>they will happily waste millions of dollars
Who is "they"? I don't think anyone but corrupt politicians and their cronies are happy about wasting millions of taxpayer dollars. Certainly not the taxpayers.
Who is "they"? I don't think anyone but corrupt politicians and their cronies are happy about wasting millions of taxpayer dollars. Certainly not the taxpayers.
Now the government has been broken so thoroughly that it no longer has the capacity to actually audit the private-sector work it contracts out.
If the government hired developers directly and promoted those developers to levels of seniority, it would in fact spend taxpayer dollars more efficiently than outsourcing to shitty consultants and contractors whose primary goal is to keep the same zombie contract going year after year.
The government at least has incentives to make the best product they can on a local level. There might be politicking at the higher up, but their goal is to make a product. The incentives for larger consulting companies is to make money and often does so at the cost of cutting corners or delivering broken products. The reason why they can get away with it is because the larger consulting companies operate at a different scale than smaller ones, which is often needed for major projects. Which means then you're forced to work with scumbag consulting companies.
That being said, at some point if you're cutting, or if you don't know where you're cutting, at some point you will hit bone. More money is not a panacea but neither is less.
To that end the government needs to attract, develop, and keep in-house talent, starting by actually offering competitive compensation.
The key phrase here is "same work." But I don't believe a small government should be doing the same work as a big government. It should be doing less work, have less responsibilities, and taking & wasting less of everyone's money.