3 ms·

Lots of comments below are accurate e.g. terrible gov't oversight, extremely large and complex projects, corporations responding correctly to bad incentives, co

Lots of comments below are accurate e.g. terrible gov't oversight, extremely large and complex projects, corporations responding correctly to bad incentives, corporations thriving off the complexity of govt contracting However I will posit an additional layer to this...and it lies with the American people themselves. We just cant handle gov't officials and contractors making a ton of money. The real root of the complexity in govt contracting is FAR (Federal Acquisition Regulations) Which create the complexity to avoid egregious corruption and profits in the federal space. While on paper it sounds great...lets make rules that limit what corporations can make off of the government... what you actually get is tremendous waste. Redundancy, arcane billing practices and auditing, and huge bureaucratic RFP bidding systems that limit competition. A classic case in not doing a complete cost-benefit analysis. The solution is not palatable to the general American public. Put up with some fraud and corruption in the federal government which would be offset by increased competition from the private sector (thus better products and prices). And dont kid yourself if you think fraud and corruption doesnt still go on...it's just more sophisticated.

Retric 13y ago
IMO, the real solution is to let the government compete with the private sector on 'government' contracts. Basically, do an analysis on how much it would cost to do in house and then put the same contract up for bid. (aka a Sanity check) However, you need to add a companies reputation to their bid so if they say it costs X and they tend to be 30% over budget or have quality issues then you don't just accept X. With that said and done if someone can really deliver high quality and still make a 20% profit then let them.
- holograham 13y ago
  I am not sure this is feasible in practice. The government is not a business so "competing" isnt a fair rubric. The government has unlimited resources and does not have to "make a profit". I dont know how you could create an apples to apples comparison. In the business world it's easy...profit. Companies reputation is a fuzzy number too. As the stock market adage goes "past performance does not guarantee future success". Sure brand reputation means something but how do you measure that and create equal comparison...across hugely disparate government contracts. Comparing the US Census contract (yes this is contracted out almost entirely) to the F35 contract would be absurd. I do not necessarily have the end all solution. I tend to favor smaller government because I am not sure our current political system scales to be able to execute large projects (I tend to think the ideas behind many large scale projects are correct but fail when you consider the costs of implementation within our political constraints).
  - nucleardog 13y ago
    I think the idea behind having the government compete wasn't that it was a fair competition, it was just a way to spend the least amount of money. If the government is able to do something internally for $500m, and the disadvantaged private sector is going to cost $750m, then let the government do it themselves. (On the government's books, this is a net win.) If the government costs it at $500m, but a private company can do it for $400m... Why let the government do it? Contract it out and save money.
- JPKab 13y ago
  The government's hiring process makes this impossible. They are too slow, the people who know what needs to be done are completely separate from the centralized offices which hire, and therefore the government only hires people based on arbitrary measures including keywords on resume, number of years in x industry, certifications from Craposoft and Orac-ket. They are fucking fantastic at hiring useless middle-management fucks whose only ambition in life is a paycheck and to stop using their brain when they leave the office (at 4:00 or 3:30 pm on a weekday) Ambitious people leave in droves, because an organization run entirely on "other people's money" always steers towards complacency and lack of accountability, translating to ambitious people who care about delivering on-time being surrounded by people whose kid's softball game takes precedence over leaving customers out in the cold. Anyone who has EVER dealt with the federal government in any fucking way knows that what you are saying would never work. The laziest people I have ever encountered in my life are in the Federal government. I'm a huge advocate for the environment, and my first dealings with the EPA made me want to cry. They are horrifically lazy at a cultural level. The DoD is fucking awful. Go to a military base at 3:00 PM on a Friday afternoon and watch as a traffic line builds up at the exit gates as the civillian workers go home 2 hours early, EVERY weekend.
  - Bahamut 13y ago
    There are some hard workers in government - you see many around DC. But I don't disagree that there are some lazy people in government - I have heard much worse about the EPA than you have stated for example. The military is some of the hardest working but criminally underpaid. The whole contracting system is broken - the amount of money government leaks there is criminal.
    - JPKab 13y ago
      Military are not criminally underpaid. When you factor in housing benefits, pension, health care, education, etc, the military is a fantastic career option, which is why so many people join it. For a non-college graduate, it is absolutely the best career path you can take in the US. When you get out, you have access to federally subsidized loans that nobody else gets, as well as the ability to have Tricare (ultra cheap health insurance) for the rest of your life. When you consider that less than 10% of active duty military will ever see combat, this is a bargain.
- nucleardog 13y ago
  Okay, but who determines the quality issues? The government could easily fall into the same issue that some of our clients do. Yes, that competitor provided you a solution for 10% less, however it's horribly bloated and inefficient and will have double the on-going hardware costs, and the solution itself is a fucking mess that is going to increase the cost of any changes or maintenance ten-fold. Problem is, they don't know the difference. The people who will best know the difference are going to be the people who work with/in the same area - the supplier's competitors. Far from impartial. So maybe we set up some sort of oversight agency, but then we either have them make snap judgements without the appropriate understanding and penalizing what may be more difficult/complicated projects (meaning no one will want to bid on them), or we create such a huge overhead in documentation that we're pretty much back where we are now - no one but the largest of players can even afford the overhead to participate.
nocoment 13y ago
When you put it like that, paying for such oversight is well worth it. Would the military request less if it was more efficient or would it keep its budget and just fight (== exchange GDP for the "benefit" of additional limitless risk) on more simultaneous fronts? Really, I don't see that many private sector companies competing on the big contracts no matter what you do. But for the smaller profit and more general purpose projects, the problem is that their purchasers interfere with the process to get what they want/need as the buyer. For example, they needed our systems and we didn't much care about learning their processes, so an Aerospace seemed to take the bulk of the profits by making a package that depended on us. If the system were equally complex yet more transparent/published and tamper resistant then I don't think corruption would be so rampant and cost may at least be allocated to regular companies that choose to navigate them alone. But with no system at all, I think the Aerospace that took most of the profits would have taken even more and delivered still less.
malandrew 13y ago
I would also speculate that many of these projects are subject to horrendous scope creep where accounting systems are being used for far more than just accounting needs. These additional requirements need to be evaluated and excluded from accounting and auditing systems if they are beyond the scope of such systems. Instead they should be rolled into other systems that have a narrower scope. For example, the posted article states: "while an impenetrable tangle of logistics and personnel systems can hinder commanders’ ability to know who and what are available for deployment." That to me sounds like scope creep. Yes, commanders need that capability, but that is not a feature that should be part of an accounting and auditing system. Of course these is somewhat relationship between a soldier being paid his wages and being available for deployment, but that is a weak relationship that is best handle via a public API for each system that other specialized defense systems can consume. I would posit that the contracting approach does nothing to prevent scope creep since most contractors participating in this system are glad to let things keep snowballing because it means more billable hours.

Retric 13y ago

IMO, the real solution is to let the government compete with the private sector on 'government' contracts. Basically, do an analysis on how much it would cost to do in house and then put the same contract up for bid. (aka a Sanity check) However, you need to add a companies reputation to their bid so if they say it costs X and they tend to be 30% over budget or have quality issues then you don't just accept X. With that said and done if someone can really deliver high quality and still make a 20% profit then let them.

holograham 13y ago
I am not sure this is feasible in practice. The government is not a business so "competing" isnt a fair rubric. The government has unlimited resources and does not have to "make a profit". I dont know how you could create an apples to apples comparison. In the business world it's easy...profit. Companies reputation is a fuzzy number too. As the stock market adage goes "past performance does not guarantee future success". Sure brand reputation means something but how do you measure that and create equal comparison...across hugely disparate government contracts. Comparing the US Census contract (yes this is contracted out almost entirely) to the F35 contract would be absurd. I do not necessarily have the end all solution. I tend to favor smaller government because I am not sure our current political system scales to be able to execute large projects (I tend to think the ideas behind many large scale projects are correct but fail when you consider the costs of implementation within our political constraints).
- nucleardog 13y ago
  I think the idea behind having the government compete wasn't that it was a fair competition, it was just a way to spend the least amount of money. If the government is able to do something internally for $500m, and the disadvantaged private sector is going to cost $750m, then let the government do it themselves. (On the government's books, this is a net win.) If the government costs it at $500m, but a private company can do it for $400m... Why let the government do it? Contract it out and save money.
JPKab 13y ago
The government's hiring process makes this impossible. They are too slow, the people who know what needs to be done are completely separate from the centralized offices which hire, and therefore the government only hires people based on arbitrary measures including keywords on resume, number of years in x industry, certifications from Craposoft and Orac-ket. They are fucking fantastic at hiring useless middle-management fucks whose only ambition in life is a paycheck and to stop using their brain when they leave the office (at 4:00 or 3:30 pm on a weekday) Ambitious people leave in droves, because an organization run entirely on "other people's money" always steers towards complacency and lack of accountability, translating to ambitious people who care about delivering on-time being surrounded by people whose kid's softball game takes precedence over leaving customers out in the cold. Anyone who has EVER dealt with the federal government in any fucking way knows that what you are saying would never work. The laziest people I have ever encountered in my life are in the Federal government. I'm a huge advocate for the environment, and my first dealings with the EPA made me want to cry. They are horrifically lazy at a cultural level. The DoD is fucking awful. Go to a military base at 3:00 PM on a Friday afternoon and watch as a traffic line builds up at the exit gates as the civillian workers go home 2 hours early, EVERY weekend.
- Bahamut 13y ago
  There are some hard workers in government - you see many around DC. But I don't disagree that there are some lazy people in government - I have heard much worse about the EPA than you have stated for example. The military is some of the hardest working but criminally underpaid. The whole contracting system is broken - the amount of money government leaks there is criminal.
  - JPKab 13y ago
    Military are not criminally underpaid. When you factor in housing benefits, pension, health care, education, etc, the military is a fantastic career option, which is why so many people join it. For a non-college graduate, it is absolutely the best career path you can take in the US. When you get out, you have access to federally subsidized loans that nobody else gets, as well as the ability to have Tricare (ultra cheap health insurance) for the rest of your life. When you consider that less than 10% of active duty military will ever see combat, this is a bargain.
nucleardog 13y ago
Okay, but who determines the quality issues? The government could easily fall into the same issue that some of our clients do. Yes, that competitor provided you a solution for 10% less, however it's horribly bloated and inefficient and will have double the on-going hardware costs, and the solution itself is a fucking mess that is going to increase the cost of any changes or maintenance ten-fold. Problem is, they don't know the difference. The people who will best know the difference are going to be the people who work with/in the same area - the supplier's competitors. Far from impartial. So maybe we set up some sort of oversight agency, but then we either have them make snap judgements without the appropriate understanding and penalizing what may be more difficult/complicated projects (meaning no one will want to bid on them), or we create such a huge overhead in documentation that we're pretty much back where we are now - no one but the largest of players can even afford the overhead to participate.

nocoment 13y ago

When you put it like that, paying for such oversight is well worth it. Would the military request less if it was more efficient or would it keep its budget and just fight (== exchange GDP for the "benefit" of additional limitless risk) on more simultaneous fronts? Really, I don't see that many private sector companies competing on the big contracts no matter what you do. But for the smaller profit and more general purpose projects, the problem is that their purchasers interfere with the process to get what they want/need as the buyer. For example, they needed our systems and we didn't much care about learning their processes, so an Aerospace seemed to take the bulk of the profits by making a package that depended on us. If the system were equally complex yet more transparent/published and tamper resistant then I don't think corruption would be so rampant and cost may at least be allocated to regular companies that choose to navigate them alone. But with no system at all, I think the Aerospace that took most of the profits would have taken even more and delivered still less.

malandrew 13y ago

I would also speculate that many of these projects are subject to horrendous scope creep where accounting systems are being used for far more than just accounting needs. These additional requirements need to be evaluated and excluded from accounting and auditing systems if they are beyond the scope of such systems. Instead they should be rolled into other systems that have a narrower scope. For example, the posted article states: "while an impenetrable tangle of logistics and personnel systems can hinder commanders’ ability to know who and what are available for deployment." That to me sounds like scope creep. Yes, commanders need that capability, but that is not a feature that should be part of an accounting and auditing system. Of course these is somewhat relationship between a soldier being paid his wages and being available for deployment, but that is a weak relationship that is best handle via a public API for each system that other specialized defense systems can consume. I would posit that the contracting approach does nothing to prevent scope creep since most contractors participating in this system are glad to let things keep snowballing because it means more billable hours.