DOGE and USAID -- nothingburger?

[Gilligan]

I think we are getting disconnected between DOD and GOV. I cannot speak to how it works for HUD and State and Ed. All of my statements and it think PEs related to DOD.

The waste we see in DoD purchasing is because of the astonishing number of FARs everyone is supposed to comply with. Many smaller companies like mine will not sell directly to DoD because of that. This has lead to the growth of thousands of intermediate companies whose sole purpose in life is to make our stuff "compliant". What this means in practice is that DLA contracts, on behalf of some NAVSEA PMS office or other, with one of these intermediary companies to buy some of our equipment or parts for it. We ship to intermediary...they repackage, RFID label, bar-code label, assign NSN, vacuum desiccant bag, yadda yadda,,,and then deliver it. I don't have insight in to the cost adder that all entails but I guarantee its a lot.

But that's waste..no fraud.

 

[glhs837]

The waste we see in DoD purchasing is because of the astonishing number of FARs everyone is supposed to comply with. Many smaller companies like mine will not sell directly to DoD because of that. This has lead to the growth of thousands of intermediate companies whose sole purpose in life is to make our stuff "compliant". What this means in practice is that DLA contracts, on behalf of some NAVSEA PMS office or other, with one of these intermediary companies to buy some of our equipment or parts for it. We ship to intermediary...they repackage, RFID label, bar-code label, assign NSN, vacuum desiccant bag, yadda yadda,,,and then deliver it. I don't have insight in to the cost adder that all entails but I guarantee its a lot.

But that's waste..no fraud.

Yep. We needed to buy a thing, 15K a pop and needed 35 of them. No time nor budget for a two year contract action. Were given end of year sweep up money to buy them. Expires, that stuff does. So we went through one of these intermediate companies. About doubled the cost to us. But we got them and provided a capability.