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by alistairSH
2388 days ago
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GSA gets paid a % of the fees charged by the consultant. Therefore, the GSA has an incentive to have a very short list of highly paid consultants. The individual agencies using the scheduled are supposed to pick the low bid, but if GSA has restricted the schedule, well, we all get ripped off. |
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Take the example schedule used in the article:
>McKinsey asked for 10-14% price hike for its already expensive IT professional services (which is a catch-all for anything).
The IT services schedule lists over 13,000 vendors [1]. McKinsey is listed on this schedule under four categories: 132-32, 132-50, 132-51, and 70-500. The most relevant to the article is 132-51, "IT Professional Services" which has 3,872 other contractors listed besides McKinsey. I personally wouldn't consider that evidence of the GSA restricting the schedule or indicative of a monopoly. This is what led me to my previous question as to why an agency would select the more expensive McKinsey given a reasonable amount of competition.
The ghostwriting brought up is a genuine concern and I would be in favor of investigating other funding mechanisms outside of the IFF pay structure. However, the author admits they are selling a book about how politics and monopoly are intertwined. Speaking of perverse incentives, I worry that the conclusions drawn are too heavily biased to support the book thesis rather than objectively looking at the broader context.
[1] https://www.gsaelibrary.gsa.gov/ElibMain/scheduleSummary.do?...