Theresa Payton writes for Real Clear Politics about one positive impact of the Trump administration’s government efficiency initiative.
Fresh from a run through federal agencies that saw budgets (and heads) exploding all over Washington, Elon Musk and the DOGE team have turned their Starlink satellite and aimed its powerful laser at the most inflated portion of the unofficial “shadow” bureaucracy: government consultants. This has the biggest names in the business – like Booz Allen Hamilton, Deloitte, and IBM – getting nervous, and with good reason.
I’ve seen the contracting game from all sides: working as the White House Chief Information Officer, doing major corporate consulting myself, and running my own cybersecurity firm. It’s long past time for this entire ecosystem to be shaken up and rearranged. Once again, DOGE is shining a light on how taxpayers are being taken for a ride.
The new acting head of the General Services Administration, which is supposed to coordinate federal contracts, recently revealed that the top ten consulting firms are set to get more than $65 billion in taxpayer money in the coming years, and has put them on notice to account for it all by the end of this week. One of those companies, Booz Allen Hamilton, reportedly depends on federal contracts for 98% of its $11 billion revenue.
The same big guys (and it’s mostly guys – as the first woman White House CIO, I was often the only woman in the room) have hogged the trough for far too long. …
… Executives from BAH, Guidehouse, and other consultancies have reportedly rushed to meet with Trump administration officials to justify their massive paydays, an argument they’re cynically calling “defend the spend.” This week, DOGE has a once-in-a-generation chance to shake up the sclerotic contracting system to take advantage of all the different specialized teams the consulting world has to offer, instead of over-relying on unwieldy behemoths.
