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Outgoing Federal CIO Warns of 'IT Cartel' In DC

Posted by Soulskill on from the interweb-industrial-complex dept.

CWmike writes "In a wide-ranging discussion Friday with President Barack Obama's top science advisors, Federal CIO Vivek Kundra warned of the dangers of open data access and was sharply critical of government IT contracting, telling the committee: '...We almost have an IT cartel within federal IT' made up of very few companies that benefit from government spending 'because they understand the procurement process better than anyone else.' He added: 'It's not because they provide better technology.'"

9 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. And this applies exclusively to IT. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not any other area of federal contracting. No sir, this is exclusively an IT problem...

    1. Re:And this applies exclusively to IT. by kaizendojo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I would hope that the janitor would be able to call out the CIO if he found him to be wasting company resources. At least that's th way W. Edwards Deming saw it, and I've always been inclined to agree. He said that the most important people in the company are usually the lowest on the corporate pyramid because they have day to day contact with the customer. All workers need to be empowered to be part of the quality control equation becuase they all function within the system. It seems to have worked quite well for Japan and many of the other Asian nations...

    2. Re:And this applies exclusively to IT. by cayenne8 · · Score: 5, Informative
      Somewhat.

      But his larger point of knowing how to use the system and apply for the contracts...is what keeps the major few companies as being the only IT companies doing business with the feds.

      The hoops you have to jump through are many. The larger contract houses have staff devoted to NOTHING but writing proposals. The small guy, cannot compete with this.

      And even when there are contracts dedicated to SM's....the only way that truly works, is, the larger contract houses, *back* the small business and join to them...basically using them as a front to get the bids on the small business contracts.

      They generally find a small company, it must be female or minority owned about 99% of the time, to get federal consideration.....then, the big guys basically do most of the proposal work, and the so call PRIME contractor that wins...gets a good kick of money in, but they really aren't in control of anything.

      Happens all the time.

      You'd need to rewrite the oversite rules...somehow...to try to prevent this. To make the application process simpler....but I don't see that happening any time soon. But, ever since they've been trying to make mandates that the Federal govt workers be more oversite and managers, rather than hands-on tech, you're gonna see more and more of this.

      That and the situation that really kills the small companies off....is the hesitance of the feds to hire individual contractors as 1099's directly....they'd rather hire a large IT company which then wires the 'contractors' as W2 employees....giving you essentially the worst of both worlds.

      You don't get the bill rate you should get as a true contractor, but you do get the lack of stability of a contractor. This bastardization of the contracting paradigm has really hurt things....

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    3. Re:And this applies exclusively to IT. by pixelpusher220 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This whole BS MBA compartmentalized mentality is killing America.

      I sooo much prefer the "Palinization" spewing word salad on any topic imaginable that they know nothing about...

      --
      People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people :-D
  2. How can you take him seriously? by MikeRT · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "My view is we should only have three major data centers across the entire U.S. government," said Kundra.

    Set aside the procurement debate for a moment and let this one quote sink in. Three data centers is not enough to give each of the branches of the military its own dedicated data center for operations. There are five (technically) branches: Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. Each one of those should have at least one "major data center" except maybe the Coast Guard.

    Let's face it, Kundra doesn't appear to be any better than the very people he's criticizing.

    1. Re:How can you take him seriously? by Amouth · · Score: 4, Interesting

      explain to me why we need that much overlap? i understand the different roles that each branch fills.. but there is zero reason why each of them can't use the same data center.

      --
      '...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
    2. Re:How can you take him seriously? by Amouth · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So i assume the pentagon is a horrid idea and that we should never have the leaders of these branches in the same area as each other?

      aside from your "cruse missile" (which by the way would work just as well now as it would then) comment the other stuff is already covered inside a data center - just because the info is in the same building doesn't mean the networks talk to each other - nor does it mean one side knows what the other is doing..

      --
      '...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
  3. Par for Course by pavon · · Score: 5, Informative

    Welcome to all government procurement of any sort. We have rules to prefer small businesses over big companies. So who gets this business? Not all the existing small businesses in town who know their product, can answer questions, keep stock on hand, are a generally helpful. They can't handle the bureaucratic overhead of government procurement.

    Instead we have to buy from companies created for the sole purpose of being middle men to the government, whose only benefit is their understanding of the procurement process. Bonus points if they are owned by a woman or minority. They don't keep anything in stock, and add another 2-5 days to the shipping process compared to buying direct from the manufacturer. They are even more expensive than the local shops. They don't know what their products are used for and can only regurgitate what catalog in front of them says. But since they do so little they can turn over tons of revenue with only a few employees and thus remain a "small company".

  4. Not just an IT problem by gmcraff · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's a military, construction, health, fill-in-the-government-blank, problem.

    General Dynamics, Raytheon, Boeing, Halliburton, etc provide a critical service: they understand government regulation. If you've ever seen a printed out copy of the Federal Acquisition Regulations, you'd be surprised that gravitational collapse isn't happening.

    For most businesses, it's not worth taking a government contract until they're asking you to provide a COTS solution, where you know what you're selling, and the government pays you, and that's the end of it. The government is getting exactly what the commercial market gets. Firm Fixed Price contract, no surprises.

    As soon as the government wants it customized in any way, and they're willing to pay you to customize it, that rabbit hole goes all the way down. Every stipulation of the contract must be assessed for compliance, and every assessment requires some kind of test, and every test has a schedule towards passage of the test, and every last one of these things costs time and resources, which means money, which the government is going to pay you, because the government wants its double cheeseburger in a way that no-one else wants it.

    If you're an action oriented kind of entrepreneur, this will drive you insane. So you don't do it yourself. You go in as a subcontractor to one of the big Gov-BS-Handlers. You do the work, they firewall you from the BS, 50% for you, 250% for them (after change orders and spec changes and reviews and program management overhead) and everyone is happy with the $500 hammer (non-sparking, minimal toxic release, aircraft rated, 8 pound, loading bracket hinge, for the hitting of, one count)