'go away…
This ^ and uncertainty
If I had to break down how consulting contracts are actually priced, it'd be:
- 50% work
- 35% requirement ambiguity
- 15% customer management overheadRe: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
> we do waste a ton of money on consultants I bet the median skill of a Deloitte consultant is higher than that of the average government office worker.
The trend for decades has been shrinking the public workforce and replacing them with contractors, because Republicans have said that the private sector is more efficient. So the average government office worker is not a tech, they are a contract officer. The government does not have these skills internally at the level necessary, if they want this work done they have to contract it out. And if these contracts get ca…
Yes but do you really believe Deloitte isn’t showering them with bribes and bending the knee to keep these contracts?
It’s not about who bends and who doesn’t. They all will. Even Tim Cook who famously wears his politics on his sleeve has completely bent the knee to Trump.
Money talks.
Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte
#94Not sure why this really matters a ton if they announced a 100+ billion pentagon budget increase.
There have been multiple errors posted in this thread, and I don't know where those numbers are coming from since the budget is public record.
The '25 budget has not yet been approved, but the request is $8 billion more last year, not $100 billion.
Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte
#95All fine and dandy until one realizes that the pentagon's budget is measured in the trillions, and this sort of deal probably doesn't even deal with mission critical stuff. That said, we do waste a ton of money on consultants, and the pentagon needs to trim its budget. Should also be noted that Pete Hegseth is a fucking moron, and some of these cuts probably hurt our national security readiness.
> we do waste a ton of money on consultants I bet the median skill of a Deloitte consultant is higher than that of the average government office worker.
No chance. The median consultant is a fresh graduate. The median government office worker actually knows something.
Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte
#96These guys are massive scammers, I worked with them over multiple projects and the only thing I remember is by the end of each one, everyone was memeing on them for how poorly made everything they did was.
Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte
#97Earlier 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.
AIUI, the Pentagon failing an audit is essentially akin to most people failing an audit because they can't produce every single paper receipt for everything they've ever purchased. Combine that with the fact that the Pentagon is (I believe) the single largest purchaser on the planet, the fact that much of what it does is compartmentalized in different security buckets, and that the managerial staff tends to be younger than most organizations, and it shouldn't be so surprising that it's persistently in a state of being unable to literally dot every i and cross every t.
Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte
#98Now 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.
I agree. The government could be made hugely more efficient through the use of technology. However, the civil service simply doesn't pay enough to attract the talent it needs. Therefore, we are left with little option but to pay consultants more to deliver these contracts. The total cost to the tax payer is higher; it doesn't make sense!
It is reductive to say that we just need to pay more, however. The civil service also needs better and more effective management. Consultants are used as both liability shields and to force through change, both of which are an abdication of management's responsibility.
Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which isn't ideal, but easily better than the pentagon that has literally never passed a full audit since they started auditing them in 2018. I'm a huge fan of musk's company's, but I don't want my public tax dollars ever choosing winners/losers
Your public tax dollars picked Tesla and SpaceX as winners vs losers, through billions of dollars of subsidies.
I'm not a huge fan of Elmo but Telsa get's subsidies that all car manufacturers are eligible for. The fact that those manufacturers have to purchase credits from Tesla is their decision. If they can't delivery a quality ZEV the public wants to buy they have no one else to blame.
Re: Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your public tax dollars picked Tesla and SpaceX as winners vs losers, through billions of dollars of subsidies.
Those subsidies also went to Boing and ULA, who also bid on those contracts. This is such a debunked argument but I guess its undebunkable because its a branch you can hang onto about how the only reason SpaceX exists is the government. Question is why hasn't Blue Origin managed the same then, or Arianaspace in the EU.
> Question is why hasn't Blue Origin managed the same then, or ArianeSpace ...
Or any of hundreds of other national space programs and companies, in countries which would have been ecstatic to pay 10X the US Govt's "subsidies to SpaceX", to put themselves or their nation's company into SpaceX's current position of utter global dominance.