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One of the commenters to this post said the magic 4-letter word that describes why the procurement process works like it does: the process must be “fair”. It is a word that should be familiar to lawyers as well, and it explains why both the procurement process and the legal process produce results that are sometimes astonishing, and usually quite expensive. When you need to make sure that everyone who paticipates considers the process “fair”, then you need to add all sort of vague general rules, and some very specific rules for particular situations, not all of which necessarily mesh well. And when the very specific rules get added in to ensure that some particular nightmare event “will never happen again”, you get politics involved, and rules that get jammed into the system without any real consideration for the consequences.

In the late 90s, we had the Republicans pushing business oriented solutions on top of the existing bureaucratic system. It resulted in the creation of a system with the worst characteristics or both govt and business practices.

It is the political process that creates this. See, e.g., the CPSIA…

should be “…worst characteristics of both govt and business…”

@rxc: Actually, the federal government was pushing ‘business solutions’ on the bureaucracy as long as I can recall. Remember ‘Zero-based budgets’, ‘Managing for success’, ‘360° management’, ‘SWOT management’, ‘Excellence management’, ‘Core Competencies’? Been there, done that.

The federal government and its HR offices seem to lack any immunity whatsoever to the latest fad in management theories.

@John:

Don’t forget “Total Quality Management.” 🙂

Daily, I find new reasons (or remember old ones) to embrace dementia with open arms.

Six-Sigma. ISO9000, ISO9001, and now CMMI. And don’t forget EVM.

It’s always been true, but never more so than recently, that a government bureaucrat will happily spend ten dollars to track how a contractor spends one.

Density nails it with his 2nd paragraph.

Instead of holding the Govt procurment manager responsible for delivering on time, on budget, to promised performance characteristics, they subsitute procedure for results. Typical of any system run by a lawyer. I followed the procedure….my @$$ is covered.

I’m not and never have been a Federal employee and I “live off the land” as a small business owner with zero revenue derived from government contracts or grants, but you folks are largely full o’ beans. Feds try to ape the language of private commerce because they are charged with “speaking our language” and the political imperative of their elected overseers is that they play with US, the Cool Kids of the private sector. WE in the private sector are the originators of such junk as TQM, WE popularize it and lend it credibility. As for government’s core competencies, this term is intended generally to identify those things within the Federal bailiwick that should NOT be farmed out to contractors.
Be mindful of the thorny issues that arose in Iraq when contractors were exempt from both Iraqi and American jurisdiction; recall the mess that arose from giving contractors to much discretion and too little oversight in country. Remember that we in the corporate world are accontable to our stockholders or proprietors for profitability, while our public servants operate in an FOIA environment and are otherwise highly accountable–at least in theory– for the lives of uniformed members of the armed forces and for advancing the public interest in general. There is, to be sure, a built in tension between these competing agendae, but would you really want that eliminated? Would not the bad actors in the private sector run wild in that case? Use your heads, people. We ain’t all-knowing and virtuous, and neither are they. Your first step in attempting to change that simple fact would be to repeal human nature. Have at it….