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by Afforess 3927 days ago
Yes, it is ridiculous. I can not imagine how the choice to use tropical woods, or the number of minority employees would impact the final result of a business contract. The government should be concerned with the end result, not the minutia.

This sort of detail-peddling is why only massive corporations can attain government contracts. Regulatory capture is the inevitable end result.
2 comments
eropple 3927 days ago
The government is concerned with the shape of the society it represents as well as the end result. Accepting some inefficiency for social good is a feature, not a bug. Even when it makes you mad.

And, as described numerous times elsewhere in this thread, it's not that hard for small companies to get governmental work. But the process is different, for reasons that are not themselves unreasonable, and most don't really want to play with stuff like FAR. (Which is part of why many large governmental contracts require subcontracting to small companies--itself but the most efficient process, but a good one for growing those small companies.)

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mindcrime 3927 days ago
The government is concerned with the shape of the society it represents as well as the end result.

No it isn't, it's concerned with perpetuating itself and its bureaucracy and maintaining whatever hold on power it and its people have established... and with grabbing more power when and where possible. Any social good the government does is just a happy accident / side effect.

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mynameismonkey 3927 days ago
The federal government is not a for-profit corporation intent on profit. Consider it more as a social service mission driven non-profit. Federal contracting is mission-driven by specific regulation, whether it be defense or health or transportation or whatever. The US govt. is not about end results, it's about process which hopefully leads to end results. The US, as a people, through the voice of the elected federal government, has determined that taxpayer dollars should not fund tropical hardwoods but should fund the growth of minority-owned businesses. Agree or disagree on the goals, that is the mission of those tax dollars.

As a contractor seeking to spend those tax dollars, you are effectively signing up to help execute on the US population's stated goals as a people, not achieve the best business result for a government agency. Until you understand this, government contracting is not for you.

As for disruptive start-ups, in my 15 years working on state and federal contracts, every single agency that has requested "innovation", "disruptive change", "modern technologies" in fact means "please do this 95% of the way we did it last time, but add some shiny magic so we can feel good about progress".

As with any customer, your goal should be to give the customer what they want, while educating them about what they need. At the end of the day, you need to make your customer happy, and for a federal agency that often means don't fail, don't get their name in the paper. Which generally comes from doing it in a predictable fashion with incremental change.

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mindcrime 3927 days ago
The federal government is not a for-profit corporation intent on profit.

Not on paper, no. In practice, it's a massive mechanism to transfer wealth to the rich, connected, insiders and the sycophants who hover around them and suck at their teat.

As with any customer, your goal should be to give the customer what they want, while educating them about what they need. At the end of the day, you need to make your customer happy, and for a federal agency that often means don't fail, don't get their name in the paper. Which generally comes from doing it in a predictable fashion with incremental change.

So very true. "Not getting their name in the paper" is probably a good idea for most customers.

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