In the UK public sector gross incompetence and fear of making a decision is the norm.
One reason they hire consulting firms is so they can say they "took best advice" and if it all goes wrong (as it often does) they can point at someone else.
The UK government recently paid $18bn for a computer system that doesn't work, has now been scrapped and the project abandoned - yes that's eighteen BILLION US dollars.
I'm pretty sure the people in charge didn't get fired because they followed procedure.

Another reason for hiring consultancy firms rather than employing people is that employees don't give kickbacks to get a contract.
I know of instances in the UK of government departments paying 10 times the going rate by using a consultant for procurement of services. I can make a very good guess as to where some of that money is going.... Kickbacks! it simply doesn't make sense until you follow the money.

In reply to Re: The Role of Software Consulting Firms in... the World? by fluffyvoidwarrior
in thread The Role of Software Consulting Firms in... the World? by core_dumped

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.