@mimsical this is one of the conflicted aspects of federal contracting for even responsible civic tech firms.

@mimsical Same thing happened with the pandemic response. California outsourced a lot of the key decision-making to McKinsey by way of Blue of California. I know b/c I had to push back against having the consultants on an introductory call regarding equitable access to COVID-19 testing.

@mimsical Oh boy... do I have McKinsey war stories when I was attached to the Manufacturing USA initiative.

What an absolute failure that turned out to be.

Had quite a bit of promise at the start.

https://www.manufacturingusa.com/

@mimsical I don't understand why this is news to anybody. This is something that was clear and obvious in the 1990s (no doubt earlier). But nobody seems to talk about it during elections.

@mimsical Interesting...I spent a little time in the Manila Metro planning office in the mid-1990s when the region was adding transit lines and British consultants did all the work while the locals...didn't.

@mimsical Quelle surprise. I was observing this in local government 30 years ago and reported on it, but I was a "liberal journalist" so no one believed me.

@mimsical not just states. My small town does the same. it’s distressing how much they spent on consultants for a parking study, for example. One which basically duplicated what the town traffic commission already did. I think they want to be able to pass the buck if something goes awry, but that’s just a guess.

@mimsical look no further than the major government IT projects

@mimsical Sad but true, the difference between a 5 million dollar and 10 million dollar project, to taxpayers, often comes down to availability of in house resources, a handful of people making 100k. 200k worth of govt engineering time costs millions when done by consultants. On site construction engineers are especially egregious.

@mimsical The disease is neoliberal capitalism.

@mimsical I wonder whether one solution would be for the federal government to build up a really big body of design and management experts it can hire out (or loan or grant) to municipal projects. Sort of a mashup of the White House Digital Office, the Army Corps of Engineers, and an agricultural extension office.

@mimsical
The McKinsey-Bain-ing of America.

@mimsical It's not *the* reason, but it's a large contributing reason, especially when multiple agencies are involved each hiring its own consultant.