It’s actually not the consultants gone wild. It’s that society hates the public sector and makes it impossible to operate normally - instead of building expertise with civil servants people treat any sort of governance (and knowledge) with hostility.

Well it's never going to end because most consultants have personal or political ties either ex management or someone who paid enough in campaign donations for the contract

Article misses the obvious conclusion. The public sector is filled to the brim with incompetent bureaucrats who have little expertise in their field. The public sector is required to look at private companies to solve their problems.

🛎️🛎️🛎️

Thank you. People don't understand what losing a significant part of your civil service actually means. Then they turn around and ask why the city takes so long to do shit.

There was a time when America was proud of its city halls and its governments; about the same time it was building infrastructure. But then certain political party….

Ah yes, let's ignore the systemic issues and blame the underpaid, overworked, and inexperienced people who are left after decades of budget cuts with the aim of trying to replace them with private sector contractors.

Bloomberg was a disaster for the very concept of civil service in this city.

This is a good article and highlights how many who preach “small government” actually use self fulfilling prophecy to enforce their opinions.

Cut government jobs —> hire contractors who then charge boatloads of money and are inefficient —> blame the government. Rinse, wash, repeat.

I saw this a lot in the Army. The DOD budget is obviously massive. Yet unbeknownst to many, there’s a solid chunk of service members on food stamps. Much of the bloat of DOD budgets come from reliance on contractors, everything from weapon’s manufacturing to logistics (KBR was a familiar one). It’s a cycle of basically getting swindled. Sure they have insights and should be used appropriately, but reliance on them just ruins it for everyone and further erodes trust in government unfortunately.

FYI- the engineers and architects that design these projects are these “consultants”. I think your use of “most” might be a touch misguided.

They cut the benefits and barely gave any raises to the public employees for years, on top of multiple hiring freezes. There’s almost no incentive to go into public service anymore.

Agreed. I think much of that comes from folks who want to limit large government and public “bloat”, unfortunately.

There’s certainly bureaucracy in the government. But solving the problems the article laid out definitely won’t come from making working in the public sector undesirable. Those jobs need good wages and benefits. Taxpayers pay for those jobs, yet too many people are hung up on the idea that government is too big/ not good at its job and decide to vote against tax increases to fund public jobs. So when the bare bones government staff then eventually can’t perform well, those same folks are proved right in some way.

Ahh yes, shift accountability and blame capitalism for decades of public sector incompetence.

Too many people drank the Reagan juice of believing the worst saying in America is I’m from the government and I’m here to help.

If consultants are 10-20s% of the costs, but budgets overrun by 4x, basic math would tell us there are other, bigger issues.

It's in the report:

> On this last point, a number of people told us that MTA CC had a difficult time wrangling NYCT even with its consultants, but without the consultants it would have been impossible.
> ...
> Second, several consultants who worked on Phase 1 told us that the lack of internal capacity and a clear sense of what the agency wanted meant that consultants wasted time solving basic problems that should have been determined prior to hiring a consultant ... Specifically, we were told that instead of being handed design guidelines at the start of the project, it was the consultants who developed those guidelines first, sometimes in conflict with NYCT standards

Yeah, I am one of those consultants and work with MBTA, OGS, and NYCSCA often. They basically outsource the work they don't have people to do in-house. We are called "consultants" just because we are a third party in most cases.

The last time New York was proud of its government was the early Sixties. Things started going to hell under John Lindsay.

Conservatives insist on "public-private partnerships" and competitive bidding that syphon off profits in the name of the free market and smaller government, and they won't allow the government workforce to grow to perform these tasks permanently.

Thus, the only alternatives left are KBR, Halliburton, and other contractors and consultants who are friends of the political class.

Tell me, who is going to manage the consultants on capital projects when there is no one left to manage the consultants on capital projects? Would it perhaps be other consultants instead of your "incompetent bureaucrats who have little expertise in their field"? Why yes, yes it would.

From the OP article: >By 2011, the MTA had trimmed its in-house capital projects management group of 1,600 full-time employees (circa 1990) to just 124, tasked with steering $20 billion in investment.

From your own quote: >Specifically, we were told that instead of being handed design guidelines at the start of the project, it was the consultants who developed those guidelines first, sometimes in conflict with NYCT standards

I would also point out that as the OP article touches on, incompetence and a lack of experience are not the same thing, especially where these decades-long megaprojects are concerned, but I feel like that fine a distinction might be lost on you.

You should read the entire report. For example, they state that the NYCT could have done the initial designs since they had the standards and an in-house team:

> A review of detailed work modifications shared with us show that managing these interfaces between NYCT and Phase 1 designers meant that MTA CC had to instruct and pay its designers millions of additional dollars to redesign turnstiles after specifications changed, lay out new floor-tiling plans because NYCT objected to the proposed tiles’ dimensions, add internal partitions to public toilets, relocate CCTV locations, and revise the fire alarm system. Since NYCT had exacting standards, perhaps with new, experienced leadership who had a track record of planning, designing, and managing a megaproject, it could have designed the extension it wanted while also maintaining the project’s scope, schedule, and budget.

It's incompetence to hire consultants and then tell them to figure out what you want. That's what the report says.

You're also quoting me as saying "incompetent bureaucrats" when I said no such thing. That was some other guy.

My main point is that the MTC CC hired consultants, gave them free reign and relied on them for everything and then costs ballooned. That's incompetence. That's the wrong way to use consultants.

Yes, the famously powerful republican party of new york city is consistently defunding the civil service, thank you for speaking about this.

Note I wrote about American society at large. New York is in America. I know reading is hard.

Apologies on the misattribution.

However, "having an in-house team" really elides the fact that the in-house team that is under 8% of what it used to be, staffing wise. And before you say "that's not the same team," it doesn't actually matter if that team is the specific team in question or not - it is indicative of a general and deliberate trend of downsizing knowledgable government bureaucrats that leaves public service with serious brain drain and manpower issues. It is not incompetence to have to hire consultants to manage consultants when there is no one left. It's making the best of what you have when given an otherwise impossible task. That is how government is forced to work these days. It doesn't matter how competent your people are if you don't actually have people.

It is borderline tautological that if you want functioning government agencies you have to actually have those government agencies instead of... no one.

And the gigantic irony is, where do you think the consulting firms get their consultants? What kind of planners, engineers, designers in the tri-state region are going to have expert knowledge on building and maintaining large-scale subway and light rail systems? MTA employees! So many of these consulting firms are just hiring ex-MTA employees who end up doing the exact same thing they were doing last year except now it costs the MTA three times as much as it used to.

It's a double edge sword. People in the agencies abuse their position and create inefficient bureaucracies. Being on the consultant side for public projects, they start and restart a hundred times over. A normal project that should take a year to build out last for 5 years. For this reason you have to bake in triple your fee because you are going to need to support a project for a signicantly long duration. Not seeing work completed can be draining.

It’s not the aim. It’s the core problem. Why work for a do nothing government entity when you can do real work in private industry

Another reason is we hire politician with no practical skills or business experience. They in turn hire consultants to recommend courses of action, and hire other consultants to oversee the work being done. The delegation of authority helps inoculate the decision maker, but comes with a price.

Soldiers on food stamps is because they use their money to take out loans for cars. Another perfect example of government incompetence

Why would I pay government programmers 300k a year when their production is inferior to Apple or MSFT?

It’s absolutely hilarious that all the austerity, big government haters ended up hiring those same former bureaucrats, now working in industry, for 3x their original cost. It’s like they forgot that we actually need government to do stuff?

Healthcare too.

They complain about waste and want everything private, then private companies make billions effectively just sitting in between payments.

Government could do what health insurance does for a fraction of the price given it just needs to break even not appease shareholders.

But good luck convincing “small government” bull shit artists that shareholder profit is part of the waste problem.

Yea definitely dude they all buy dodge chargers. It’s not because base pay for a E4 is terrible.

Well you wouldn’t now because apple can attract more workers with better salaries. If we funded government agencies to pay employees competitively then perhaps that would change. Again - self fulfilling.

It’s almost as if consultants might be financially encouraged to find places to spend money, and turn their backs on potential overruns since their not subject to the scrutiny a public employee is.

“small government” is when the MTA spends $23 billion a year and you live in the highest taxed city in the entire country. Lol give me a break. You guys are losing it. Bending over backwards to blame capitalism or some other thing instead of just admitting government agencies are run by idiots in the first place. Somehow we have more funding than maybe any city in the entire world but get horrible service.

And again, I am unwilling to pay for 300k programmers with my tax dollars. Already annoyed about 100k police officers.

E4 pay is for the bottom barrel high school grad who is also getting fed and housed.

The biddings aren’t competitive. The agencies are corrupt and they don’t care because they’re spending other people’s money.

Not at all.

Things cost money. That’s a fact. We can expect something like a massive subway system to cost a lot of money.

What’s frustrating is that in other relatively comparable cities, governments have implemented transit systems that cost less money. Clearly then, government is capable of doing this.

A main issue is that with our reliance on contractors and not funding internal agency staff properly, projects become bloated and costly and we say “what are we paying the MTA so much for!” That’s a fair question, but doesn’t mean that government itself is to blame, especially if private contractors are running up cost. The blame lies at how the government is staffed and how it goes about it’s business.

Again, as seen elsewhere, governments are able to make this work.

Really? Because E4s are only entry level if they enlist with a degree. E2 is typically after high school. And nearly half of the E4s I had in my units had families with children. It’s just a reality man.

what do you have against the public sector and civil service?

So what’s the solution then? Because what will happen is that without attracting top talent, government will just be completely unable to do anything. Roads will be terrible, subways will be terrible, and we will all complain about it. Yet we don’t want to fund programs to fix it.

You’ve effectively implemented societal purgatory.

By definition the government itself is to blame. Who else spends the money??

It’s not like it’s stolen at gunpoint by the consultants. The whole institution is corrupt and they knowingly pay way above market rates for everything. It’s not their money so they don’t care. Been that way for years now and nothing is going to change that without drastic action. Whether it’s privatization or a complete federal takeover who knows.

Of course I should have said that “government as an institution isn’t to blame”.

The current government and its policies are to blame, sure. But government as a system isn’t the issue, surely it can’t be if elected officials in other nations find ways to publicly fund and oversee massive metro systems.

The goal now becomes to reform our governments policies to make it work better and cut out middle men.

Part of that process is having internal staff, based on the article. That will mean attracting talent to work for government agencies themselves, which means having competitive salaries for them.

Do you believe that no programming job can be worth 300k?

Because the work still needs to be done and it will be outsourced to private contractor who charges 300k x 3.5 multiplier = 1 million per programmer

So the solution is to pay even more money for contractors? Your comments make no sense.

I agree that seems to be low, and they need more evidence that this is the problem. But the idea is the consultants lack the expertise, continuity, and most importantly, the incentives to carry out projects efficiently.

Nothing.

Might want to use different examples than Apple and Microsoft when talking about getting way less than you pay for

I do love seeing complaints about how inefficient government is, as if the private sector doesn’t have massive bloat and waste as well.

>By 2011, the MTA had trimmed its in-house capital projects management group of 1,600 full-time employees (circa 1990) to just 124, tasked with steering $20 billion in investment.

That does seem like a big cut but I don’t have anything to compare it to nor context on why.

Every fortune 500 operates on consultants

Of course, but this is just scapegoating “consultants”

What incentive do government employees have? They cant be fired for performing badly, and can’t be rewarded much for performing well. If they spend too much money, they just ask for more money (as opposed to a private company where your execs get fired when expenses get out of hand).

Under capitalism, workers get jobs that pay the best. Government jobs do not pay as well as private jobs. Therefore government jobs are staffed with people who have accepted lower paying jobs, and the reason they accept lower paying jobs is because they're not capable (or don’t want) a better paying job.

Hence, private sector consultants taking on high paying RFPs. They’re not to blame.

Cant they just pick cheaper contractors? Or limit the budget so there’s less money for politicians to fill their friend’s pockets?

Government employees are "incentive-neutral", as they aren't rewarded or held accountable for what they do. In an ideal world this could change (better rewards, pride in public service), but that's a whole other story.

But consultants have negative incentives, as they are specifically rewarded for not getting things done, not spending efficiently, asking for more funding - that wasted money ends up back in their own hands.

Yea, you could argue that because of corruption, connections, bribes, the government employees have those same negative incentives. But that's why honing in on outsourcing could be an approach to fixing these problems. Make it harder to sign these contracts, and easier to hire full time staff.

I don't think you understand the 4 in E4.

> It is not incompetence to have to hire consultants to manage consultants when there is no one left. It's making the best of what you have when given an otherwise impossible task.

I think this is the crux of our disagreement. To me, if I was given no ability to manage my consultants, but forced to use them, that would be an inability to do something successfully. If I didn't kick it up and say it would be unsuccessful, that would be a failure of action too. If I was still forced to do so, the incompetence doesn't go away; it just includes those above me.

I do not malign those workers as being malicious, stupid or bad people. Simply, to me, they are incompetent in the literal sense of the term, especially if they were put in that situation (which necessarily means that those above them are also incompetent). Moreover, per the report, they used consultancies to fight the bureaucracy in the system. So they were willing participants in this quagmire.

For what it's worth, I just want efficient and effective government. It may mean that government(s) have in-house staff or they hire consultants. I think what this article elides, but the report emphasizes, is that our government is inefficient and ineffective (for a variety of reasons). We, as voters, should force government to be prudent with our money. I have no control over the various consultancies, but I do have some say in my government.

….which in turn forces cities to rely on expensive consultants rather than in-house expertise. So it is the consultants, but it’s also the hostility to bureaucracy. Chicken and egg.

I mean, the consultants are filling the need. They didn’t create it .

That’s true, and I don’t blame the consultants for going where they money is.

> Soldiers on food stamps is because they use their money to take out loans for cars. Another perfect example of government incompetence

How is that government incompetence and not individual incompetence.

I saw this in the navy specifically in HR. They cut a bunch of jobs by combining 2 jobs and then hired consultants. Took everyone of the ships and placed them in one building.

Hundreds of service personnel had to either switch jobs or eventually get out because they could not move up in rank.

Cheaper contractors usually result in shoddier work. When I was doing consulting with city and regional governments, it was not uncommon for a government to pick one of our competitors because they promised to get the work done for half the price. Then, six months later, it becomes evident that the competitor vastly underbid and ended up delivering results that were well below expectations. The government then has to basically throw that work out and start over.

A good example - the Freedom Tower in NYC, over 100 stories tall, was built with $4 billion. NYC is currently looking to spend $12 billion on renovating, not building, the Port Authority bus station. Maybe the government should use the Freedom Tower builders? Maybe NYC has incompetent managers that can’t be trusted to run and direct the builders.

I work in one of these consulting firms. We are indeed, a huge part of the problem. Many design projects by municipalities get picked up by consulting firms, billing at 3x the rate. These budgets end up very bloated to give firms their desired profit. Government in-house design teams are usually understaffed and undertrained, leading to poor results that then result in more costly change orders down the road.

The simple solution would be to have in-house design teams to be robust, and offer very competitive salaries and benefits to compete with these consulting firms. They need to stop giving in to the indulgence of these consulting firms.

Consulting firms are not necessarily all horrible. But I've seen enough to be pretty grossed out by their practices. Many of my coworkers have left to smaller ones or left to be part of municipalities. There's good people and talent in these firms, we are at the mercy of the MBA PMC class who charge much more than we do for God knows what and are not even freaking engineers/scientists.

Consultants are fine for solving a problem or managing a project that you rarely need them for.

But if you regularly use them, then, as you said, you're wasting money that could have been spent to build out a full in-house team.

?

Idk about them but this comment was actually quite eye-opening for me

dude you are probly paying Booz Allen-contracted-programmer-consultant 400k with your tax dollar for the same thing right now.

if lobbying to the point where congress cut agencies' leg and arm to be dysfunctional then pretty much forcing to use contractor isn't creating the problem, idk what is.

IT service is pretty much obliterated from government agencies, and are forced to use contract bidding. And I dont think anyone need an insight on how god-awful IT in govt is. And guess how much the bid was for these "consultants" :) most likely multitude of just having a solid in-house IT team.

Subcontracting the subcontracts held by a subcontractor delegated by another subcontract that was initially filed with a contractor.

It's kinda insane when you look at the amount of subcontracting that occurs for a single project.