News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abando... by ThinkBeat on Sunday January 31, 2021 @08:20AM (#25978599)
This is quite common in the US.

For a while my entire job ended up writing proposals and all the related nonsense for federal an state government contracts. I did not like that one bit.

However spending week after week trying to divine the meaning behind phrases and terms.

It shortly became apparent that some parts of the government would consistently have requirements only applicable to one vendor.

That saved a lot of time since I could just skip them whenever they came out.

These types of «arrangements” often go all the way to congress promised pork for donors and secure job for voters.

If I have given the impression I was doing all the work myself that is not intended. We had a big team of all sorts of disciplines

Re:CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abando... by sul_tasto on Sunday January 31, 2021 @10:59AM (#25979713)
What I don’t understand is why auditors can’t or won’t put a stop to this.
Re:CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abando... by p_l on Sunday January 31, 2021 @06:57PM (#25983944)
It's hard to put down a technically legal, as far as text of law goes, practice. Especially when there are no complaints to use as a base because all contenders for the contract were similarly shady. And sometimes some $RANDOM gets the contract because nobody serious will take it, thanks to anti-corruption/anti-loss measures that the populous voted in that made the contract impossible. So Honest John Federal takes the contract and finds a suitably desperate student/outsources it to cheapest vendor possible.

Meanwhile auditors (unless burned out) would love to get the contractors and buyer staked in court, but technically all checkboxes on the checklist are checked (pun intended) and there's no obvious better candidate to use as counter example.