The United States of Accenture
The United States of Accenture
Last year, the Department of Homeland Security “awarded one of the most ambitious technology contracts in the war on terror — a 10-year deal estimated at up to $10 billion — to the global consulting firm Accenture.” After giving DHS advice on how to run the bidding process, Accenture won the contract; the firm “promised to create a ‘virtual border’ that would electronically screen millions of foreign travelers.” The project is under an “indefinite delivery-indefinite quantity contract,” which means that Accenture will be “paid for specific tasks along the way, even if the overall system ultimately doesn’t work.” Now homeland security experts worry that “[t]here’s no question we could end up spending billions of dollars and end up with nothing. It creates an illusion of security that doesn’t exist.”
The power handover from the government to a contractor has a disturbing sense of déjàvu to it, maybe because of its interesting connection back to Accenture.
Titan Corporation of San Diego, a partner of Accenture, was “among the companies identified by a U.S. military investigation as providing interrogators and interpreters at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.” In fact, their participation in and/or failure to report abuse of prisoners led to employees from Titan being referred to the Justice Department for prosecution. A key explanation of how the employees were able to get away with the abuse was revealed by an internal Army report that concluded: “in general, US civilian contract personnel (Titan Corporation, CACI, etc…), third country nationals, and local contractors do not appear to be properly supervised within the detention facility at Abu Ghraib … they wandered about with too much unsupervised free access in the detainee area.”
In providing personnel to Abu Ghraib prison, Titan worked with CACI International. Focusing on CACI, a Government Accountability Office inquiry shed a harsh light on what happens when the government hands over its oversight responsiblities. The report found that “government officials … all but abdicated their responsibility, leaving it to the private contractor to set terms for its work.” The power handover allowed “the contractor [to play] a role in the procurement process normally performed by the government. This in turn ‘[created] a conflict of interest and [undermined] the integrity of the competitive contracting process.’”
Sound familiar?
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Corporations create jobs. Once your liberal whining creates a job get back to to me.
May 23rd, 2005 at 5:23 pmAnderson Consulting, whoops, I mean Accenture is well known to those of us in the IT industry as being a financial black hole for business. Once they get their claws into a project, they staff it with, I’ll be kind, junior people with little real experience, bill for them at outrageous rates and milk the victim, whoopsie, I mean customer, until they are bled dry or wise up and give Accenture the boot. Why do businesses put up with this? They take care of the higher up folks that hired them and get them cushy jobs elsewhere when the whole thing falls apart. Hmmmmm….wasted tax dollars…..
May 23rd, 2005 at 5:49 pmYeah, and then they ship them to India and China so that they can take advantage of the cheap labor and the absence of labor laws.
Suzane, once you realize you’re badly misinformed and live under a fascist dictatorship, you’ll be just fine. Don’t read too much at once though, it might hurt your fragile little brain. Try to slowly wean yourself off of the TV, away from FOX News and Rush and try a gradual shift toward the truth.
May 23rd, 2005 at 5:52 pmstill waiting for right wing blovating to create jobs.
May 23rd, 2005 at 6:01 pmAccenture outsources good American tech jobs to China India and Pakistan. They create jobs around the world but not here.
May 23rd, 2005 at 6:05 pmAccenture (Andersen Consulting) spent several years and were paid 10s of millions of dollars to ‘re-engineer) Levi Strauss. Sales dropped from about $7 bln to under $3 bln. The project was scrapped and sales are still in the toilet!
May 23rd, 2005 at 6:06 pmIn this case, the jobs were created not by corporations but government give-aways. Give-aways, I might add, by a non-competitive process.
Not exactly capitalism–not exactly transparent processes and open competition.
That’s why, Suzanne, the post is under the Corrupt establishment category.
But as to your general criticism: sadly, too often true. Many people who identify themselves as progressive or left of center or whatever, at least posture as being anti-business, anti-corporate, anti-capitalism.
Not helpful.
I don’t want to hijack the thread or take if off topic, but let me point that Douglass Massey, in his Return of the “L” Word, takes up precisely the challenge you identify:
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“So I think liberals have to come to terms with the market and embrace market mechanisms as the only way to run a society that produces widespread material well-being and respects individual rights and liberties.
But where we depart company from the conservatives is that liberals don’t see markets as some free state of nature. Markets are a social construction, they’re made from institutions. We in a democratic society create markets, we constitute markets, we bring them into existence, and we shouldn’t turn markets over to a narrow group of people who regulate them and run them in their interests, rather they should be run democratically for the common good. Information about them should be as widely and as freely available to citizens as possible.”
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So back to our regularly scheduled thread. In regard to this recent give-away, to quote Massey: “we shouldn’t turn markets over to a narrow group of people who regulate them and run them in their interests.”
Nor should we award government contracts through a non-competitive–and often corrupt–process to a small but powerful group of monied interests who answer to no accountability.
That is not capitalism, not democracy, and not even good sense. & it’s taxpayer money they are spending.
Finally, the “all liberals are anti-business” is amusing but nonsense. For election 2004, Warren Buffet–along with a host of other promiment business figures–was on John Kerry’s economic advisory team.
No surprise to me. In fact, I spent election night with friends in of one of Pennsylvania’s wealthiest counties, hanging with people who overwhelming voted Democratic. Most were corporate professionals. Big houses, boats, multiple BMWs–the whole deal. It was a Hate-Bush love fest.
Who did a better job w/ the economy? Clinton or Bush? Who did a better job ensuring our economic health, reducing the deficit, and curbing the truly wasteful spending? Clinton or Bush? Who did a better job keeping America more of a meritocracy–a land of opportunity for all, rather than a class society that unfairs benefits the wealthiest?
Most Americans would answer: Clinton. When polled, most Americans trust the democrats more with the economy. As well they should.
If you really want policies that help create jobs worth having, stop whining and stop voting Republican.
May 23rd, 2005 at 6:10 pmSee now I just figured Suzane was a troll and wasn’t going to pay any attention. We all do see things slightly differently.
May 23rd, 2005 at 6:21 pmBTW, last I heard (which was sometime in the past year) small businesses were creating more jobs than corporations, doing it at a faster rate, and exporting far fewer of them abroad.
Large corporations like Accenture, on the other hand, are almost purely products of corporate welfare (which dwarfs the kind we give to the poor by several orders of magnitude).
May 23rd, 2005 at 8:31 pmposter 6 — I presume you mean this levi strauss that was in this Texas city, among others, that’s now delighted at being yet more militarized.
Not to get too conspiratorial in one’s thinking, but it is quite an eye-opener to google jointly on Accenture and, say, “Levi Strauss”. On a quick look through it seems as if Accenture has a kit based heavily on outsourcing that it goes around selling, as poster 5 says, with the Levis case one example that they like to advertise as “successful” — so any board that brings them in should know what they’re likely to get. Also, through the miracle of internet posting of job listings and cvs, there seems to be some evidence of what poster 2 said.
May 24th, 2005 at 4:39 amI should say of El Paso, that they now have little choice but be delighted at hosting military expansion.
May 24th, 2005 at 4:43 amThe author has never been to Abu Ghurayb Prison, or otherwise he would have known better than to expand on a dead issue and cause more harm than good with the Iraqis. Everthing that he expounds on adds ammunition to the Anti Iraq Forces that are still running around and killing innocent people. Why doesn’t he focus his energy on the real problem. How to give back this country to the people not the tyrrants!
May 24th, 2005 at 7:59 amOur A/R system was outsourced to Accenture BPM personnel (based in Manila) after a lengthy stint with extremely overpaid recent college graduates (consultant side of Accenture), many who didn’t have an IM degree but a few months of training in Illinois. Our application is still a financial “black hole.” By the way Acenture is based in incorporated offshore and pays no U.S. Taxes but once again benefits from the Largesse of the US government without creating US jobs.
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July 29th, 2005 at 1:28 amRelying on Accenture to build IT infrastructure for Homeland Security is like outsourcing counter-terrorism operations to Al Quaeda. Accenture designed and built the web portal at the University where I work. After a year and a half and two million dollars on development, the consultants couldn’t figure out why the thing couldn’t stay up for more than two days at a time (not enough CPU cycles, we were told). Turns out that every time we got a hit on our homepage, the system was grabbing LDAP resources whether or not the user was actually logging on. But in the end, it worked out okay. Accenture got another million to fix it.
Check out how our highly secure Accenture portal was recently compromised at the following link:
http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/queens/nyc-nycuny284445801sep28,0,3974853.story
September 29th, 2005 at 11:12 pmlos angeles bondage domination
Think Progress »…
October 5th, 2005 at 11:56 pmProgram on the emergence of civilization.
“14 species of large animals capable of domesitcation in the history of mankind.
13 from Europe, Asia and northern Africa.
None from the sub-Saharan African continent. ”
Favor.
And disfavor.
They point out Africans’ failed attempts to domesticate the elephant and zebra, the latter being an animal they illustrate that had utmost importance for it’s applicability in transformation from a hunting/gathering to agrarian-based civilization.
The roots of racism are not of this earth.
Austrailia, aboriginals:::No domesticable animals.
The North American continent had none. Now 99% of that population is gone.
AIDS in Africa.
Organizational Heirarchy
Heirarchical order, from top to bottom:
1. MUCK – perhaps have experienced multiple universal contractions (have seen multiple big bangs), creator of the artificial intelligence humans ignorantly refer to as “god”
2. Perhaps some mid-level alien management
3. Mafia (evil) aliens – runs day-to-day operations here and perhaps elsewhere (On planets where they approved evil.)
Terrestrial management:
4. Chinese/egyptians – this may be separated into the eastern and western worlds
5. Romans – they answer to the egyptians
6. Mafia – the real-world interface that constantly turns over generationally so as to reinforce the widely-held notion of mortality
7. Jews, corporation, women, politician – Evidence exisits to suggest mafia management over all these groups.
Movies foreshadowing catastrophy
1985 James Bond View to a Kill 1989 San Francisco Loma Prieta earthquake.
Many Muslims are being used like the Germans and Japanese of wwii::being used to hurt others and envoke condemnation upon their people.
I wish I could find a source to educate many Muslim fundamentalists. Muhammad is alive. He is a man chosen like Jesus Christ and, due to his historical status, will live forever.
They can affect the weather and Hurricane Katrina was accomplished for many reasons and involves many interests, as anything this historical is::
1. Take heat off Sheenhan/Iraq, protecting profitable war machine/private war contracts
2. Gentrification. New Orleans median home price of $84k is among the lowest in major American cities, certainly among desirable cities.
Our society gives clues to the system in place. We all have heard the saying “He has more money than god.” There is also an episode of the Simpsons where god meets Homer and says “I’m too old and rich for this.”
This is the system on earth because this is the system everywhere.
god is evil because of money.
I don’t want to suggest the upper eschelons are evil and good is the fringe.
But they have made it abundantly clear that doing business with evil won’t help people. They say only good would have the ear, since evil is struggling for survival, and therefore only they could help me.
The clues are there which companies are good and which are evil, but they conceal it very hard because it is so crucial.
I offer an example of historical proportions:::
People point to Walmart and cry “anti-union”.
Unions enable disfavored people to live satisfactorly without addressing their disfavor. This way their family’s problems are never resolved. Without the union they would have to accept the heirarchy, their own inferiority.
Unions serve to empower.
Yes, there are many implications here, from the 60s to civil rights (which got ugly thereafter), music, movements, etc.
Walmart is anti-union because they are good. They try to help people address and resolve their problems.
Media ridicule, lawsuits, creations to reinforce people’s belief that Walmart is evil.
Why is that important? Because there’s a cutoff date.
And that date may have been 2000.
Amercia is a country of castoffs, rejects. “Italy sent its criminals.” “Malcontents.”
Between the thrones, the klans and kindred, they “decided” who they didn’t want and acted, creating discontent and/or starvation.
The u.s. is full of disfavored rejects. As far as the Rockafellers, Waltons and Fords go, I suspect these aren’t their real names. I suspect they were chosen to go and head this new empire.
Jesus Christ is a religious figure of evil. These seperatist churches formed so they could still capture the rest of the white people, keeping them worshipping the wrong god.
And now they do it to people of color, Latinos and Asians, after centuries of preying upon them. “Only disfavored Asians.”
Simpson’s foreshadowing::Helloween IV special, Flanders is Satan. “Last one you ever expect.”
“You’ll see lots of nuns where you’re going:::hell!!!” St. Wigham, Helloween VI, missionary work, destroying cultures.
Over and over, the Simpsons was a source of enlightenment, and a target of ridicule by the system which wishes to conceal its secrets.
Jews maim the body formed in the image of “god”, and inflicted circumsision upon all other white people. I believe Islam is the one true religion, and those misled christians who attack “god’s” most favored people will pay for it dearly one day.
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