DataRepublican (small r)@DataRepublican
👀 Government Contract Waste in Action: A True Story
A software engineer friend shared his experience from a decade-long government contract. On paper, it looked like a cost-saving move—six contractors replacing over twenty civil servants. But in reality, a decade was spent rebuilding a software system from scratch... only for the project to be scrapped, and the agency to continue using the original version.
The project cycled through three different contracting companies before being insourced back to the civil service. Actual development took about three or four years. The rest as bureaucratic battles just to get it approved for use.
And the kicker? The small user base (50-100 people, many nearing retirement) didn’t want a new system. Worse, the new version was slower due to mandatory full logging for debugging. A simple solution—adding a toggle to disable logging after model verification—was rejected.
In the end, the contractors worked in slow motion, thinking they were building something valuable. But after ten years and who knows how many millions spent, it was all for nothing.
Also, according to my friend, contractors are never fired for poor performance. The government just gives the contract to someone else, and the original guys are be eligible to bid for new ones.
This is how government contract waste happens.
