[bobthepanda]

The "small government" party also likes to push the fallacy that if it's private-sector work it must be efficient.

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.

[daenz]

Are you saying that if the government was bigger, it would spend taxpayer dollars more efficiently?

[fzeroracer]

I'll come out and say yes, in fact.

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.

[bobthepanda]

The fact that one extreme is false does not make the other extreme true.

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.

[daenz]

I guess I don't understand your position other than "just make it run better." What concrete steps do you want to see occur to make the government run more efficiently, and will they grow or shrink the government?

[bobthepanda]

If the government is going to contract out work it at least needs to have the capability to audit the results of such work on an ongoing basis, rather than just get left with a flaming bag of crap after the fact.

To that end the government needs to attract, develop, and keep in-house talent, starting by actually offering competitive compensation.

[daenz]

The obvious question nobody is asking is: why is the government obligated to pay for a broken service that should clearly be in violation of the contract? And if delivering a broken service doesn't violate the contract, why are these contracts being written so one-sided? There's more at play here than a lack of auditing. In the real world, if you don't deliver what you promise, you don't get paid.

[pqhwan]

Big or small, inefficient govt is inefficient. Pushing for “small govt” either misses the point, or is dishonest, possibly with an ulterior motive. I couldn’t possibly know what that motive is, but seems clear to me that a small inefficient govt would need to spend more on private sector contracts than a big inefficient govt, if it wants to do the same work; it would also have less capacity for audit, as gp points out.

[daenz]

>but seems clear to me that a small inefficient govt would need to spend more on private sector contracts than a big inefficient govt, if it wants to do the same work

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.

[dsparkman]

Really the "small government" party likes to use crony "capitalism" to line the pockets of the "private-sector" with as much tax payer dollars as they can.