Hektor

https://www.wsj.com/business/big-consulting-bosses-meet-with-trump-officials-to-save-contracts-8b2946f8 Big Consulting Bosses Meet With Trump Officials to Save Contracts Executives from EY, Booz Allen and others are being told to ‘defend the spend’ on their work for the government—and identify possible cuts In recent days, top executives at professional services firms including Ernst & Young and Guidehouse have met with officials including Josh Gruenbaum, the Federal Acquisition Service commissioner within the General Services Administration, according to people familiar with the discussions. A Booz Allen executive has also been in touch with Gruenbaum. The GSA has identified that the 10 highest-paid consulting firms are set to receive more than $65 billion in total fees across 2025 and future years. That is money that has yet to be spent, and comes from contracts tagged as “consulting services” within the Federal Procurement Data System from the top governmentwide vendors In the meetings with consultants, Gruenbaum has emphasized to executives that the government sees value in consulting—particularly in rolling out advanced technology and modernizing government agencies. What may be frowned upon are contracts providing market research and analysis or supporting work on topics the Trump administration has de-emphasized, such as diversity, equity and inclusion issues. Gruenbaum has assured executives that the GSA wasn’t looking to put firms out of business Consulting firms are being asked to “defend the spend,” by explaining which of their existing projects they see as mission critical to the government’s goals, and which could be cut. Firms may be asked to make pricing concessions on existing contracts, though Gruenbaum has told executives that they could make up for the cuts by also suggesting new projects or services to the government that could offer a demonstrable return-on-investment.

+1 Good work @Saluki

Thanks

@Blake Hampton You can stay here and apply Graham’s teaching. Similar to Mr. Market, you are offered many opinions every day. What you do with it is for you to decide

I feel these adventures are resulting in the push for peace by this president. Many kids born in the US after 9/11 went to fight wars in distant lands that started before their birth and did not come back. A good majority of their communities are the current president’s constituents, I feel. He has been clear about not going on these adventures even during the previous term. I feel that if the fighting continues and Ukraine does not have man power, US will be involved directly sooner or later.

The more I read about this event, I feel Zelensky pulled a master class in negotiation. He pulled out of a negotiation where the terms did not meet his needs. Does anyone else feel this way?

Hi @Grafter, curious to hear why ABG, if you don’t mind. Thanks

If only President Zelensky had watched the Puppet Regime!

That's prudent, I think. Interestingly, CACI is not in the top 10 targeted

https://www.washingtontechnology.com/companies/2025/02/trump-administration-asks-agencies-cull-consultants/403348/ Trump administration asks agencies to cull consultants The Trump administration is asking agencies to review their consulting contracts with at least 10 large companies, including some global firms, as part of an effort to cut “non-essential consulting contracts.” The acting head of the General Services Administration, Stephen Ehikian, asked “agency senior procurement executive[s]” to review their consulting contracts with the 10 companies the administration deemed the highest paid using procurement data — Deloitte, Accenture Federal Services, Booz Allen Hamilton, General Dynamics, Leidos, Guidehouse, Hill Mission Technologies Corp., Science Applications International Corporation, CGI Federal and International Business Machines Corporation — in a memo dated Feb. 26 obtained by Nextgov/FCW.

There is probably some method to what seems to be madness https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/us/politics/musk-federal-bureaucracy-takeover.html Excerpt from the news article How Elon Musk Executed His Takeover of the Federal Bureaucracy The operation was driven with a frenetic focus by the billionaire, who channeled his resentment of regulatory oversight into a drastic overhaul of government agencies. On the last Friday of September 2023, Elon Musk dropped in about an hour late to a dinner party at the Silicon Valley mansion of the technology investor Chamath Palihapitiya. Mr. Musk’s visit was meant to be discreet. Still skittish about getting involved publicly in politics, he told the guests he had to be careful about supporting anyone in the Republican nomination fight. And yet here he was at a $50,000-a-head dinner in honor of the presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who was running as an entrepreneur who would shake up the status quo. As the night wore on, Mr. Musk held forth on a variety of topics: the U.S.-Mexico border; the war in Ukraine; government regulations hindering SpaceX; and Mr. Ramaswamy’s highest priority, the dismantling of the federal bureaucracy. Mr. Musk made clear that he saw the gutting of that bureaucracy as primarily a technology challenge. He told the party of around 20 that when he overhauled Twitter, the key was gaining access to the company’s servers. Wouldn’t it be great, Mr. Musk offered, if he could have access to the computers of the federal government? Just give him the passwords and he would make the government fit and trim. What started as musings at a dinner party evolved into a radical takeover of the federal bureaucracy. Mr. Musk’s strategy has been twofold. His team grabbed control of the government’s human resources agency, the Office of Personnel Management, commandeering email systems to pressure civil servants to quit so he could cull the work force. And it burrowed into computer systems across the bureaucracy, tracing how money was flowing so the administration could choke it off. Mr. Musk’s transformation of DOGE from a casual notion into a powerful weapon is something possible only in the Trump era. It involves wild experimentation and an embrace of severe cost-cutting that Mr. Musk previously used to upend Twitter — as well as an appetite for political risk and impulsive decision-making. Mr. Musk’s stealth approach stunned both Democrats and civil servants. Failing to imagine an incursion from inside the bureaucracy, they were caught essentially defenseless.

Take him at his word at your own risk

Thank you.