Wired Magazine’s Danger Room blog has an interesting post today about the McLean, Va.-based consulting behemoth Booz Allen Hamilton. Danger Room’s editor, Noah Shachtman, essentially accuses Booz Allen executive vice president Mike McConnell of over-hyping cybersecurity threats so his firm can win government contracts to combat the dangers that he invented. Shachtman calls Booz “cyberwar Cassandras.” Now, I can’t speak to the motivations of Mr. McConnell or anyone else at the firm. However, the evidence Shachtman presents on Booz Allen’s supposed recent windfall in government contract spending seems a little thin. Booz Allen has raked in $400 million in deals…
Browsing: acquisition reform
Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he will convert 11,000 acquisition contracting jobs to Defense employees and hire 9,000 more government acquisition staff by 2015. He plans to start with 4,100 employees in fiscal 2010, the budget he presented at a news conference today. You can read his full budget speech here.
The House Armed Services Committee is getting in on the acquisition reform action. Chairman Ike Skelton, D-Mo., and Ranking Member John McHugh, R-N.Y., announced a special panel to suggest acquisition reforms for the Defense Department. The panel will evaluate the performance of the current system, assess its failures and make recommendations to fix it. The findings will guide the fiscal 2011 defense authorization act, a committee statement said. The White House gave special attention to waste, fraud and abuse in Defense Contracting when it announced its contracting reforms on Wednesday. During a Wednesday news briefing, Obama said: In Iraq, too…