Politico: Massive Pentagon agency lost track of hundreds of millions of dollars

Bodhisattva said:

I'm having a dispute with the technical team in my program currently. To recap, one of the tasks I (my team) manage are the 60 or so hardware and software contract for the program. I received a requirement to renew maintenance for certain hardware. Cost about $900k. It's not my job, but I did some quick checking and found out that much of equipment is end of life, while the rest are the replacement devices bought a year ago. So, I wondered, why are we buying maintenance for both? It turns out to do the check i did would take too long according to the technical POC. (It took me a few hours over two days to audit the requirement). The preference was to not to any real work and just keep buying maintenance. So what if it cost an extra $400,000? Now, can you guess who is getting grief from on high for causing a couple day delay in the purchase? (Hint, it's not the technical team who submitted a sloppy requirement. And it's certainly not offensive to the PTBs to waste massive amounts of money.)

$400,000. One action among 60 from one program among thousands. Care to guess how much waste that is writ large?

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So you're THAT contracts guy.

crimsonaudio said:

My definition of welfare is tax dollars (not including SS or medicare) used to fund the lives of others. It's a small percentage of discretionary spending (somewhere around 10% of discretionary funs in 2017, iirc).

A VAST majority of the annual budget is blown on military spending (over half of discretionary funds) and things such as 'education' (which the federal government shouldn't even be dealing with in the first place).

Again, there is so much waste it's incredible - they could balance the budget by simply tightening their collective belts (including absorbing the new tax cuts). It's offensive that people who pay over 1/3 of their income in taxes are constantly being asked to give more when there is so much waste.

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dvldog said:

So you're THAT contracts guy.

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Bodhisattva said:

I'm having a dispute with the technical team in my program currently. To recap, one of the tasks I (my team) manage are the 60 or so hardware and software contracts for the program. I received a requirement to renew maintenance for certain hardware. Cost is about $900k. It's not my job, but I did some quick checking and found out that much of equipment is end of life, while the rest are the replacement devices that were bought a year ago. So, I wondered, why are we buying maintenance for both? It turns out to do the check i did would take too long according to the technical POC. (It took me a few hours over two days to audit the requirement). The preference was to not to any real work and just keep buying maintenance. So what if it cost an extra $400,000? Now, can you guess who is getting grief from on high for causing a couple day delay in the purchase? (Hint, it's not the technical team who submitted a sloppy requirement. And it's certainly not offensive to the PTBs to waste massive amounts of money.)

$400,000. One action among 60 from one program among thousands. Care to guess how much waste that is writ large?

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crimsonaudio said:

I agree completely.

Government waste should be a cardinal sin, yet it's seemingly excused as if it's just the way things have to be. Yet all the time people clamor for more funding, more money from the rich, from corporations, from anyone except them (of course), so the government can fix whatever problem they feel needs fixing.

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rgw said:

If the our social welfare systems had the lack of oversight and teeth in enforcement that the DoD receives, welfare would actually be as bad as reactionary conservatives think it is.

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