It's easy to bash poor work by Deloitte (rightfully so), but this reflects decades of poor decisions by the Federal government. The number of Federal employees

It's easy to bash poor work by Deloitte (rightfully so), but this reflects decades of poor decisions by the Federal government. The number of Federal employees has remained constant for 30 years so that politicians can claim the Federal government isn't expanding; but the budget has ballooned. The balance all goes to contractors. They need Deloitte because they have lost the capability to do anything themselves. To make a sweeping generalization which doesn't give enough credit to some amazing groups, the Federal government does not have people who are capable of managing complex IT projects. The government has outsourced so much work that it no longer has personnel who are capable of knowing what is going on. Federal workers are competent in managing contracts, but not actual work. So when you arrive at a new and complex project (like widely distributing a vaccine for an unforeseen global pandemic), they don't know what to do. How do you write that in a contract and enforce it? That doesn't even begin to get in to the requirements around what it takes to launch a production IT system while meeting government cyber security requirements/processes. A lot of comments here are lamenting how easy this is. Let me set it straight: you cannot launch a random Django/Rails MVP in the government. They don’t operate that way, for reasons good and bad. The fact that Deloitte had something in production in under a year, no matter how buggy, is a minor miracle.