Ottawa paid nearly $670k for KPMG's advice on cutting consultant costs | Hacker News Reader

Ottawa paid nearly $670k for KPMG's advice on cutting consultant costs

theglobeandmail.com

64 pointslsllc23 comments

They are just laundering difficult decisions and premade conclusions through post civil service gig partners. Nothing new or exciting to see here.

I'll keep my outrage for phoenix (1) with their 500mil/year budget to process transactions(3) and and whatever the hell is going on with Canada Life/PSHCP(2).

1 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/phoenix-pay-system-202...

2 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/canada-life-federal-go...

3 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/federal-budget-2023-ca...

Alternatively they had underspent their budget allocation and the end of financial year was approaching. So it was either (1) dump the spare budget on consultants (sort of pre-paying for labour) or (2) 'lose' the money when the financial year ticked over.

These consultants have a sweet gig going on. They just interview everyone at the company, write down what the employees say needs to be fixed, then they put it in a report to upper management as expert recommendations.

Then they bill for their time and 'expertise'.

Yep. It's about solving a mild case of the Dictator's Information Problem.

We’re putting cover letters on all the TPS reports now…

It sucks that we're all this bad at communicating. The amount of harm and wasted effort/time is already maddening if there wasn't such a tragically high human cost to it.

KPMG report: "You could've saved almost 700k by not hiring KPMG consultants." Government: "Wow, brilliant!"

I'll send over my bill for that advice.

I know the joke of this is that they could have in-housed this.

But why do government agencies not always have groups focused on financial efficiency? Is it corruption or stupidity?

It's the flip flopping of liberal investment in government and public services, followed by conservative slashing of those services, followed by a condemnation of government's ability to provide after having been slashed, followed by an open bidding war for private consultancies to take over the role of the slashed service at a supposedly lower cost (that overruns in the end anyway, just like the aforementioned government service did in the first place). Rinse and repeat as every generation of politician proposes the new thing (repackaged old thing) and can then pat themselves on the back about what a good job they did. The kickbacks must be nice too I suppose ;)

I've lived in cities and states where there was never the remote political possibility of the "conservative slashing of services" yet the problems and complaints still persist. Your theory may have some gaps.

Gaps or a soap boxed size podium in some backwater forum board with bad css where they can beg the question about a liberal conservative epicycle?

Because governments (and corporations) are so brutally inefficient that they cannot implement change with their own staff. Bringing in a third party with a mandate from the top can skip entrenched red tape. It does work and is possibly the only tool they have to break the status quo. But it doesn’t help the underlying problem of organizations being so knotted that they need this short term fix for every problem.

Because it doesn't always make sense to spend a lot of money on cutting costs?

See, for example, the Paperwork Reduction Act which is the physical equivalent of the EU cookie banner.

The article mentions cost overruns on the ArriveCAN app, which was required for border crossings into Canada from about 2020 to 2022. The app originally aided in pandemic screening and was well-made overall being easy and fast to use. But it also felt somewhat like a solution in search of a problem: More than once I heard Canadian border crossing agents question how helpful the app actually was and its use was quietly made optional last year.

The use seems to be funnelling millions of dollars to a few well connected individuals with little prior experience who in turn, farmed the actual development to other contractors?

From the headline, it sounds like the beginning of a great Armando Iannucci sketch making fun of management consultants. Which sure seems to be tangentially relevant to more and more situations during these times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQcA5CKFl2A

"The Norbrand's management consultancy rule is simple: Give it to your clients straight."

"Ok what's our problem?"

"You're spending too much on management consultants you skuzzer."

Am I reading it right: cutting consultant cost by making more consultations...

I feel like they should try their own like Lemmy or Reddit-type forum where everyone's forced to remain anonymous (even the boss) and they can discourse without fear of reprisal when they come up with exactly what we spend so much money on consultants to do.

Propose an action/decision AMA style and let the demolition or drafting begin. Screw KPMG/DesLoittes/McKinsey (hate them). Go do something productive to all sides.

Edit: the Public should be "the boss", anybody else screwing everything by insisting on their little hierarchy needs to be told by the real boss to f off (John Q Public)

Problem is it would cost several billion to make, operate for 500mil a year, not work, and be delivered in a decade when it's irrelevant and not the pet project of anyone still involved in making decisions. (Disclaimer: I'm pro-government run public services but this type of stuff would be consulted out.)

How do they, like, have ANYTHING then? That sounds like the paradox that you can keep dividing stuff by 2 forever and it will never be small enough to reach zero technically lol

I'm not sure what their budget is but I wouldn't be surprised if this is cheap.

Performance art!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com