The Government's Gadget Habit

sanzibar writes "The Federal procurement database reveals millions of dollars are being spent on gadgets. Over the past 10 years, the US government has spent $117 million on BlackBerries (including service plans), almost $18 million on iOS devices, about $1 million on PS3s, over $500k on Xboxes, and somehow, $12k on Zunes."

Comments

It's a problem in most governments

[milbournosphere]

but at least people are starting to realize it: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/06/09/3687455/jerry-brown-confiscates-more-than.html

Re:It's a problem in most governments

[Anonymous Coward]

These could have been for parts of government which work with kids. It may not have been as abusive as it initially appears. I can think of numerous way in which such purchases would be legitimate government purchases. The PS3 for instance has been used in large scale super computing projects. Not for actual gaming. The military may have some similar use. I object to the non-free software aspects so I am not thrilled with the government purchasing these devices. That being said it still may not be a waste of tax payers money. We have already accepted (for better or worse) that the government has a social responsibility to the population besides defense and security. Everything from social security and Medicaid to public schools.

Re:It's a problem in most governments

[bberens]

A friend of mine works for a defense contractor. In the early days of Blu-Ray they bought a hand full of PS3s because it was the best, cheapest, hi-def platform available at the time for them to run their demo videos on at conferences and such. It would not surprise me in the least if those PS3s were in fact owned by the government and are on this list...

Re:It's a problem in most governments

[MBGMorden]

now with AT&T and VZW both going to tiered data expect the peons to stop putting work email acccounts on their iphones unless the company picks up part of the tab

As odd as it sounds, the last few times a Verizon rep has visited us they've been pushing the idea of users supplying their own phones and us giving them access to email if the users let us lock them down and enforce various security policies on the phones.

Even as the person who would be doing thing it boggled my mind that ANYONE would be willing to go along with that. My work phone and my personal phone will be remaining separate (as well everyone else's for as long as I can convince them its a good idea).

Re:It's a problem in most governments

[peragrin]

if you can't figure out why then you are a fucking idiot.

$117 million on blackberries is cheap with 1.5 million employees in the federal government. That's 1/2 of 1% of the countries population.

we have 275 cities with populations over 100,000 people. $550k on xboxes would be roughly 1,700 xboxes. or 6 per "city" for social services to use.

If you actually breakdown the numbers into where things went the US government does waste some, but n t nearly as much as people think. They just can't wrap their heads around just how fucking big this country is.

No our current problems is fiscal mismanagement over the last 30-40 years where both sides agreed that the good times would never end and they could just keep on spending out the credit cards. Like giving a million dollars to a couple of crack addicts. It was fun, but now reality is setting in.

the government is kind of large

[Osgeld]

sure ps3's and xboxes sound silly for congress or the DOJ but it could be going to our troops, like that ps3 supercomputer ... but TFA is obviously out to state an agenda, so nothing to see here unless you want some rant by what seems like a child

Re:the government is kind of large

[RobinEggs]

It could also be going literally to our troops. I've heard some military installations, especially foreign operating bases, have very nice digital entertainment options to take the stress out of being in a contested zone (and take the boredom out of being on a military base).

Re:the government is kind of large

[Ephemeriis]

sure ps3's and xboxes sound silly for congress or the DOJ but it could be going to our troops, like that ps3 supercomputer ... but TFA is obviously out to state an agenda, so nothing to see here unless you want some rant by what seems like a child

Even if they aren't going into a cluster/supercomputer, I'm not sure that I have a problem with it. Sure, maybe our congresscritters can just go home and play on their own console system... But folks who've been deployed don't really have that option. And I'm certainly not going to begrudge the soldiers who are keeping me safe the cost of a few game systems.

Re:the government is kind of large

[sg3000]

Various government labs have the need for large banks of computing nodes for supercomputing purposes, so it wouldn't surprise me if the large number of PS3s were being used for that. Another proof point: there's a wide discrepancy in the xbox numbers. If they were being used as game machines, you'd think the xbox numbers would be comparable (or even higher). When the PS3 was introduced, it at the time offered a great price to performance ratio, so research labs in different countries bought them for that purpose. The software has been out for a while and has been government certified already, so it remains a solution today.

Re:the government is kind of large

[maxume]

Right. For comparison, it would be interesting to see how much the government is spending on peanuts.

Re:the government is kind of large

[interkin3tic]

I'm reminded of when Bobby Jindal made fun of "Volcano research" and then a few weeks later a volcano erupted.

Nearly any spending can be made to sound wasteful when you gloss over important details. The government spent $47k on nintendo Wiis? I don't know what that's about but here's two wild guesses:

1. The government funds some services for children, like orphanages, hospitals, day cares, holding facilities, and schools, and someone thought that spending $200 on a wii to pacify the kids was a good investment (compared to maybe the kids getting bored and causing damage to the facilities in vandalism, costing more.)

2. A massive conspiracy in which congressmen and women and their staff do nothing but play videogames, made in some backroom deal with Nintendo.

Probably number two now that I think about it.

At any rate, lets not be simpletons and start foaming at the mouth because a valid reason for some of these expenditures don't immediately pop out at us.

Re:the government is kind of large

[bberens]

Agreed. Guys in the military get paid like $0.05/hr for their work. Give them all the access to PS3s and XBoxes they want.

Re:the government is kind of large

[Hatta]

And I'm certainly not going to begrudge the soldiers who are keeping me safe the cost of a few game systems.

What about the soldiers that are endangering you by perpetuating conflict because of imperialistic foreign policy? Not all military action keeps you safe. In fact most military action is less about keeping you safe, and more about securing profits for powerful and connected people or organizations. Pretending otherwise is dangerous.

kudos

[yagu]

If you compare that money against the total government expenditures, I'd guess percentage-wise they're spending far less on gadgets from their budget than the average consumer. Maybe we should be congratulating them.

Of course, there may be buried beneath all the other expenditures many gadgets that don't show up as itemized and measurable.

Re:kudos

[MozeeToby]

I can't imagine a news item being less news worthy... there are 2.5 million full time federal employees. That means that the federal government spends on average $4.70 dollars per year, per employee on phones (including for service). Somehow that doesn't seem at all unreasonable to me. I'd presume iOS devices are almost exclusively phones (~1 per 50 employees), perhaps with some company use tablets thrown in as well. As for the rest: PS3s are used all over the place to make cheap super computers, and I'd guess xBoxes and Zunes would be either for the troops or for performance giveaways. Yes, lets all be upset that they spent half a penny per employee on Zunes.

Also, to really put this in perspective. At the height of the Iraq war, a single day's operations cost more than 5.5x the 10 year 'gadget budget'. 4.5 hours of operations in Iraq, 10 years of gadgets for every federal employee.

Re:kudos

[KhabaLox]

The number of Executive Branch employees per capita has been declining since the 1960s. Actually, that's not true. It went up a bit under Reagan and the first Bush.

Thats all?

[kelarius]

Over 10 years that really isn't a whole lot, especially when you're talking about the government. I think many corporations end up spending more on the BB phones/plans ALONE than the gov spent on all of that, and considering that many of those PS3s/xboxes/zunes/iOS devices probably went to the military to entertain deployed troops (or in iOS case, to be used functionally in the field) I don't really consider those bad investments.

Re:Thats all?

[afidel]

Yeah, my little 1,000 employee company has probably spent $4M on Blackberries, ipad's, and cell service over the last 10 years (our AT&T bill alone is ~$25k/month and they only have ~80% of our business). The government has a hell of a lot more than 25k employees so if anything the numbers seem rather small to me.

Re:Thats all?

[Rob the Bold]

Over 10 years that really isn't a whole lot, especially when you're talking about the government. I think many corporations end up spending more on the BB phones/plans ALONE than the gov spent on all of that, and considering that many of those PS3s/xboxes/zunes/iOS devices probably went to the military to entertain deployed troops (or in iOS case, to be used functionally in the field) I don't really consider those bad investments.

Let's just do that math. Looks like federal spending over that time period was a little under $30 Trillion (give or take 3 or 4 trillion). So Blackberry expenditures would be about 4 millionths of total federal spending. Let's see, what do I spend about 4 millionths of my money on? If I somehow spend $100,000 annually, that's 40 cents a year. That doesn't even get me a payphone call -- provided I could find one.

I guess I should put that in the same frame as the summary: $4 over ten years. That's a few orders of magnitude lower than my "gadget" spending.

So?

[bmo]

Those figures are over 10 years?

That's not even real money.

Get back to me when we're not spending billions on wars each month that we're losing in the long run.

Get back to me when there is an accounting for the 6 - some odd billion in *cash* we shipped off to Iraq (or was it Afghanistan? Who cares, same thing) that simply disappeared down the rat hole through simple theft.

--
BMO

Re:Uhh

[Osgeld]

troops sitting out in bum fuck nowhere middle east. what? do you expect them to play cards and read Archie comics 100% of their down time?

How much did they spend on typewriters?

[blair1q]

Did they spend anything on typewriters?

How about filing cabinets?

Any word on semaphore flags?

Pretty sure this is a shift in paradigm in the tools needed to perform the task, not a shopping spree on cool toys.

Re:Of course they're buying Zunes

[langelgjm]

Actually the Zunes are backhanded gifts for our diplomats to hand out when they want to insult another country's leaders. Kind of like buying someone a really ugly sweater.

Re:Okay...

[frank_adrian314159]

There's no excuse for buying a Zune, though.

That's true for everyone, not just the government.

Re:Newsflash

[Osgeld]

did you even read the summary? over a decade for the united states government that's piddle squat amounts of money, fuck we spent more than that to watch worms fuck in space during the last NASA mission alone!

so relax

What is standing in the way of saving money!

[jd.schmidt]

I unfortunately know why Government agencies don't allow workers to buy their own cell phone for a small reimbursement. Salary, taxes and discovery.

While lots of workers need cell phones, lots don't. so there is a danger of it becoming the "government cell phone benefit". Further it ends up messing up taxes and contract/salary agreements, is it an additional benefit or not?

Worse yet is discovery. If you transact public business on private devices, does discovery apply? Are you breaking laws by texting instead of calling (avoiding the agency email server)? How do you edit out all the call records of personal stuff?

I wish there was a simple way around these problems, I like saving money too, but so far no one has found one.

So the accountability needs of the Government prevent us from saving money. It is too bad however.

The XBoxs I am sure are mostly for the troops.

Re:Of course they're buying Zunes

[networkBoy]

Hello from the other side of the political seesaw.
I find both Obama and GW to be too liberal. It's interesting how different two people's views can be.
The problem is, while I want very hard line conservatism (and you obviously don't) we are both stuck with politicians that give neither of us what we want because they think that they have to straddle the aisle to get any votes. The Tea Party is a good thing for all of us because they are showing the wafflers currently in office that strong political opinions can get votes.
Now hopefully we can also get them to realize that they can disagree but still do things that are for the benefit of the country.
(sadly I'm afraid that's too much to ask)
-nB

Re:Innocent until proven guilty

[Hatta]

If they go into the military knowing they will be used for imperialism, then they are at fault for that. If they go into the military ignorant of that fact, then they are at fault for ignorance. A good person will never abdicate their conscience.

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus,(7) etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens.
Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849