Pentagon Axes HR System After 780% Budget Overrun (theregister.com) 122
The Pentagon has canceled its troubled Defense Civilian Human Resources Management System after years of delays and budget overruns, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said. The project, launched in 2018 with a one-year timeline and $36 million budget, ultimately ran eight years and exceeded costs by $280 million, reaching 780% over budget. "We're not doing that anymore," Hegseth said in a video announcing the cancellation. Officials have 60 days to develop a new plan to modernize DoD's civilian HR systems. The cuts are part of a broader $580 million spending reduction that includes $360 million in diversity, climate change and COVID-19 grant programs, plus $30 million in consulting contracts with Gartner and McKinsey.
I'm shocked (Score:4, Funny)
shocked, to find out that an IT project has overrun it's budget.
Re: I'm shocked (Score:4, Funny)
But you must admit it takes skill to spend $280 mill and get nothing!
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Can't agree about skill in wasting money. No real skill required there, especially when it is taxpayer money, not your own. But what might be interesting is to see how the YOB was persuaded to start this buffoonery in the first place. There must be a real need somewhere in there, but the one-year plan was clearly imbecilic--and I'm confident the imbecility was generated elsewhere and just presented to the YOB for signature.
Weak joke of the day: Want to save millions of taxpayer dollars? Just damage the YOB'
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Can't agree about skill in wasting money. No real skill required there, especially when it is taxpayer money, not your own.
The amazing skill is not the wasting of money. It is keeping it going on for eight years.
Cuts jobs program for consulting firms (Score:4, Insightful)
Oddly, Accenture's stock is down 25% from its yearly high in Feb 2025 related to these government contract waste reduction
https://media.defense.gov/2025... [defense.gov]
- 6 years behind schedule
- $280 million over budget - Original estimate was $36 million
- The move echoes the ongoing scrutiny of federal consulting contracts, such as reviews of deals involving Accenture, IBM, and Deloitte.
- Cancellation of $30 million in contracts with Gartner and McKinsey for analysis products
a) Turning government contracts into a perpetual jobs program for consulting firms is not good use of taxpayer money.
b) Would like to see the breakdown by total paid to consulting firms of hours and costs billed by country of the employee to see how much of this work supported the domestic GDP and how much went to other country's GDP
Re: Cuts jobs program for consulting firms (Score:3)
There is always some good news. Money going to Accenture really is wasted. The less of that the better.
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Oddly, Accenture's stock is down 25% from its yearly high in Feb 2025 related to these government contract waste reduction
https://media.defense.gov/2025... [defense.gov]
- 6 years behind schedule
- $280 million over budget - Original estimate was $36 million
- The move echoes the ongoing scrutiny of federal consulting contracts, such as reviews of deals involving Accenture, IBM, and Deloitte.
- Cancellation of $30 million in contracts with Gartner and McKinsey for analysis products
a) Turning government contracts into a perpetual jobs program for consulting firms is not good use of taxpayer money.
b) Would like to see the breakdown by total paid to consulting firms of hours and costs billed by country of the employee to see how much of this work supported the domestic GDP and how much went to other country's GDP
The problem is, unlike the private sector the government is pretty much forbiden from punishing people like Accenture, Infosys, et al... and worst, restricted to approved supplier lists that put them at the top. Even worse still, political lobbying will get these contracts delivered to whoever can bribe the most (used to be "without getting caught" but that no longer seems to matter).
Government contracts are treated as license to bill... because they are and you get away scott free.
Until government de
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Interesting discussion and reminds me of my first government funding request... I thought it was just a little database to help respond to a lawsuit, but years later I found out the real objective was bureaucratic infighting.
They didn't get nothing .... (Score:2)
But you must admit it takes skill to spend $280 mill and get nothing!
They did not get nothing. I am sure a lot of power point presentations were created for the periodic status meetings. The corporate logos in the corners were probably amazingly well crafted.
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Just like OnlyFans.
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I can't decide whether to mod you insightful or funny, because both fit so well.
I've seen worse (Score:5, Interesting)
Back when I was in college we covered the Peoplesoft SAP program for Anchorage, Alaska.
While smaller, it still managed to be worse in most metrics:
1. Managed to cost $81M over the $10M estimate - 810% over budget rather than 780%
2. Lasted 10 years, rather than 8
3. Code review (at a cost of around $1M to have an independent org do it) while I was in college came back and told the Mayor basically "It'd be cheaper to throw it all out and start fresh."
4. Cost like $20M more settling all the wrong/missed payment claims by employees.
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Good software engineering, architecting and coding are real skills, and early dividends of good or bad engineering will pay off or consume everything in the long term.
During my work in a F500 company I realized just how many poor and average coders there are, working on all sorts of projects. It seems like companies are not doing even rudimentary ability tests during the hiring process, since most of the people I need to work with I would never have hired myself. You only want to have at the very least "goo
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First you pay someone else to tell you what your needs and wants are, then you pay them (or a third party) to implement that vision and then finally when it's done, you realize it's not what you needed at all and that's when the fun starts.
And the F-35? (Score:3)
Are they looking into all the cost overruns for the F-35? Will that be cancelled as well or will they say, "We've already dumped billions into the aircraft. Might as well dump a few more billion."?
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The F-35 had a good premise in the uniform-platform concept, but proved too tricky in practice.
Sometimes you just have to break big projects down into smaller independent projects even if that results in reinventing some wheels. Managing and coordinating giant projects is just plane hard, pun intended.
STOVL is where commonality goes too far (Score:2)
The F-35 had a good premise in the uniform-platform concept, but proved too tricky in practice.
It has always been tricky in practice, even with the more ideal case where only land based and carrier launch/trap is considered. But throw in STOVL. That's just asking for disaster.
Commonality is great, the F-4 demonstrated that. Marines maintaining the Navy variant greatly benefitted from the shared air base at Da Nang where they could officially requisition parts from the Air Force side of the base, and bribe AF maintenance crews or outright steal parts at zero dark thirty when official channels faile
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STOVL is a drop dead requirement for Marines/Japan with their helicopter launcher ships. Britain for its ski-jump carrier. Only the US navy has a catapault carrier that can use the F-35C.
Absolutely. My argument is that STOVL should be its own airframe compared to naval launch/trap and land based. Commonality limited in that respect.
I'm open minded to naval launch/trap and land based having their own airframes too. F/A-18 vs F-16, so to speak.
Common avionics and engines would be nice. Maybe rudders and elevators.
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F-47 will likely be more expensive per unit due to lower units purchased, but will likely be less of a debacle since the F-35 was the king of scope creep seriving Navy/AF/Marine requirements plus the host of other requirements of allies particpating in the program.
The F-22 is a far better model of what to expect than the F-35. Far less conflicting design requirements. Common components is one thing, but a good idea can be taken too far. Cockpit instrumentation and other avionics, engines, sure. But fuselage is perhaps a bit too far. STOVL carrier launch/trap, and land based a bit too different. Yes some differences in their fuselages but there is still too much influence. Maybe rudders and elevators could be common.
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F-47 will likely be more expensive per unit due to lower units purchased
Especially now that we'll be going into alone. [yahoo.com]
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It's being awarded to Boeing. So at least, they'll get a cool plywood mockup of it.
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And the real thing will be made of marble? [facebook.com]
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Unlikely (Score:2)
The F-47 appears to be for the USAF, whereas the F-35 is a repeat of the F-111 Aardvark mistake by the McNamera team of fools.
In the '60s SecDef McNamera thought that he could save money by having all military branches buy and use one plane, with no regard for the very different operations and conditions the military branches cope with. The resulting plane, the F-111, was probably as good as General Dynamics could make it, but it could not be optimal for ANY of its users. It ended up being unsuited for airc
Ask Iranian air defense about F-35 (Score:5, Interesting)
Are they looking into all the cost overruns for the F-35?
In the F-35 case something was delivered, thousands of planes. They can even drop bombs and stuff. Ask Iran about the Israeli F-35s. So it was a pork filled committee designed process. Like the HR system I suppose the power point slides were awesome. But with respect to delivery, two very different projects.
Re:Ask Iranian air defense about F-35 (Score:5, Insightful)
Also those thousands of planes that are the envy of the world, are getting cheaper on a per-unit cost for each successive block of airframes and there are hundreds of pending export orders on the books with more countries wanting to purchase it.
Real costs is the incremental going forward. (Score:2)
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According to what I have read about procurement on the B-21 Raider is that the DoD did apply a lot of "here's what went wrong with F-35" and that program is leaning much closer on budget.
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The sunk costs are lost forever. Only valuable as a history lesson for the next project.
Impossible to over-state this. I get so frustrated when people talk about sunk costs as if they are lost forever and can provide no value. That's only true if you ignore them and continue to carry on as you did in the same way that let you into the previous disaster, having learned nothing.
If an organization learns from a failed or disastrously over-budget project so that they don't repeat the same mistakes, those sunk costs actually start to pay for themselves. The project may have gone 400% over-budget
How about you use some of that money for OPSEC (Score:4, Informative)
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans [theatlantic.com]
Free version: https://www.yahoo.com/news/top... [yahoo.com]
The messaging app project also behind schedule (Score:2)
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans
The DoD messaging app project is also way behind schedule and over budget. But man the power point presentations for the status meetings are awesome. The videos and background music rock.
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I bet it is but let's have a little fun and imagine if the Hillary Clinton admin was caught doing military strike planning on unofficial, unverified messaging systems outside of records and archives, Republicans would be demanding she be fired out of a cannon into the sun. It wasn't so long ago this would be (and probably still should be) bringing up discussion of impeachment.
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I'm sure there will be subreddits dedicated to "butterytexts" or the like...
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Hey I can't argue against that so if you don't mind a consistency check I assume you support the same level and thoroughness of investigations Hillary underwent for that fracas for this situation here?
That includes a State Department IG investigation, multiple FBI investigations, testimony in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee, a DOJ IG investigation, two house Committee investigations and probably some more I am missing.
Give me that for this case and we can put these on equal terms and compare.
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I bet it is but let's have a little fun and imagine if the Hillary Clinton admin was caught doing military strike planning on unofficial, unverified messaging systems outside of records and archives,
She established the modern digital precedent. No accountability. Just oops, sorry, when caught.
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Hey as long as the Trump admin gets the same level of accountability Hillary did I think we can all agree to that, so that include includes a State Department IG investigation, multiple FBI investigations, testimony in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee, a DOJ IG investigation, two house Committee investigations and probably some more I am missing.
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Hey as long as the Trump admin gets the same level of accountability Hillary did I think we can all agree to that, so that include includes a State Department IG investigation, multiple FBI investigations, testimony in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee, a DOJ IG investigation, two house Committee investigations and probably some more I am missing.
LOL. As long as Trump staff to be interviewed are first given immunity like Clinton's. And Tump donors are in charge of it all like in Hillary's case.
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Maybe but I mean who was President while that investigation was happening? Obama did not interfere so I expect the same level of discretion from Trump
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Maybe but I mean who was President while that investigation was happening? Obama did not interfere so I expect the same level of discretion from Trump
Obama did not interfere when the known to be false Trump Dossier was misrepresented to the public as accurate. Obama also let the misinformation Dossier be used to jumpstart Trump campaign investigations.
Obama is like that, he used the DOJ to investigate journalists who he did not like.
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Obama did not interfere when the known to be false Trump Dossier was misrepresented to the public as accurate. Obama also let the misinformation Dossier be used to jumpstart Trump campaign investigations.
Obama is like that, he used the DOJ to investigate journalists who he did not like.
Did he interfere or not? You're contradicting.
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Obama did not interfere when the known to be false Trump Dossier was misrepresented to the public as accurate. Obama also let the misinformation Dossier be used to jumpstart Trump campaign investigations.
Obama is like that, he used the DOJ to investigate journalists who he did not like.
Did he interfere or not? You're contradicting.
No contradiction. He is not letting the public or the judiciary know it is false information. He is knowingly allowing false information be used to jumptstart investigations. Work on that reading comprehension.
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Did President Obama know it was false at the time? Was there not an open investigation with warrants and such and Presidents usually don't involve themselves into direct investigations?
Are you saying your preferred actions here is for the President of the United States should be involved directly and instruct DOJ lawyers, the AG, US Attorneys General and the FBI and intelligence agencies, you think the role of the President should be to directly involve themselves in ongoing investigations, direct those age
Re: The messaging app project also behind schedule (Score:2)
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And yet, when the administration tries to prevent false information, the right screams censorship.
Preventing the dissemination of false information internally, within the government, is proper.
Preventing the dissemination of any information, false or true, outside the government is unconstitutional in the US. The government can however label information in the public sphere as true or false.
The fact remains Obama allowed false information to masquerade as true for political reasons.
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Did President Obama know it was false at the time?
Prior to the 2016 election, no. After the election, yes.
Was there not an open investigation with warrants and such and Presidents usually don't involve themselves into direct investigations?
FISA warrants were based on this known false information. Additionally, the FISA judge was erroneously led to believe the person disclosing the dossier was acting as a private citizen when in fact it was an attorney that had done work Hillary campaign.
Are you saying your preferred actions here is for the President of the United States should be involved directly and instruct DOJ lawyers,
A President has a duty to see that the law is administered properly. The President is the head of the Executive branch which includes DOJ. Action would be appropriate if false information (for example the
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Prior to the 2016 election, no. After the election, yes.
Well then he ain't President is he?
FISA warrants were based on this known false information. Additionally, the FISA judge was erroneously led to believe the person disclosing the dossier was acting as a private citizen when in fact it was an attorney that had done work Hillary campaign.
Did they know this in 2015/2016 or is this more 2025 knowledge? If the judge was mislead how would he have known?
A President has a duty to see that the law is administered properly. The President is the head of the Executive branch which includes DOJ. Action would be appropriate if false information (for example the dossier) or false circumstances (for example not a private citizen) is being presented to a Court (for example FISA).
Ok, soi it's ok for the President of the United States to act wildly ahistorically improper and most likely corrupt fashion, and directly involve himself in ongoing investigations if it's for an issue you care about. That's exactly where I figured this was heading. Clownshoes, not serious.
It was later investigative efforts that were contaminated by the Dossier.
You actually haven't read the Durham report lol
Actually (Score:2)
It's probably not illegal per se for Hillary or any Trumpsters to communicate using some non-government app, and particularly if it's advisors simply mulling-over possible options, BUT there IS a legal requirement that all the official acts and documents are copied into the national archives where they will be available to future historians and policy makers for study and reference. It's also illegal to deliberately give access to any classified materials to non-cleared people.
In Hillary's case, ALL of her
DOGE (Score:4, Insightful)
I realize DOGE is a hot topic for many sides but if the Pentagon feared the "eye of sauron" would be upon on them at some point and started killing wasteful contracts, I think we can all agree that's a good thing.
The devil's in the details (Score:2)
If it cost $400m to stick with the clunky old system, then being $200m over budget doesn't necessarily mean cancelling is the right decision. These kinds of decisions should have thoughtful and logical cost-vs-benefit analysis done.
This should go without saying, but too many are knee-jerk in the current air of political tension.
The public deserves a cost-vs-benefit report.
Re:The devil's in the details (Score:5, Informative)
I would say in most cases that would be a correct question. However when you are 700% over budget and ~5 years late on what was supposed to be a 1 year project, you have to recognize you don't understand the problem well enough to do a cost-benefit analysis, with any validity.
To make the analysis you have to know what it would take to finish the project and if you were so comically wrong in the first place what possible faith can you have in any estimates you make now? The only way a sane person would continue at this point is if the entire thing was like 95% deliver, data migrated and QA'd, with all the reaming work being basically final sign-off and user training.
Because there is no way this went on this far without a lot of the people involved up and down the line grossly misstating progress and their capabilities; and that is a charitable assumption we are not into the realm of intentional FRAUD.
The time for a cost-benefit analysis on continuing was when the product hit the 36min budget mark or the one year point whichever was first. If the decision to continue was made then, another such review should happened around the 100% over budget point, and that should have triggered a pause and audit into WTF is going on! Maybe resumption if a satisfying narrative about where the deficiencies in management and project resources are and how the can be resolved is arrived at. At least point though short them being able to show something that is literally ready to promote to production this weekend, I don't see how we could have any trust at all in anyone still involved with this.
Note the word "benefit" (Score:2)
The public deserves a cost-vs-benefit report.
Note two metrics in that phrase. Cost and benefit. A $200 million non-working system loses the analysis to a $400 million working system.
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Also, the assessment requires taking the administrations word at the cost and state of the program. They have been shown to lie to exaggerate their "cost savings" repeatedly.
Also characterizing their savings with the big three GOP virtue signaling words is also likely suspect.
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That contract would get rubber stamped if Elon was providing the IT services.
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I predict that in about 20 years, having survived and grown through several administrations of different political parties, DOGE will be the second largest government agency in both employees and budget.
No. (Score:2)
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Can this be attributed in whole or in part to DOGE?
I realize DOGE is a hot topic for many sides but if the Pentagon feared the "eye of sauron" would be upon on them at some point and started killing wasteful contracts, I think we can all agree that's a good thing.
Not really, DOGE is about punishing the government departments that are/were investigating or suing Musk or his businesses.
Secondarily being used as a scapegoat for implementing Project2025.
Any actual cost savings are purely coincidental and a drop in the bucket compared to the damage it's causing.
no (Score:1)
Cuts? (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't cut spending on something you've spent. This isn't a budgeted program that costs too much, it's something that has literally overrun. All they've achieved is potentially started the entire saga again from the beginning and called it a success.
How about check developer for friends and family (Score:3)
All they've achieved is potentially started the entire saga again from the beginning and called it a success.
No. Throwing out a failing team can be warranted. Bringing in a new team, that will presumably look at predecessors work to see if anything is salvageable, is necessary at times. Been there, done that. Sometimes starting from scratch with more competent people is the lower cost path forward.
When these contractors go wildly over budget and/or experience ridiculous delays. I want an automatic background check looking for friends and family of members of congress or the executive branch.
Sunk cost fallacy (Score:2)
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Disagree. They have stopped thtoeinv good money after bad.
Yes, but in the worst possible way. Step one is to evaluate what of your sunk costs can be recovered in a meaningful way. You don't get to overspend by that much without being nearly at the end of the project. Abandoning it wholesale is the worst possible option. The government now got *nothing*.
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There are still 6mos left in the fiscal year, so they can stop it for some cost savings. This just sounds like a Federal program where they'll throw money at it and hope for a result.
To wit: NASA is looking to give Starliner another chance [gizmodo.com] and the ISS has how many years of useful life left?
The Pentagon could have chosen one of easily a dozen enterprise-scale HR systems already developed and used it but instead, it sounds like they were trying to upgrade the existing junk they already were using. [defense.gov]
Re: Cuts? (Score:1)
So a project that clearly isn't succeeding and just hemorrhaging money... shouldn't be cut? Is that your answer?
Cf sunk cost fallacy
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I feel that's an optimistic characterization.
Probably the "bad" system was from an unfavored supplier to the current administration, and the "new" system will be awarded to some different pet supplier, that will probably overrun budget and still fail and just be basically even more bad money, but on a later schedule, maybe to be cancelled later.
They are over here pinching relative pennies to cater to the "woke bad, covid is a hoax" sentiment while simultaneously spending bililons a year on just keeping the
HR project doomed by HR guidelines? (Score:3)
Probably the "bad" system was from an unfavored supplier ....
Meaning a supplier chosen (or not chosen) due to inclusivity guidelines by the previous administration? As is the case with EV charger installations where skilled vendors matching the guidelines are unicorns?
Wouldn't that be ironic, a HR project doomed by HR guidelines.
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More like "need to switch to this supplier that made bribes... err... campaign contributions".
I don't think I've ever seen DEI actually make a significant difference for the worse, but I have seen *plenty* of incompetent, cheap, greedy, and corrupt behavior around all the sorts of the things the right wingers blame DEI for. The good news about those things is that those are bipartisan at least.
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I don't think I've ever seen DEI actually make a significant difference for the worse
Biden EV charger project. Finding qualified vendors for the work was a severe problem. I recall state level officials complaining about how this was impeding progress.
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The only problem I see with this new plan is there is zero chance they'll claw back money from this first dead project nor will anyone involved in bad decision making get fired.
I'd say do an immediate backgr
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It's called throwing good money after bad. Do not run your business or government by sunk cost theory.
No. Throwing good money after bad is continuing to do the same thing without change. That's not something I proposed in my post. The point is drastic change resulted in all money going to waste. You don't go that far over time and budget without being virtually finished. Any idiot with half a brain could have come up with a proposal to get it across the line. It takes a true moron to start from the beginning.
Moving money from one contractor to another (Score:1)
The actual contract (planning started a few years before) was originally issued in 2020, and had planned extensions for completion. Like most government contracts, being over budget and behind schedule is almost a given (especially when the DoD did not really know their systems well enough to know what the transition costs would end up being).
The statement, however, just says that this contract particular will be terminated, and they are going to start over. It will still end up being a multi-year cont
Re:Moving money from one contractor to another (Score:5, Insightful)
And they'll be starting from zero, which means they'll spend a few hundred million doing work that was already done on this system. I'm not a fan of the sunk cost fallacy, but throwing it all out and starting over probably means spending even more money and time.
It's almost like building an HR system for the largest organization on the planet might be difficult.
What exactly does the Pentagon do well these days? (Score:2)
"...The project, launched in 2018 with a one-year timeline and $36 million budget, ultimately ran eight years and exceeded costs by $280 million, reaching 780% over budget..."
Can anyone identify what the Pentagon/DoD does really well these days?
One major file they [mis]handled (with shame if i may add), is the way they left Afghanistan with "tails between their limbs"...a total shame for this "mighty" USA.
Just imagine...You spend 20 years fighting thugs in sandals, only to hand over to the same thugs 20 years later with billions spent and further billions in hardware left in their country!
I'll scream "shame...shame...shame..."
Re:What exactly does the Pentagon do well these da (Score:5, Insightful)
It shows we learned absolutely nothing from when Russia attempted it two decades earlier.
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Can anyone identify what the Pentagon/DoD does really well these days?
Kill people and burn things. That is what a military does, and the US armed forces are better at it then any force in history.
The problem with most of the US latter 20th and 21st century military adventures is one of mission. While the mission was, kill or capture Al-Qaeda leadership we/they did very well at that. When it morphed into turn Afghanistan into pluralistic society with a functioning democracy, it went a bout as well one might have expected, particularly after witnessing the Clinton era nation b
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Nah. Getting chased out of Afghanistan is practically a rite of passage for a dying empire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Admittedly, most of them didn't arm the locals, THEN invade them, then get chased out and leave behind a bunch of hardware to arm the locals again.
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The Trump negotiated Air Force One contract should be the standard. Contractor agrees to deliver X by this date for this amount of money.
The only cost overruns are if the government's specs change.
https://www.politico.com/news/... [politico.com]
Trump got personally involved in the negotiations for the replacement aircraft. In February 2017, Trump said the Air Force was “close to signing a $4.2 billion deal” and that “we got that price down by over $1 billion.”
“President Trump negotiated a goo
Cost-plus (Score:5, Insightful)
When the contract is structured as cost-plus to with "allowable" additional costs, the motivation for the contractor is always to have cost overruns, because those overruns are additional revenue and profit. In fact, it could even be viewed as corporate malfeasance to not extract the maximum cost overruns. Imagine getting your home renovated with this type of contract.
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In fact, it could even be viewed as corporate malfeasance to not extract the maximum cost overruns.
I could not have stated it better! After all, the duty of whoever runs a company (in today's USA), is to "maximize shareholder value."
This is one such way to that goal.
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Imagine getting your home renovated with this type of contract.
Senator Stevens has entered the conversation.
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What's the alternative? The customer always needs tweaks that were not in the original contract.
Or ... root problem solved. (Score:2)
Officials have 60 days to develop a new plan to modernize DoD's civilian HR systems.
I thought they were firing all the civilians ... then they wouldn't need a civilian HR system.
Start by not using government contractors (Score:2)
Gov contractors are THE WORST. They have turned milking the US Government into a science.
Put out a call for somebody to do the work, with a requirement that they can't have ever done work for the US gov before.
And don't be extremely prescriptive like "must support these 200 other interfaces to other systems written in 30 unknown ancient languages including screen scraping of that one system"
Re: Start by not using government contractors (Score:2)
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And don't be extremely prescriptive like "must support these 200 other interfaces to other systems written in 30 unknown ancient languages including screen scraping of that one system"
You're essentially saying: don't be extremely prescriptive like "it must work".
Trouble is those systems exist and either need to be update themselves or interfaced with.
Anti-corruption proposal (Score:2)
The government should not be allowed to buy from any company if doing so would mean that more than 50% of that company's revenue would come from government contracts.
Companies that become totally driven by government contracts tend to get spoiled by lack of adequate competition, too many unearned performance bonuses [often handed out by bureaucrats hoping for second careers working at these firms], and cost-plus contracts from a customer who is spending somebody else's money. They lose sight of the efficien
An example (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an example of where the black budget money comes from. The company creating the software is more than likely a funnel set up to move money. I mean come on, cost overruns adding up to 780% kept getting approved over a 7 year period. That money was going somewhere, especially when there is nothing to show for it. This is just probably one of MANY over the budget projects with nothing to show funding the black budget.
Not so much (Score:2)
This is a common trope, and it's even good for a laugh, as-in the movie Independence Day, but the reality is that the so-called "black budgets" are actually in the budgets and the congress really does know about them and approves their funding.
Sadly, the idea that gross overspending and budgetary incompetence is actually bureaucratic camouflage for vital secret projects is actually just a way for corrupt bureaucrats to build tolerance for their corrupt spending.
Hint for the government (Score:2)
Cost-plus bids are the problem (Score:2)
Cost-plus bidding is basically a license to waste money. When the customer (ie DoD) is on the hook for all costs, what incentive is there to control costs? Even worse, the contractor determines the costs, so almost anything can get nicely disguised as a "cost". Government contracts should be fixed price. You agree on a set of deliverables, and you get paid when you deliver, or you get half up-front, and half on delivery. Otherwise, I could bid $1 on cost-plus contracts and bill for "expenses" like mad to ma
Let me guess.... (Score:2)
Either Oracle or SAP?
Lethal AI Machine Models ?? (Score:2)