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The Military Government Software

How the Unraveling of Two Pentagon Projects May Result In a Costly Do-Over (reuters.com) 85

Posted by BeauHD from the government-inefficiency dept.
The Pentagon is poised to cancel two nearly finished Navy and Air Force HR software projects worth over $800 million so new contracts can be awarded to other vendors, including Salesforce, Palantir, and Workday. "The reason for the unusual move: officials at those departments, who have so far put the existing projects on hold, want other firms, including Salesforce and billionaire Peter Thiel's Palantir, to have a chance to win similar projects, which could amount to a costly do-over," reports Reuters. From the report: In 2019, Accenture said it had won a contract to expand an HR platform to modernize the payroll, absence management, and other HR functions for the Air Force with Oracle software. The project, which includes other vendors and was later expanded to include Space Force, grew to cost $368 million and was scheduled for its first deployment this summer at the Air Force Academy. An April "status update" on the project conducted by the Air Force and obtained by Reuters described the project as "on track," with initial deployment scheduled for June, noting that it would end up saving the Air Force $39 million annually by allowing it to stop using an older system. But on May 30, Darlene Costello, then-Acting assistant Secretary of the Air Force, sent out a memo placing a "strategic pause" on the project for ninety days and calling for the study of alternate technical solutions, according to a copy of the memo seen by Reuters that was previously unreported. Costello, who has since retired, was reacting to pressure from other Air Force officials who wanted to steer a new HR project to SalesForce and Palantir, three sources said. [...] The Air Force said in a statement that it "is committed to reforming acquisition practices, assessing the acquisition workforce, and identifying opportunities to improve major defense acquisition programs."

Space Force, which operates within the Air Force, was set to receive the Air Force's new payroll system in the coming months. But it is also pulling out of the project because officials there want to launch yet another HR platform project to be led by Workday, according to three people familiar with the matter. The service put out a small business tender on May 7 for firms to research HR platform alternatives, with the goal of selecting a company that will recommend Workday as the best option, the people said. Now the Air Force and Space Force "want to start over with vendors that do not meet their requirements, leading to significant duplication and massive costs," said John Weiler, director of the Information Technology Acquisition Advisory Council, a government-chartered nonprofit group that makes recommendations to improve federal IT contracting.

In 2022, the Honolulu-based Nakupuna Companies took over a 2019 project with other firms to integrate the Navy's payroll and personnel systems into one platform using Oracle software and known as "NP2". The project, which has cost about $425 million since 2023, according to the Government Accountability Office, was set to be rolled out earlier this year after receiving a positive review by independent reviewer and consulting firm Guidehouse in January, according to a copy obtained by Reuters. But the head of Navy's human resources, now retired Admiral Rick Cheeseman, sought to cancel the project according to a June 5 memo seen by Reuters, directing another official to "take appropriate contractual actions" to cancel the project. Navy leaders instead mandated yet another assessment of project, according to a memo seen by Reuters, leaving it in limbo, two sources said.

Cheeseman's reason for trying to kill the project was his anger over a decision by DOGE earlier this year to cancel a $171 million contract for data services provider Pantheon Data that essentially duplicated parts of the HR project. In an email obtained by Reuters, he threatened to withhold funding from the Nakupuna-led project unless the Pantheon contract was restored. "I am beyond exasperated with how this happened," Cheeseman wrote in a May 7 email to Chief Information Officer Jane Rathbun about the contract cancellation, arguing the Pantheon contract was not "duplicative of any effort." "From where I sit, I'm content taking every dime away from NP2 in order to continue this effort," he added in the email. The pausing of NP2 was "unexpected, especially given that multiple comprehensive reviews validated the technical solution as the fastest and most affordable approach," Nakupuna said in a statement, adding it was disappointed by the change because the project was ready to deploy. The Navy said it "continues to prioritize essential personnel resources in support of efforts to strengthen military readiness through fiscal responsibility and departmental efficiency."

How the Unraveling of Two Pentagon Projects May Result In a Costly Do-Over More | Reply

How the Unraveling of Two Pentagon Projects May Result In a Costly Do-Over

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  • DOGE (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2025 @08:20PM (#65588672)

    Hello DOGE where are you? Massive waste of resources here. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

    • Hello DOGE where are you?

      There's been a bit of a leadership shake-up and some messes to fix since the "broship" ended. [npr.org] Musk's latest interest seems to be promoting a tool that can turn your photos into AI slop.

    • Re:DOGE (Score:5, Insightful)

      by XanC ( 644172 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2025 @10:19PM (#65588834)

      It's probably worth $800 million to NOT end up with the Oracle-based product they almost got.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        This phrase particularly stuck out for me:

        reviews validated the technical solution as the fastest and most affordable approach

        How much did Oracle pay those reviewers to lie like that?

        • reviews validated the technical solution as the fastest and most affordable approach

          When a single thing is being reviewed, that's not much of a statement. It actually parses to, "it works." Oracle wouldn't have needed to spend anything.

    • Re:DOGE (Score:4, Interesting)

      by edi_guy ( 2225738 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2025 @10:53PM (#65588870)

      Came here to say the same thing. There are programs that I generally support, including USAID, PBS, and others. But if DOGE started with the meaningful stuff like the constant, year over year, decade over decade, disaster that is Pentagon spending, then resolve Medicaid, then resolve Medicare, and then eventually doge made it down the list to PBS's $1 billion per year. I'd have to be ok with that.

      But the fact is every 2 years or so, 60 minutes has a report on a(nother) Pentagon cluster- mess that is billions...hundreds of billions of dollars over budget. Or immediately out of date. But somehow 'Muricans confuse supporting the uniform with supporting fraud, waste, and abuse in the DOD. And that's bizarre because the behavior of the DOD in it's finances does add risk to people in the service, it does diminish their salaries, benefits, and the most dangerous thing IMHO to Americas position in the world is the increasingly fragile economic situation around deficit spending and our economic engine. Someone needs to read some freakin' history books.

      Less nonsensical 'deals' like Hooray, the US 'made' $26 billion in June tariff revenue, but July national debt increased by $220 billion...wtf math is that?!?!

      • Re:DOGE (Score:4, Informative)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Thursday August 14, 2025 @08:44AM (#65589402) Homepage Journal

        But if DOGE started with the meaningful stuff like the constant, year over year, decade over decade, disaster that is Pentagon spending, then resolve Medicaid, then resolve Medicare

        Medicaid and Medicare are just not problems. The fraud rate is extremely low. Even most people who are lying about their income on Medicaid applications would still qualify even if they told the truth as they are typically declaring no income while they have some, but are still below the income limits. Medicare fraud is even lower. The same federal government that provides the Medicare processes the taxes and knows what the recipients' income is. Even when people don't file taxes, the financial institutions report account balances and dividends to the federal government, which then disseminates this information to states. The eligibility workers processing Medicaid applications in the states and counties (some states are centralized, some delegate) receive distillations of that data that tell them about assets and income, and are obligated to act on such reports and discontinue eligibility when recipients are over income limits.

        If you wanted to cut health care costs in America, what you would do is eradicate the health insurance companies and put everyone on Medicare, and expand Medicaid further so that the people for whom paying 80% of costs (which is what Medicare does) is insufficient would be covered. The health insurance companies' entire reason for existence to make a profit from human suffering. The ACA capped their profits at a percentage of cost of care, so they now lobby to increase the cost of care and to prevent Medicare, VA and so on from negotiating those prices down. While the prohibition on denying care for pre-existing conditions in the ACA has saved lives, everything else about it is unsustainable.

        APTC, the Advance Premium Tax Credit, puts money directly into the pockets of the insurance companies. We The People are paying typically $600-1000 per month per APTC recipient for a plan which provides MEC, and this still leaves citizens paying co-pays which are increasing as drug prices increase. And then there's a whole other SNAFU with the way drug approval is done in the USA — to bring a new version of an existing medication to the market, you do not need to prove efficacy, only that it doesn't kill statistically significantly more people than the prior version. Then the drug companies publicize the side effects of the prior form while pretending the new form doesn't have all the same ones, and are allowed to advertise directly to patients who then demand the new form of the drug, while also paying physicians both directly and with lavish vacations masquerading as educational events to prescribe their new versions.

        every 2 years or so, 60 minutes has a report on a(nother) Pentagon cluster- mess that is billions...hundreds of billions of dollars over budget.

        The DOD never, and I mean never passes an audit. Those clusterfucks are SOP and intentional. The MIC has had a death grip on our balls as a nation ever since its inception. It gets to hide behind secrecy which is allegedly justified by military needs. Corporate lobbyists fund campaigns and then hire politicians as lobbyists when they leave office to benefit from the connections they made while employed in alleged service to The People. And they promote military conflict so that their goods and services will be in constant need, so the MIC is literally making sure people are blown up so they can profit. That joke about the billion dollar airplane firing a million dollar missile at a fifty dollar tent isn't actually a joke, it's just the way the MIC does business.

        • It was never about the tent. You know that, but it's more entertaining to seem wise than to evaluate the facts.

    • And that $45 million big boy parade was an EXCELLENT use of resources?!?

  • No heroes in this story (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Wednesday August 13, 2025 @08:22PM (#65588676) Homepage Journal

    Accenture, Salesforce, Palantir, Workday, Pantheon... it's a who's who of who's shit. The only name in the whole thing I don't associate with some type of farce is Nakupuna.

  • This is the most corrupt administration (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2025 @09:05PM (#65588732)
    In American history and yes I know about Harding's administration.

    I don't think people realize what this level of corruption is going to do to their personal finances. And by the time they do it's going to be too late.

    I mean seriously if you want to sell your house and all your possessions and give them to Donald Trump or Peter thiel, maybe splitting the proceeds between them, that's your business. But what pisses me off is you dragging me and my family into it.

    Letting crap like this slide is why people call it a cult.

    • Nobody is selling your house. Unless you're an idiot.

    • Speaking of selling your house and right-wing grifters, Ben "Aquaman" Shapiro is special kind of stupid [youtu.be].

      And speaking of Peter Thiel, it is perhaps not possible to describe him as special kind of authoritarian due to how normal it is with such people in Trump's administration, but he is definitely not hiding it [youtu.be]:

      "Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible."

      Also worth watching is Some more news' video about him: [Peter Thiel and his dorky little goons](https://youtu.be/4WfHXt1ZQhg).

      • "Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible."

        People like him are allowed to get away with saying things like that because people are dumb enough to think this has ever been a democracy. The USA has literally never even tried democracy. The vote was given specifically only to landed white males, and everyone else has had to fight for it and were not permitted to have it until it no longer mattered. The electoral college was created specifically so that slave states could have a voice in how the nation is run despite having just proven that they don't d

      • Well, well. Too used to markdown comments these days. Here is a proper link Peter Thiel and his dorky little goons [youtu.be].

    • I don't think people realize what this level of corruption is going to do to their personal finances. And by the time they do it's going to be too late.

      Ummm, it is already too late. The fix is in and nobody with any sort of power seems to care. *shrug* I guess I will see the world burn.

  • What does he care? (Score:4, Informative)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2025 @09:35PM (#65588778)

    It's not his money he's wasting.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Some people have morals and integrity. Others ... do not.

    • Forget wasting the money he is actively soliciting bribes here. Peter thiel runs those companies and Peter thiel pushed Trump harder than anyone going so far as to put his hand-picked man into the vice president role.

      Take away Elon Musk and Peter thiel and Donald Trump wouldn't be president he'd be on his way to jail. And now Trump is already selling Trump 2028 merchandise.

  • Seems to play no role anymore when "friends" need to be given millions.

  • >"In 2019, Accenture said it had won a contract to expand an HR platform [...] and was later expanded to include Space Force, grew to cost $368 million and was scheduled for its first deployment this summer at the Air Force Academy."

    So SIX YEARS before just HR/Payroll software STARTS to roll out to just one small portion of the organization sounds reasonable? Granted, it can be a mess working with multiple vendors. But this sounds really long for something with such a [seemingly] narrow scope. HR/Payro

    • So SIX YEARS before just HR/Payroll software STARTS to roll out to just one small portion of the organization sounds reasonable? Granted, it can be a mess working with multiple vendors. But this sounds really long for something with such a [seemingly] narrow scope. HR/Payroll is a function that *every* business/organization does and it isn't rocket science. Surely 80+% of what they are doing is the same as anywhere else and is already written code/products.

      While you would think there is a lot of commonalit

  • Costly Do-Over (Score:5, Funny)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Thursday August 14, 2025 @01:45AM (#65589070)

    Sounds like a Secret Service code name for the President's hairstylist. :-)

  • People from USA should understand that their taxes have to be transferred to (already too) rich people.

    Even Trump understood this. And he is doing its best to implement it. It might even try to justify it by claiming it will create more jobs and is therefore good for employment and the economy.

  • The existing contracts had to meet a formal set of requirements. Will the new commercial software be held to those same requirements? Or will they just ignore anything that is actually difficult? That's a pattern I saw from Palantir, where they lobbied Congress really hard to overturn a contract, but when evaluated against that contract's requirements, they replied "Oh, some of those are really hard and expensive, so we shouldn't be forced to do those."

    Sure, sometimes those requirements make no sense, or

  • Several air force programs that had reached completion were canceled, back in Janurary, despite having been fully paid for, before the software was deployed to the actual users.

    I suspect the users are not happy, since in at least one case, the alternative to that software was paper spreadsheets.

  • So all the passengers in the US Administration Clown Car are now required to cancel previous footwear contracts.

    New shoes will be single-sourced from "a great American Company.".

    In other news, the Trump Family Foundation has announced a major investment in the Hey Dude shoe company.

  • Sure, managing 3 million employment records is no small feat. But does the software really cost $800M ?

    For small businesses it's under $10/mo to outsource your payroll, and gets cheaper with more employees. So perhaps $360M/year if you paid full price, but I'd imagine you could negotiate down to 20% of that if you were willing to do a multiyear service contract. After 10 years, it's still going to be less than the $800M they are spending now. And at this scale, doing it in-house instead of buying from Oracl

  • US Government corruption.

    Still. Not even "again".

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