Re: Bureaucratic procurement
Not just the Gov't. In an y huge corporation, Procurement seems to go out of its way (1) to make finding and adding a vendor to the approved list as long and hard a process as possible (2) to make sure the final costs are always higher than just going out and gettign something, (3) making it a long-hard process simply for staff to order something. The only people benefitting are the people on Procurement: they have nice, secure jobs and (at least on one place I worked) featherign their nests with bungs. The corporation did not save money.
I agree that you can't have people dashing off to buy whatever, whenever, but they end up doing so (I bought a lot of equipment on my corporate credit card0 because finally they need it before the heat-death of the universe.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
