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Report: US Military Is Wasting Millions On Satellite Comms
An anonymous reader writes: Fast information exchange is the key to a powerful military, and satellites have been an incredible boon to the commanders of modern fighting forces. But a new report from the Government Accountability Office says the U.S. military is vastly overpaying for its satellite communications, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. They say the Department of Defense "has become increasingly reliant on commercial SATCOM to support ongoing U.S. military operations." You see, every part of the DoD is required to go through the Defense Information Systems Agency when procuring SATCOM equipment. The problem is that this process is incredibly slow, and fraught with red tape. Because of this, many in the military skip DISA and go straight to commercial providers — at a steep markup. The GAO estimates that this cost taxpayers around $45 million extra in a single year.
The GAO estimates that this cost taxpayers around $45 million extra in a single year.
So about $450 million over the last 10 years opposed to how much spent in Afghanistan and Iraq over the same period? How about checking into that? Oh right, that stuff is "off book" and not accounted for - though probably still affects our budget, economy and taxes. The SATCOM bill is chump-change by comparison. While we're looking at blips in the account, why not also cancel Public Radio and NASA - they probably also cost us each a nickel.
Yes, it may be an unnecessary expense that can be avoided by fixing the in-channel SATCOM process but our Government (and specifically Congress) is notoriously penny-wise and pound-foolish.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I have almost exclusively worked for large corporations. In almost every one of them, there has been a central purchasing department that does nothing more than forward orders to a pre-approved supplier. I think you become a pre-approved supplier by kicking back a certain percentage of sales to the purchasing manager.
When faced with this, every place I have worked at has had a shadow IT department. Back in the pre-cloud days, this was the department buying equipment that IT didn't know about simply because the quoted price was too much or it took too long. These days, it's a manager whipping out the credit card and putting company data out on AWS or Azure. The usual "better to ask for forgiveness than beg per permission" applies here, and IT ends up supporting it anyway. Centralized purchasing doesn't work for IT stuff -- it *may* save you money on toilet paper and light bulbs, but IT is too complex to reduce to a line item in a PO.
This is just the government equivalent. The only reason we know about it is because the records are public.
Which is exactly why sequestration actually worked and why we need more of it.
There isn't political will to cut any specific program. Its like a comment up that page said "oh its only a nickle per tax payer" so the generally electorate does not get excited and won't vote for you because of you tough stance on support of Emu breading research. On the other hand the handful of Emu farmers and researchers out there will be very concerned about and run scary ads about how you are killing all the jobs in the Bumbfuck County [Insert Square State].
Congress is to freckles to deal with any specific budge line item or even any specific department level budget. On the other hand if you push big cross the board cuts it may leave all of our problems of in appropriate allocation in place, but at least you bring the aggregate numbers down.
In the best case:
Someone figures out away to save a few million by negotiating better contracts and eliminating some waste.
In the next best case:
That leaves the folks on the ground in a position to say well we don't have enough budget to do all this mandated activity lets divert resources from this effort we know really does not work so we can maintain this other that does or this other that is more important. Sure we have to "officially" still research Emu breading but will just have a intern book an hour to it once a month.
Worst case:
Some actually productive and beneficial program / policy gets short shrift-ed because the money isn't there even though plenty of money is still being foolish spent elsewhere.
Still this is the best we can do in the current state of political system. Until some real calamity forces people to get real I don't see things changing. I thought the financial crisis might have done it, but the pols managed to kick the can down the road by printing their way out and our biggest trade partners were sufficiently upside down as well that is kept a lit on inflation. With Asia now getting the shakes they can probably get away with it for another decade.
The next president is going to be one luck SOB or DOB? whoever it is. They going to get to continue to enjoy the real stimulative effects of the low interest rate, policy, and the benefits of all the medical industry growth which is already a sixth of the economy. Obama care is going to be good short term here. It will move a lot of money around. 9-10 years from now when the next guy is on his way out office though its going all come off the rails.
1) Demographics will be further screwed older
2) We will likely be even more a service economy having seen little growth in real wages
3) The Debt will be larger, meaning more borrowing will cost more
4) The once insatiable appetites for our bonds in foreign markets that is now gone will still be
5) Even if the dollar is still the reserve currency of many alternative currency markets for commodities like oil will probably exist.
6) Mandatory health insurance while having prevented a handful of personal bankruptcies will have further reduced the savings rate among the general population.
I don't think the formula from 2008-10, which barely worked then will get us out of the next hole
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html