NASA's Outsourced Computer People Are Even Worse Than You Might Expect (arstechnica.com)

Eric berger, writing for ArsTechnica: As part of a plan to help NASA "modernize" its desktop and laptop computers, the space agency signed a $2.5 billion services contract with HP Enterprise Services in 2011. According to HP (now HPE), part of the Agency Consolidated End-User Service (ACES) program the computing company would "modernize NASA's entire end-user infrastructure by delivering a full range of personal computing services and devices to more than 60,000 users." HPE also said the program would "allow (NASA) employees to more easily collaborate in a secure computing environment." The services contract, alas, hasn't gone quite as well as one might have hoped. This week Federal News Radio reported that HPE is doing such a poor job that NASA's chief information officer, Renee Wynn, could no longer accept the security risks associated with the contract. Wynn, therefore, did not sign off on the authority to operate (ATO) for systems and tools.A spokesperson for NASA said: "NASA continues to work with HPE to remediate vulnerabilities. As required by NASA policy, system owners must accomplish this remediation within a specified period of time. For those vulnerabilities that cannot be fully remediated within the established time frame, a Plan of Actions and Milestones (POAM) must be developed, approved, and tracked to closure."

Comments

Who would have guessed?

[HornWumpus]

EDS under a new name is the same old POS.

How do they get contracts? It's not like their incompetence isn't already legend.

The only thing they are competent at is marketing to government and fortune 500s.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> How do they get contracts?

Golf maybe?

>> It's not like their incompetence isn't already legend.

I took part in a state-wide effort to avoid hiring Accenture for some kind of state voting system about ten years, based on their demonstrated inability to complete that kind of project (they were getting sued by other governments during bidding) and their 3-4x run-up of costs at the same time. Guess what happened? The state hired Accenture anyway...got screwed with a system they couldn't use...and got charged about 3x what they were told. Unfortunately as I got older, I noticed that this happens all the time.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because management doesn't listen to IT people, or even consult them about IT-related contracts. Instead, they imagine that they have all the knowledge and experience required to judge the merits of a proposal and end up selecting the one with the slickest marketing.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called lobbying (aka bribery). You funnel lots of money into the campaigns, foundations, or libraries of powerful people (for example....Secretaries of State) and magically you get whatever you want. Big government contracts. Laws that hinder your competitors. Regulations that benefit you personally. Tax breaks. The list goes on and on and on...

Re: Who would have guessed?

[Anonymous Coward]

IT people mostly suck, too. And there's this fallacy that people will actually deliver on contractual obligations; they won't. People that are good at spotting bullshit are usually marginalized as negative influences.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[Anonymous Coward]

They can get the contract because HP is both services and hardware all in one (minimal subcontractors) and they can claim "experience" from Navy-Marine Corps Internet (NMCI, see above AC post). The problem is the Navy and Marine Corps _hate_ NMCI for many reasons, and the network is still a playground for the Chinese and Russians while any"failures" result in EDS^H^H^H HP saying "you didn't pay us enough to do X". X is anything which is not something positive for HP, which means they can blame the Govt / DoD, which means they don't have to declare problems on RFP's for other government agencies (like NASA).

The groups that were hit the hardest in the NMCI transition were RDT&E facilities because they were going to lose their custom software (and did). NASA in particular is going to be hit by this. The NMCI contract also states that HP owns all the hardware, so if they are canned they can literally pick up all the office computers, most printers, and all file servers used by the Navy and USMC and take them back, leaving the USA with a long term national security problem*. I'm guessing the NASA contracts also states this.

* This does not pertain to active military operations computers (i.e. Aegis computers, Blue Force Tracker, etc. are 100% government owned), but it does to all backoffice and logistics systems, including most computers being used for acquisition management and email dissemination.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[OrangeTide]

I wish someone could dig up some proof.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[EndlessNameless]

The original NMCI contract expired and was replaced by NGEN.

Under NGEN, the government has full network infrastructure documentation and certain hardware assets.

While this particular problem has been addressed, HP got a sweetheart deal because they were basically a shoo-in. Precisely because Navy/USMC botched the original contract.

So while the government apparently learned from its mistakes, the Navy/USMC are stuck with HP for the next few years regardless.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[sjames]

Found the shill.

Re: Who would have guessed?

[EndlessNameless]

People that are good at spotting bullshit are usually marginalized as negative influences.

I don't have that problem, so it's probably a question of how you identify BS or how you expose it up the chain.

The underlying issue is that you have to be right. If you call something out---even once---and it ends up doing what they wanted it for, then your credibility is shot.

There's an art to conveying uncertainty in regard to anything management wants.

I have never gotten a bad response from saying, "The suggested product does not have a perfect reputation, so here is an alternative if they can't deliver." And that alternative comes with a summary of the costs, functionality, and tradeoffs so he can justify the change if necessary.

The people I see marginalized as negative influences are the ones who talk shit about proposed solutions without offering one of their own. A business need can't go without a solution, so you're offering either a viable alternative or noise. And an alternative solution doesn't count if it can't check off all the major requirements, including the ones that might not be written down.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Accenture consistently drives high performance and has a history of satisfaction on projects for the worlds top organizations

No they have a history of bringing in piles of bodies that are only slightly more effective than a rotting corpse in the corner although the corpse may actually smell better.

What sets Accenture apart from the competition are its management.

Translation: We will blow more smoke up your ass than a stationary 2 stroke diesel Fairbanks engine with bad rings at load.

However Accenture Senior Management staff have shown consistently high levels of skill and communication.

See above a blowing smoke up your ass. Skills wise they suck harder than a black hole with daddy issues

Re:Who would have guessed?

[plopez]

Just wait until EDS+CSC , a black hole of IT despair.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[karlandtanya]

Perhaps we can be satisfied with digging up the people who dared to dig up the proof?

Re:Who would have guessed?

[hey!]

Government procurement contracts pretty much preclude the government obtaining goods and services on the open market. Instead it must rely to a large degree on contractors and vendors who have the capability of handling all the special paperwork and requirements.

So if you're on a procurement committee you don't have much choice. Once you discard the vendors who (a) can't absorb the amount of money to be spent on schedule and (b) jump through the statutory federal contractor hoops, what you're left with is a rogues gallery of usual suspects.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[HangingChad]

EDS under a new name is the same old POS.

ZOMG that brings back horrible memories of NMCI. That was like the worst elements of outsourcing combined with the worst elements of in-house management. It would have been difficult to deliberately design a less functional system.

Re: Who would have guessed?

[postbigbang]

Let me premise this by saying I'm in no way defending HPE, who I otherwise find to be competent in some areas, and total nitwits in others.

At each stage in the procurement process are opportunities to screw things up. They often start at the needs analysis and systems analysis point that provides motivation for change. People aren't visionary and don't think well for five years down the road. Add in people that are looking for retirement plans, or who are plainly scared to try something new, or go out on a limb, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Then there's a bidding process, vendor qualification, the tender and win (perhaps a lose), and then a vendor is going to try to optimize profitability wherever possible, including using the cheapest labor they can find to meet the minimums of the requirements. You get very few stars, and mostly average people.

And they're all critics in one way or another. Some have a clue, some don't. Everyone can bitch and moan about a job, but few are competent enough to be valid critics of design. Everyone thinks they are, but few really do have the skills.

This said, I wish there were more motivators-- with teeth-- to protect the government's use of funding of projects in general, and IT specifically. Litigation is when everyone loses, despite any settlements. By the time litigation pays off, the problem is well past and now vastly more complex.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[bwcbwc]

Keep in mind: small to medium companies are also terrible at maintaining security patch levels. This isn't just an issue with government contracts and fortune 500 companies. If you look at the headline breaches and vulnerability disclosures over the past few years, most of those were under internal IT departments even if the breach came in from another source. And how does a corporate IT department/contractor fix a vulnerability on a device where the manufacturer hasn't issued a patch and all comparable products have similar issues? Think security cameras for example.

Regarding government contractors, my theory is that all of the contractors are equally bad. You can get horror stories about IBM, Accenture, CSC, and all of them.

The other factor is the state budgeting and hiring processes are not geared toward hiring large IT departments..No state has a large internal IT department to serve the entire state. Each administrative area has its own IT department. The same applies at the federal level. These agency IT departments could be permanently staffed for maintenance, but no legislature is going to fund enough IT personnel on a permanent basis for project work -- once a project is done you have all these extra employees sitting around, and they can't be fired except for cause.

Two ways out of this: Modify state hiring laws to allow term contracts of x months or y years so that government IT departments can directly handle project work with temporary hires. Also consolidate agency IT departments to a statewide department of IT services. That would give many of the benefits of contracting and centralized management, without the overhead of procurement, corporate profits etc.

The difficulty is that there are many interest groups who would oppose both of these initiatives. Government workers would oppose the term hiring provisions and agency heads would oppose having their IT departments pulled from their direct administration.

Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked for them. They have Linux HA failover setup on single network cable going to the same switch from both nodes. And then they debate why both nodes became master. When it was pointed out by me they stonewall and bounce between teams like engineering vs server ops. Nothing gets done. Engineering is a joke, they only know how to install linux from a CD. No tuning at all. SAN storage, where do I start. They recruit kids who got certifications, who use production as learning platform.

Re:Not surprising

[shaitand]

"SAN storage, where do I start. They recruit kids who got certifications, who use production as learning platform."

Yup, I knew some of those kids while I worked in Albuquerque. HP would poach some of our greenest and youngest people.

Re:Not surprising

[segedunum]

Not surprised at all. I interviewed with them, and they really wanted me mainly because I got the impression they desperately needed someone who knew what he was talking about for something they really needed. However, HPE already have a massive reputation for casting employees aside and I wisely backed out. They are a company that simply don't do anything useful at all but get cash thrown at them for some reason. That's the result.

Re:Not surprising

[Anon-Admin]

So it has not changed from the time I worked there.

HPE is a joke, I would be willing to bet that these vulnerabilities are considered out of contract and remediation will be billed as T&M

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

That's nothing. To save costs they collocated backup systems in the same physical facility with the main systems for many Navy east cost services.

Guess what happened?:
http://static.dvidshub.net/media/pubs/pdf_6736.pdf (link to an issue of "The Flagship", Vol 18, #19)

We (Navy) lost a lot of expensive data as a result..

Re:Not surprising

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Engineering is a joke, they only know how to install linux from a CD.

So you are saying they are more competent than a standard MCSE cert holder then.

This is why

[Anonymous Coward]

Some advice that was given to me years ago and has proven very accurate is to always be involved with the core business of anywhere you work. Never be a part of the support staff - accounting, IT, HR, etc.

If you make widgets, be a widget engineer or a widget assembler or a widget repairman.

Support staff is easily outsourced or replaced and you wind up bouncing from job to job and being cut any time your pay nears a livable level. If you work at N

ASA, have something to do with rocket launches or exploration and you'll be fine. IT? Not so much.

Re:This is why

[shaitand]

True but in tech there is no advancement in position anyway, the only way you get a pay increase you'll notice is to get hired at the current market rates by another company. Within 2-3 years you'll pay will have advanced only joke 1-3% amounts while new hires will make as much or more than you.

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

Support staff is easily outsourced or replaced and you wind up bouncing from job to job and being cut any time your pay nears a livable level.

As an IT support contractor for 20+ years, I currently make $50,000+ per year and live in Silicon Valley.

Re:This is why

[Joe_Dragon]

50K is crap in SV

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

Within 2-3 years you'll pay will have advanced only joke 1-3% amounts while new hires will make as much or more than you.

I turned down a job when I ran into an old coworker during an interview. He was still making the same amount of money that I made when we worked together nine years earlier. If I had accepted the position, I would had made 80% more money than him for doing the same kind of work. Those 2% raises don't add up over the long run.

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

50K is crap in SV

Not if you're living a modest lifestyle. The mistake that most people make is chasing the American Dream: big houses, big cars, big toys, big women, big kids. That gets expensive in Silicon Valley.

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

Some people like the position they have currently and don't want to change/climb higher in the pay rank.

I'm studying for my InfoSec certifications, as that is my current position in government IT. When the contract expires in three years, I'll make the jump to $100K with a new job.

Re:This is why

[HornWumpus]

Sorry dude, 50K is crap in Sacramento. It's a small piece of crap in SV.

Nobody should work hell desk for 20 years. If I couldn't find something better (pro mechanic?), I'd open my veins..

You are getting too old to live like an undergrad.

Re:This is why

[frank_adrian314159]

How's the cardboard box you're living in going? I figure that's about all you're going to afford in the Bay Area at that salary rate...

Re:This is why

[Fire_Wraith]

This is very, very true. If I'd stayed with my original position and company, I'd be making a fraction of what I am now.

At a minimum, getting an offer letter for a higher salary lets you negotiate more money than you'd otherwise get from simply going through a regular annual review.

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

How's the cardboard box you're living in going? I figure that's about all you're going to afford in the Bay Area at that salary rate...

I rent a 470-sft studio apartment for $1,466 per month. I've been here for 11 years.

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

Err, so about half your take-home is for rent?

Less than half. I put away 20% in savings.

That's some poverty-level shit right there.

Poverty-level shit is owning a house with an underwater mortgage, still paying off the down payment borrowed from the wife's 401k plan, leasing two or three cars, and buying $180 blue jeans. That's my brother and his family. He's rich, I'm poor. But only one of us can afford to retire — and it ain't him.

Re:This is why

[The-Ixian]

The nice thing about IT work is that all sectors need IT workers.

So you don't have to restrict yourself to one market sector.

Some sectors pay more than others.

For me, it is always a trade off between freedom and burdensome restrictions.

Usually, the bigger the company, the more you can get paid as an IT worker and the less you need to know. However, you also have much less freedom to drive company policy or to even do your job (or what you view to be your job).

OTOH, the smaller the company, the less money you make as salary but the perks may be bigger (retirement, medical insurance, free parking, etc) and you have more freedom to involve yourself in more things (wear more hats). However, the work is harder and you need to know more.

I personally like the smaller companies. I don't make as much as my peers, but I do get to do a lot more interesting things on a daily basis.

Re:This is why

[nedlohs]

aka a cardboard box. Especially since most people with 20 years in a career have a kid or two (though likely not most who pay close to half their net salary to rent a studio apartment).

Re: This is why

[turbidostato]

"To be fair, any number is a potential fraction."

How to show you wrong in one word: Pi.

You can polish a turd...

[D00MSlayer]

But it's still a piece of shit. Any level of support from HP should be dealt with great skepticism. They haven't had their stuff together for a very long time.

Outsourcing vs Inhouse

[Archangel Michael]

If you outsource, you get what you pay for .. maybe.

If you keep it in house, you get what you pay for .. maybe.

The problem isn't outsourcing, it is leadership that is incapable of articulating needs correctly. Or even make a decision without having to have 18 meetings with people who don't give a rip and don't know anything.

Re:Outsourcing vs Inhouse

[chipschap]

Or even make a decision without having to have 18 meetings with people who don't give a rip and don't know anything.

When I becane an IT manager, I instituted a "two meeting" rule. The first meeting to broach and issue and discuss it, and the second meeting to complete the discussion and make a decision.

This enraged people, who wanted multiple meetings spread out over weeks. Great way to avoid accountability but I wouldn't allow it. So people then started coming to me individually, post-decision, trying to get me to reconsider or have another meeting.

Sorry. I would rather have risked a sub-optimal decision than have no decision at all---- and the additional dozen meetings very likely would have resulted in something worse, not better.

I only lasted a few years in that job. Too counter-culture. (I also --- gasp --- got rid of subordinate managers who weren't getting the job done.)

Re: Outsourcing vs Inhouse

[Archangel Michael]

'nobody working for the govrnment has any talent'

I am a libertarian. I would not say "nobody" (an absolute) has talent. That being said, you make a strong strawman argument!

I am convinced, that that there are enough incompetent or evil people in government that it makes it impossible to dodge all the raindrops. The problem with Government Employees that suck, that are incompetent, that are evil is that it is virtually impossible to rid them from the system. They exist, they remain, and everyone knows a few that cannot be fired.

The reason you outsource in Government is so you can terminate the incompetent by eliminating the whole staff. Everyone pays the price for the bad. And in that case, it appears that "nobody has talent" because in order to function, you have to fire everyone (absolute) just to rid yourself of those that shouldn't be there in the first place.

Insider Info

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked at one of the NASA research centers when this contract was awarded. During the Due Diligence phase, HPE didn't even send a representative to our facility, and at other sites the reps were there for one day. We were incredulous; at our site alone there are 3,000+ people and a complex IT infrastructure. How can you do proper due diligence for a multi-billion dollar contract without even visiting the IT environment your going to be taking over, or talking with existing staff and customers?

Lockheed also competed for this contract and lost. (Lockheed was the incumbent on the expiring ODIN contract, and some of us suspected bias against Lockheed because of this.) Lockheed contested the contract award, which is something that is rarely done because you don't want to burn bridges with the government, and the United States government is Lockheed's customer for about 99% of all corporate revenue. Lockheed's position was something like, "you can't be serious! HPE has no idea what they are doing!" But NASA was insistent that they wanted HPE. It's been pure IT hell at NASA ever since.

MORE: During implementation, we found out that HPE's plan was to have a single HPE employee at our location! Any other staff would be outsourced or done via remote desktop sessions.

Re:Insider Info

[segedunum]

I worked at one of the NASA research centers when this contract was awarded. During the Due Diligence phase, HPE didn't even send a representative to our facility...

Because they knew it was a done deal. Palms greased, rounds of golf done, prostitutes paid.

Re:Insider Info

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Not surprising. I was at HP/HPE for a couple of years, at the original SABRE site. Almost everything was outsourced to Wipro/IBM. I had to step-by-step walk thier "systems administrator" through on installing IIS on a w2k box. To the point of "yes, now hit enter. Click here, no; you need to DOUBLE CLICK." It felt like IT Crowd "you do know what a button is, right? No, not on your trousers". I'll bet that "single HPE employee" was also a contractor. The only reason the SABRE site isn't 100% contractors is because AA won't let them. They "outsourced" the entire help-desk floor, even making LTE/FTE go to a contractor position at less pay and practically zero benefits. I was told stuff like medical insurance went from "employer paid" to "we can get you a discount"; just "good enough" to not get an ACA penalty. No vacation, no PTO. Some people had been LTE/FTE for over a decade. Everyone was outsourced, from the helpdesk Director on down. I got lucky and jumped out of the HD into the NOC just as it was announced, and managed to hang on for another 2 years...but at least I was FTE and got a severance package. Now I'm at a privately owned company, making $15k more a year and no longer feel like a replaceable part.

Re:Insider Info

[turbidostato]

"Because they knew it was a done deal. Palms greased, rounds of golf done, prostitutes paid."

Don't think so. I've been on my dose of these procurements and usually, no, they are not taken for granted. It really depends on the contract but you don't do (percieved) due diligence for two reasons:
1) Since you are not sure about winning the contract, pre-sales costs are a problem since you don't know if you'll recoup them, so you save them on on-site techs in order to expend on "hooks and booze" -which usually pays better at this stage.
2) You *positively* know these kind of contracts can't base their pricing on a honest cost-plus-margin valuation. They already come with a more or less fixed price so you only need a very rough ballpark go/no go valuation (usually mixed with some strategic considerations which make the real cost even more moot) -even worse, you usually have no time for anything better. In the end, since you know you are going to work backwards, why taking the effort? I mean, *if* you get the contract, you take the money, take out (at least) your expected profit and service it with whatever it remains, disregarding any real needs from the customer.

Obviously, this kind of approach rarely if ever offers good results.
Obviously, the hiring party absolutely knows it.
Astoundingly, they (both public or private entities) keep contracting that way.

The problems begin with the letters H and P...

[__aaclcg7560]

I talked to a recruiter a few years ago about an HP help desk position with a high turnover rate at an unnamed company in North San Jose. He refused to explain the turnover situation. I told him that I wasn't going to interview if I didn't know how bad the situation was. I had no problem cleaning up messes but I don't do lost causes. HP help desk at that unnamed company sounded like a lost cause based on what little the recruiter told me.They were also underpaying their techs.

Re:The problems begin with the letters H and P...

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Good call. You couldn't "clean up the mess": It's far beyond the help desk's scope to fix the issues; issues like being forced to use the worst ticketing system ever (HPSM). Ass-backwards implementation of LEAN. Focusing on "call metrics" like it's a second-rate call center instead of a technical help desk. A knowledge-base that makes a burning pile of confetti look good. No support for your tools; I had to go to external forums and wind my way backwards to get support from some third-party for what supposedly was HP software. Tech leads busy playing MMORPG's on their personal laptops. Ridiculous levels of unchecked favoritism.

NASA quote low bids

[turkeydance]

It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract. Alan Shepard Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quo...

But outsourcing is wonderful!

[whitroth]

Yeah, everyone who works for the government is incompetent, and business is *always* competent, and libertidiots are *sure* of this.

Btw, I work for a federal contractor, and I know as a matter of fact, not opinion, that my salary and benefits are comparable to the GS level I'd be at (well... except for, say, if the government shuts down, for Republicans, or snow, or whatever, I either have to make it up, burn vacation time, or take it without pay)... AND our tax dollars are not only being spent to pay me, but also my direct manager, and his manager, and so on up, and, oh, yes, however could I have forgotten, for my company to make a good profit.

See? So much saved money..... At least, I, and the folks I work with, actually know what we're doing.

              mark

So...

[Cornwallis]

"...a Plan of Actions and Milestones (POAM) must be developed, approved, and tracked to closure."

But they never say anything has to actually work!

The US gov tried their best

[AHuxley]

to ensure the people hired by the USA in 1950-90's after Operation Paperclip had the best skills to carry on the German vision of total internal quality control over any project.
What went wrong in the 1980-90's with the post German generations of US gov staff testing?
Top US universities educated many of the worlds best graduates based academic merit over the decades.
Did all the great people go to the private sector, starving the US gov of needed skills? Did the NRO make a better offer to the very top % considering gov work?
Who or what is holding back the best US graduates from finding top jobs and working on gov projects that once had effortless internal institutional support?

Re:The US gov tried their best

[JustNiz]

> Who or what is holding back the best US graduates from finding top jobs

Their money expectations combined with the stupidity of management that thinks everyone is interchangeable so why not just hire cheap H1Bs. The thing is, you get what you pay for.

They are highly competent at getting contracts

[raymorris]

>How do they get contracts? It's not like their incompetence isn't already legend.

They are very good at what they do - they get contracts. They handle thousands of pages of government forms, years of meetings, and of course donating to the right organizations.

I was a contractor for a company which did most of the on-site work for HP, called TCML. HP's competence was getting government contracts. TCML's competence was finding and contracting somewhat competent techs. My competence was with servers, switches, desktops, etc.

I'm not competent at preparing a XYX-7273-HDH-98(b) package for a federal RFP. HP isn't competent at upgrading a router.

Outsourcing never works

[doggo]

Management (Who usually don't do the work, or even understand the work. Not only IT, any field from IT to janitorial) always wants to outsource because they think it'll save money. It nearly never saves money, and the service usually ends up being well below what is expected or existed previously. Sometimes the bottom line isn't the bottom line.

Re:hire competent government employees

[g01d4]

rather than the State Representative's cousin Bubba Gump or this guy from the Sunday school class

Hiring could be a revolving door with industry or whatever buzzword and acronym (see summary) generating criteria the industry uses - their management often isn't much better. Managers who poorly manage large projects still have that mystical experience. Same goes for the company.

A: Because it breaks the flow of a message

[DNS-and-BIND]

Q: Why is starting a comment in the Subject: field incredibly irritating?

Tell me...

[publiclurker]

are you a high level pointy hair at Accenture or just one of their fluffers?

Yes. Reading/writing 1,000 page proposal is work

[raymorris]

> All the money is taken off the top and the real work is done for a skilled-labourer wage.

True, for government contracts a small percentage of the money goes to people with screwdrivers in hand. ALSO, the people reading and writing 1,000 page documents are doing work. It would certainly be good if we could eliminate some of that work, but it's real work that is required by the federal processes.

Most of these requirements were created to encourage fairness of one kind or another. I personally can go buy a computer in just a few minutes. When the feds buy a computer with your money, you want to know they aren't buying it at triple the normal price from Hillary's brother, so there is process involved. Another taxpayer wants the feds to favor companies that are (nominally) owned by women, so there's more process involved. Another taxpayer wants them to favor people whose great-great-grandparents probably lived in Africa - more process, more work.

Of course organizing 1,000 contractors all over the country to upgrade all of the post offices is also real work.