The Pentagon just cut $5.1 billion in IT and consulting contracts with firms like Accenture and Deloitte

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Business Insider

Apr 10, 2025, 9:59 PM ET


The US's defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, just ordered the termination of IT and consulting contracts with companies like Accenture and Deloitte, calling it "wasteful spending." In a Department of Defense memo, Hegseth said he would cut a Defense Health Agency contract "for consulting services from Accenture, Deloitte, Booz Allen, and other firms that can be performed by our civilian workforce."

Also on the chopping block is the Air Force's contract with Accenture to "re-sell third-party Enterprise Cloud IT Services," which Hegseth says the government can "already fulfill directly with existing procurement resources." In the memo, Hegseth also said he was terminating 11 other contracts for "consulting services" that support "non-essential" activities, like Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), climate matters, and the Pentagon's COVID-19 response.

Hegseth said the terminations "represent $5.1 billion in wasteful spending" at the DOD and would result in nearly $4 billion in savings. The savings would be reallocated, Hegseth said, to serve "critical priorities to Revive the Warrior Ethos, Rebuild the Military, and Reestablish Deterrence." He did not specify in his memo which Pentagon projects this money would go to.

In response to a request for comment, the DOD directed Business Insider to an X video of Hegseth talking about the terminations. "By the way, we need this money to spend on better healthcare for our warfighters and their families, instead of $500 an hour business process consultant. That's a lot of consulting," Hegseth said in the video.

Read more: https://www.businessinsider.com/pentagon-killed-5-billion-contracts-with-accenture-and-deloitte-2025-4

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Full headline: The Pentagon just cut $5.1 billion in IT and consulting contracts with firms like Accenture and Deloitte, calling it 'wasteful spending'

BAH is ALL OVER the government with contracts that have been cancelled left and right.

https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/booz-allen-hamilton/C00709816/candidate-recipients/2024

[mdbl]

1. Don't need them now that the DOGE Hacker boys are on the scene

They can do all the IT stuff.

(edited to add the sarcasm emoji just in case a dumb trumper wanders in)

[progree]

2. Hmm, maybe this kind of thing is why the BLS reported this morning that producer prices dived 0.4% in March

(a rise of 0.2% was expected)

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ppi.nr0.htm
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-monthly-producer-prices-decline-124243771.html

[BumRushDaShow]

3. And usually CNBC blares out a breaking news banner on this

but nada this morning as they have been all over the tariffs, stock market, and a pile of earnings reports! I did just find an article so will throw that up for ya!

[progree]

4. Thanks! nt

[BumRushDaShow]

6. It's up.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143438362



And just as I posted, CNBC DID wake up with a blaring breaking for the Consumer Sentiment - https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/11/consumer-sentiment-tumbles-in-april-as-inflation-fears-spike-university-of-michigan-survey-shows.html

(someone else can go ahead with that )

[progree]

11. "the Consumer Sentiment ... (someone else can go ahead with that )" -- I see why you wanted to avoid

Last edited Fri Apr 11, 2025, 09:54 PM - Edit history (1)

posting that, but at least people saw it in LBN for 5 hours, then it "blinked out" so-to-speak, and then, ha ha ...
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143438480

During the blackout phase, I put it in Editorials & Other. I also found 4 of them in General Discussion (which I added my graphs to )

[BumRushDaShow]

12. Well I provided 12 PREVIOUS examples of the posting of that

and know it's a regular feature (I don't always do those but have done a few), and I know there were plenty more that I could provide to make the point.

So it's back.

And definitely appreciate you, mahatmakanejeeves, and LetMyPeopleVote for adding that "extra" icing on the cake in threads!

[progree]

17. Surveys and features

I'm sure glad that hopefully some important surveys are still considered appropriate, even if only grudgingly so.

The consumer sentiment survey (University of Michigan) and the consumer confidence survey (Conference Board) are likely to keep getting more interesting and scary. The positive aspect is that it shows more and more people are catching on. Not a lot of people telling the surveyors about some "golden age" of falling prices. Greenland for just $570 million?

Come to think of it, the big first Friday job's report (featuring non-farm payrolls and the unemployment rate) data is from two surveys: the Establishment Survey and the Household Survey. Maybe the BLS should be called the Bureau of Labor Surveys. The unemployment insurance claims that come out every Thursday is based on a survey of each state's unemployment insurance data. Probably most of the economic reports are. (Another CPI = survey of retail prices)

Oops, did I say "featuring"? That's a bad word. I should say "highlighting" or something else safe like that.

I provided 12 PREVIOUS examples of the posting of that and know it's a regular feature

(emphasis added)

Or a regular "thing" or "report" or somesuch, rather than "feature"
https://www.google.com/search?q=thesaurus%3Afeature

Thanks also for all the info back on March 9 on these kinds of matters -- I really appreciate it.

[BumRushDaShow]

18. What is tricky though

is unless I check into the Economy group, I'm not sure who is releasing what on what date AND at what time! I know BLS, BEA, DOL, Census, etc., usually do the 8:30 ET release but others will go earlier or later - like after 10 am ET!

And CNBC doesn't always blare with their breaking chimes when they release!

I did go on and download the Yahoo! Finance app so that one is blapping out breakings. And since I keep using MarketWatch a lot for different stuff, I finally broke down and subbed to that too.

[getagrip_already]

5. The dirty little secret is the DoD has NO competency in IT.....

They have outsourced it for years under contract to civilian firms. I was a consultant for a LARGE 3 letter company that would be contracted to provide services, and we had to work with the third party contractors as well as the staff resources.

The govies were good at program management, but knew absolutely nothing about the systems we managed. Pull out the contractors, and systems will quickly degrade and become inoperable.

That is across every department and agency in the government, both classified and unclassified.

Cutting these contracts will be disastrous for systems and readiness.

Not to mention the number of people it will unemploy. Luckily, I'm out of that business.

Recession? Make it a depression.

[BumRushDaShow]

8. Exactly

I know in my agency, ever since they began migrating out of the Vax/VMS world and moving to Oracle, etc, they started wholesale contracting out management of the big data systems (hardware and software), and that started in the early '90s. The "Certified Oracle DBA" used to be as ubiquitous a term back then as the term "SEO" that you see nowadays. The onsite IT staff basically became CORs and COTRs for the contracts, getting all the requirements together and managing the task orders.

[SomewhereInTheMiddle]

19. My story was similar ...

Back when I was at an Army schoolhouse there were three tech offices – I was the head of the ed tech group, and I worked closely with the CIO’s office and the Department of Information Management (DOIM). The Ed Tech and CIO offices had about three people each The CIO and his deputy were in uniform (COL & LTC) but everyone else in the two offices were Army civilians. The DOIM had a MAJ “in charge” who was basically the contract manager and everyone else (~40-50 people) were all contractors from BAH.

So, the whole tech team was three officers, five DoD civilians and everyone else was contractor. Basically, if it plugged in only the contractors could touch it (outside of general use). The rest of us were planners and managers.

If that contract got cut the place would shut down instantly.

[Deminpenn]

20. A lot has been contracted out, but there are still civil servants who know

how to run IT.

[BumRushDaShow]

22. They might know how to "run IT"

but at this point, there might still be the ones who manage (create images for) and distribute the laptops and do basic trouble-shooting, etc., as well as managing the LAN ops, email policies, etc.

However for the big databases, you may have your civil service SMEs who handle the requirements analyses, but the rest of the stuff is housed and managed offsite by contractors - often at the contractor's facility. Some of that was due to the 9/11 and the Homeland Security Act (to help harden/tighten up the infrastructure hosting the systems, etc), along with any amendments/related Acts associated with IT/anti-terrorism stuff.

[getagrip_already]

23. exactly sysadmins can keep things running, but can't fix apps or tune shite

Some gov systems have been moved to the cloud (highly secure versions of aws, azure, etc), and some govies can manage that environment, but they don't understand the apps or architecture.

It's even worse for data center systems.

Things will keep running until they don't, and then all heck will come down. Doubly so if the idiots neglect support contracts, digital cerificates, encryption keys, and the like.

These aren't small systems. Some are multi-petabyte analytics environments. Cultural history of the systems is as important as current architecture. Change something seemingly unrelated and the ripple effects will drive you crazy until that one old timer who set it up steps up and splains things.

Just look up Louisiana Cobol Mainframe Issues. The governor has declared a state of emergency because a breakdown has pretty much disabled their DMV. Cobol is what runs the SSA, it is in the VA, and dozens of other large agencies. That is just one example.

DoD logistics runs on very old crap. Try fighting a war if you don't know where supplies are or where they need to go.

[BumRushDaShow]

24. "Just look up Louisiana Cobol Mainframe Issues."

My dad was a COBOL programmer. He was literally trained by "The Admiral" herself (as my mom said Adm. Grace Hopper was dubbed) back in the mid-'50s. He worked for the VA (back when it was called the "Veteran's Administration before becoming a Department) and worked on the veteran's checks here in Philly at their facility. When me and my sisters were little, he would bring us to work to gawk at the raised floor cold room where all the stuff was buzzing and whirring (banks of processors with mag tapes, along with the loud card reader machines, and keypunch machines). He used to bring write-protect tabs home so we could throw them around like frisbees.

He and his group would do "test" programs with stacks of punch cards that when fed into the reader, would produce a "tune" like "Jingle Bells", based on the sounds of the metal pins hitting the cards.

[atreides1]

7. Guess what

None of that money is going to the "warfighters" or their families! It's going towards the Trump tax cuts...

[eppur_se_muova]

9. Hey, that money is needed for essential multibillion $$$ contracts with Starlink and X !

And anything else Mush (N-ZA) can think to bill for. (Probably self-driving software for M1A1 tanks. Something to look forward to ?)

[Ursus Rex]

10. Amazon is a HUGE IT provider

Cloud, pro services, etc. They would likely love some of that action, and the DoD is either going to have to do without or look elsewhere to replace those lost vendors.

[BumRushDaShow]

14. Amazon's AWS already has a significant chunk of of those contracts

they did with my agency. It would not surprise me if they "cancelled" AWS contracts "in error" after finally figuring out or being told what the hell they were cancelling, and will restore them (but that won't "make the news" ).

[milestogo]

13. He has no idea what the fuck he is doing.

[JCMach1]

16. See my post below 100% knows the grift

[JCMach1]

15. We are now actively doing shakedowns for $$$ and

Political favors. Bank that's what this is about

[Deminpenn]

21. Hegseth is a broken clock here. He's right

All these consulting contracts with Booz Allen, Accenture, Deloitte are ridiculous. They are staffed by retired military and civilians mostly. They add little to nothing to DoD and depend on actual working civil servants to gather information for whatever reports or recommendations they produce. That was my experience during my career at DoD.