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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

Isn’t this commonplace in government contracting? You have a preferred vendor already, but must show the appearance of an open, fair bid, so you put your RFP out there—but is made as specific as possible, matching your preferred vendor’s product spec word-for-word, so only they can meet the requirements. This is kind of standard, run of the mill corruption that I thought was well known.

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The folks downvoting you have obviously never been in the rooms when RFPs are drafted. I've been in the room half a dozen times and in almost every case the RFP is written so one particular firm will win the bid, and at most 1-2 other firms are even qualified to respond.

Edit: Once while sitting on the private sector side of the table (yes RFPs were often drafted in consultation with the company that would eventually win them, if just informally), a [state] government employee expressed concern over the wording of a particular requirement because he was worried that it would open the door to our primary competitor being qualified to fulfill the bid.

I’ve always recommended that software folks do a short tour of duty at a government contractor, purely for perspective. Its amazing to just watch how that sausage is made and why it’s made. You’ll come away with a renewed appreciation for working in the private sector on products that are made for people.

Having worked in the sector in the past, I can’t imagine anything I’ve gained for my time in there besides bitterness and cynicism for business, and this attitude has had only negative impact upon my career. On the other hand, I see a lot of parallels with the private sector, specifically in enterprise software. B2C software has its own awfulness but at least it’s a bit sexier than the insane Rube Goldberg Machine of, say, Payroll software. These days, I don’t really see a difference between an IBM, HP and Lockheed, Northrop - they oftentimes compete for the same contracts even.

I totally understand that. I think it depends on where you work though. I've worked for a couple gov contractors and it has it's upsides. It always seems to be effectively hourly work with a 40hr max work week. Projects can be (if you push for them) short and frequently varied which keeps things fresh and lets you learn/maintain a lot of different skills. The main downside IMO is that the DFARS are nuts but with the security environment we're in, their purpose is at least understandable if not their implementation.

Been there, done that. I feel much worse about paying my federal taxes now. Federal contractor (to whom we were a subcontractor) spent at least five times what they should have, and very little of it trickled down to us. They also were a “broken telephone” between us and the end customer, so we didn’t get much user feedback. Any call (not _video_ call mind you, a phone call) with them had a minimum of 10 people, and after the call everyone on their end would have immediate amnesia. 1/10 would not recommend.

Stop me when you’ve seen this one: Prime contractor is a one or two-person shop. They don’t do any work, but subcontract the entire contract to the huge company that is doing the actual work. The prime contractor’s job is to be an Alaskan Native American-owned or Female Amputee-owned or some other underrepresented minority-owned business so the government can say they work with minority-owned businesses. The prime does nothing but pass communications back and forth and skim $$$.

Mind blown—have a contract with one of these currently.

Ours was very large. In fact, I'd say, a 2-person do-nothing prime would be a vast improvement over what we had, especially if they did not have any illusions about their own level of competence. To see the situation in the positive light, however, I have vastly improved my project management skills. Making _anything_ stick on the other end was a non-trivial endeavor.

This applies just as much to private sector RFPs too. If you're a vendor and you get an RFP out of the blue, you're not going to win it.

RFI process is usually far more open.

My first job in the '80s was doing RFI/RFP shotgunning for a mom & pop (my mom & pop) defense consulting firm out of the GSA register. We would essentially cold-respond to everything in our domain. From that experience I learned that there were some genuine requests with no fix in.

This is really interesting and I would be very keen to hear more about it, like a blog post or something. I bet a lot of other people would be interested too.

Interesting. My experience is all commercial, not government. Pleased to hear there was some good behavior (at least in defense in the '80s!)

There definitely are! However if it's an established contract (most of my experience) or a big contract, the odds of it going to an unknown entity are slim to none. But it's certainly possible to break into it as a small unknown firm, you just have to start by picking up the scraps.

I was going to say this too. Especially if you are huge enterprise.

It's not even necessarily corruption. The company they're wiring the bid for may indeed be the best option, they are just trying to minimize inefficiency.

Having said that, just as often, it's due to cronyism.

> Having said that, just as often, it's due to cronyism.

The line between cronymism and efficiency is in the eye of the beholder.

Some corporations are more equal than others.

If you look at some of the protests that have been filed, the protesters are often worse than the awardee.

That is right. Not sure if it's called corruption tho. No one is getting paid on the side.

at best it's subversion of a policy that is intended to enforce some amount of competition.

It certainly is that.

The practice is called "single-sourcing".

It's pretty clearly an example of corruption; the entire purpose of single-sourcing a contract is to defeat the RFP, or bidding-out, process. A decision is being made by someone who isn't supposed to have the authority to make it.

Do you drive the cheapest contraption that could technically haul you from A to B?

Did you type this on the cheapest thing capable of making HTTP requests?

Do you live in the cheapest structure capable of maintaining its interior at a non-life-threatening temperature?

I submit that lowest-bidder rules are patently absurd. People who have to deal with something day in and day out ought to have the authority to select a reasonable one.

If lowest-bidder rules are patently absurd, how does that stop bypassing them from being "corruption"? You have a job and you purposefully cheat at it by doing something you're explicitly prohibited from doing. It's just as corrupt whether you think the results are good or bad.

The contract is not "the job," but a means to some other end. Corruption is not a synonym for rule-breaking. It implies a subversion of legitimate purpose, serving the wrong master, prioritizing the wrong interest.

Rigging a bid in a way that compromises the real task at hand in order to personally enrich yourself is clearly an example of corruption. Rigging a bid in (what you think is) the interest of the task at hand, but in violation of contracting rules, is rule-breaking and insubordination but not corruption.

To turn that around, RFPs themselves are an example of populism, where a meta-decision (the algorithm to choose the winner) has been drafted to play well to voters' ears, rather than to actually accomplish anything. The decision-making process has been corrupted by political pandering.

"Defeating an RFP", then, is frequently (behind closed doors) agreed to be in the best interest of good government. A chosen expert—despite the bad optics—can do better (usually much better) than the RFP process.

I'm not sure "corruption" is the right word for this, since the goal here isn't to line anyone's pockets, but actually to choose the consequentially optimal, highest-ROI option. It's not quite "two wrongs making a right"... maybe "three lefts making a right?"

This is very very common and happens in every big company and in every government around the world, even so call "not corrupt" countries. For big contracts and for small contracts.

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