Tech CEOs Tell US Gov't How To Cut Deficit By $1 Trillion 311
alphadogg writes "The US government can save more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years by consolidating its IT infrastructure, reducing its energy use and moving to more Web-based citizen services, a group of tech CEOs said in a report released Wednesday. The Technology CEO Council's report, delivered to President Barack Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, also recommends that the US government streamline its supply chains and move agencies to shared services for mission-support activities. 'America's growing national debt is undermining our global competitiveness,' said the council, chaired by IBM CEO Samuel Palmisano. 'How we choose to confront and address this challenge will determine our future environment for growth and innovation.' If the cash-strapped US government enacted all the recommendations in the advocacy group's report, it could save between $920 billion and $1.2 trillion by 2020, the group said. The federal government could also reduce IT energy consumption by 25 percent, and it could save $200 billion over 10 years by using advanced analytics to stop improper payments, the report said."
For only $500 Billion up front! (Score:1, Insightful)
And they'll happily provide consultation and hardware... should be about $500 Billion by 2020.
This will never see the light of day (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh and by the way (Score:4, Insightful)
You'll save $1.1 trillion dollars, and it'll only cost you $900B in investment! Please make check payable to IBM in capital expense dollars, not the operating expense savings that we're showing you.
It's funny how such studies show fantastic savings, but you can't actually buy the solution with those purported savings. You can't point the finger and say "these are the people you'll fire, and these are the systems that will get turned off". And the companies offering such a solution won't accept payment with the funny money savings either.
All that is stuff (Score:4, Insightful)
the government is already in the process of doing.
real forward thinking, dumb ass~
Yeah. Or just legalize marijuana. (Score:3, Insightful)
IBM CEO Chair recommends IT overhaul? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not how the Gov't Does Business (Score:2, Insightful)
It's too bad that none of those businesses are Minority or Women owned, otherwise they would get the contracts for sure. Because in the world of Government, it is
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Buzzzz. (Score:5, Insightful)
That summary seemed to be full of buzzwords.
Unfortunately, part of what is keeping our country propped up is the inefficiency of bureaucracy and that it allows a lot of otherwise useless people to remain employed. If you go through and wipe out a ton of government positions there won't be anywhere else for those people to go. Though, I suppose with all those savings we could just give everyone microloans that allow them to try and at least be productive at something they are interested in.
Do you mean... (Score:1, Insightful)
Cut accumulated debt, cut defecit*s*, or something else? The defecit is a yearly thing, and I don't think they mean to make the entire cut in a single year.
More than that (Score:3, Insightful)
Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, also recommends that the U.S. government streamline its supply chains and move agencies to shared services for mission-support activities
Sounds just like... well... all the other consultants. You know, the people who come in and say "Hey, we haven't ever worked in this organization but this seems inefficient, make it better and you'll get massive savings! What? No, we haven't bothered to find out whether there is actual some reason why you are doing it in the inefficient-seeming way in the first place. If we did find that out, we couldn't make this fancy recommendations..."
I think that the first thing where government should save is this: Stop forming entities like "Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform". Any entity with such a grand name can only come up with grand suggestions that don't relate to the real world in any meaningful way. The actual improvements stem from lower levels of organizations, occur over time and resemble babysteps towards the ideal solution. Massive remakes suggested by people from outside the organizations tend to fail miserably.
Re:Yeah. Or just legalize marijuana. (Score:4, Insightful)
Seconded. I'll also add this:
Fine countries for each citizen found illegally residing in our country, *10 for repeat offenders.
Open our governments R&D dept to beyond defense and license the tech out to the private sector to pay for our infrastructure, and help create a real need for scientists.
Create regulations to stop the salary collusion that goes on in every executive board room, bring back excess taxes to discourage excessive greed.
Reform our tax structure to pay from the bottom up, instead of top down. Make my city pay to my state, who pays to the feds.
Or do more of the same for yourselves rich fuckers, eventually enough of us little guys will be pushed so far we won't care to make it better for ourselves. Our focus will be on how bad we can make it for you.
Re:Don't see how that would work (Score:1, Insightful)
The only way to reduce the national debt is by selling more stuff to other nations than you buy from them. Aside from energy savings (which I bet won't be anywhere close to $1T), I don't see how to switch to e-government or any of the rest of this stuff will make any difference.
No, the way to reduce the national debt is to...
wait for it...
STOP SPENDING MONEY!!!!
You can do that by turning over any service that can be performed by local and state governments to local and state governments.
BAM!!!!
Deficit solved.
Re:For only $500 Billion up front! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:For only $500 Billion up front! (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem I see is that the US Government contracts with companies that didn't traditionally do IT, but added it because they had a history with the Government. You know, like Northrup Grumman, because when I think on-time, on-budget I think defense contractors.
Re:This will never see the light of day (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, not necessarily... but considering what IBM has done to the states of Indiana [localtechwire.com], Texas [govtech.com] and California [sacbee.com], do you really want to trust Snake Oil Sam with the whole federal government?
Re:Don't see how that would work (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:For only $500 Billion up front! (Score:2, Insightful)
Ha! Maybe jobs created and taxes paid in India, but you think IBM is gonna create any jobs in the US? Sure. Now pull the other one.
Re:This will never see the light of day (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's a little more simple than that. The only things that can get done in Washington these days are the most trivial things. If Democrats back it before the elections, Republicans are going to toss it on the long list of things that they'll filibuster. After all, one trillion is a small price to pay for preventing the other guys from looking good.
Conversely, when republicans take back one or both houses, if they propose this, I suppose there's a thin chance they won't tack on something that democrats won't hate (or just one thing, like cutting the healthcare reform OR making Bush's tax cuts permanent), and then a thin chance democrats won't fillibuster it just out of spite...
I can say that with a straight face because it's not funny, it's just sad how unlikely either scenario is.
Re:Computers replacing bureaucrats? (Score:3, Insightful)
So I'm not sure which is worse, humans or machines.
I'll tell you. Humans that write long diatribes with machine fonts!
Right...like *every other government IT project*?? (Score:2, Insightful)
How many billions has Treasury spent trying to update computer systems? DoJ (FBI, etc.)? Military (how long did RPAS get kicked around sucking up $$s)? The plain fact is government has a horrible track record with IT spending boondoggles.
This sounds like another one; massive cash outlays today to buy illusory future savings.
Wait a minute...that sounds like most government programs period... :-(
Re:This will never see the light of day (Score:5, Insightful)
When a group of IT company CEO's propose that you spend huge amounts on new IT infrastructure to consolidate your spending, you'd do damned well to look at it with suspicion. Especially when they appear to have neglected subtracting the amount that would have to be spent to realise these savings from their final figures.
Re:Don't see how that would work (Score:5, Insightful)
Which sounds good, until you realize that there are times when deficit spending is legitimate and necessary for the good of all those that are concerned. It's just when you start wasting money on things like pointless wars and tax breaks for the rich that you start to run into trouble.
On that note, the other way we could reduce the national debt would be to go back to taxing the rich. I know that people get outraged by it, but the fact is that even if we put the tax rate on them back at say 40% it's still far lower than what it was when Reagan took office in early '81. Back thing it was 73% IIRC.
Is the gov't more wasteful the private biz ? (Score:4, Insightful)
But doesn't this describe most private biz, at least viewed in the eyes of
why is private jets for CEOs no less wasteful then anything the gov't does ?
You could go a long way with this, but I think it is a Myth that large publicly traded companies are, on avg, more efficient then the gov't and there is a lot of evidence to support the opposite posistion, eg look at he amt spent on admin in the social sec administration.
To give an example: I work in a biotech lab. The other day, a guy comes in with a 400 dollar piece of equipment, "free". What gives ? well, "they" through out a whole pallet (maybe 50) of these jobbers cause the name of the company changed, and they didn't want to bother changing the logo on the equipment....
yet it is gov't that gets blamed for being wasteful.
I mean come on, this is
Debt != Deficit (Score:3, Insightful)
Debt is how much you owe, like how much your credit card balance is.
Deficit is how much you're borrowing/losing/hemorrhaging in a given time, like how much your credit card balance increases in a year.
Cutting the deficit by 1 trillion dollars would save TEN TRILLION DOLLARS in ten years.
I guess, technically, the summary could be valid if we're talking about a ten-year budget, but the national budget is something that's settled upon on an annual basis. Cutting the deficit by "an average of 100 billion dollars per year" would be more accurate.
Re:For only $500 Billion up front! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:For only $500 Billion up front! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is the gov't more wasteful the private biz ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Private Jet for the CEO or US President (Air Force One), is one thing. Where the wastefulness comes in is that government (at all levels - local, state, federal), is very susceptible to things like contracts to purchase goods or services which are horrendously over-priced, because a well placed official or bureaucrat does something like awarding a no-bid contract to their friend, brother, son, daughter, wife.
While a lot of companies might overpay their VPs and CxOs, they are generally ruthlessly efficient when it comes to things like purchasing materials, finished goods, services, etc from other companies, and never overpaying.
Re:Oh and by the way (Score:2, Insightful)
Streamlining the supply chain usually means stopping small businesses from doing business with the company/government entity
Re:This will never see the light of day (Score:2, Insightful)
"And if their a Tea Bagger...then they're truly ignorant."
Ignoring the grammar (although funny), what exactly is wrong with wanting a smaller, more effective government? That's what 99% of the Tea Party wants. These grandiose progressive schemes have been nothing but abject failures and have brought this country to the same place that all progressive governments end up, in debt with a citizenry that feels it is entitled.
You spout a bunch of elitist nonsense about what is wrong with this country and point to the latest up and coming nation as a counterpoint. 20 years ago you would have said the same crap about Japan, 10 years ago it would be South Korea, today China. Do you really want your country to be more like China (cause that's what you're talking about, they aint gonna let you immigrate)? Well, that would get rid of all of the non-issues you listed: Gay rights good riddance, abortion only a choice for the first child, religion pretty much outlawed and Xtians, not sure what that is, but probably not allowed either. Gee, dictatorships sure do get the trains running on time.
I hope you teach your kid a little humility, as it sounds like you are raising a little monster who is going to think, like you, that they are vastly superiour.
Re:This will never see the light of day (Score:5, Insightful)
"Ignoring the grammar (although funny), what exactly is wrong with wanting a smaller, more effective government?"
Voting republican to try and get it. Good luck with that.
Re:For only $500 Billion up front! (Score:2, Insightful)
My laptop fan doesn't even come on under load running linux, but under Windows, it runs even at idle.
Turn off fast indexing service. In fact you should turn off most MS services, most of them are useless, consume idle CPU cycles and are probably attack vectors as well.
Re:For only $500 Billion up front! (Score:3, Insightful)
The power requirements are more for Windows compared to linux on the same hardware - at least on my laptop.
Sure, and the power requirements for DOS are even lower, what's your point?
Assuming switching to Linux would save power (it probably wouldn't - Windows 7's power management is excellent), it would be more than offset by the cost to re-train the millions of government employees, re-write custom software that has no Linux equivalent (yes, it exists, there's custom Windows software that has no Windows alternative, let alone a Linux version), and deal with the fraction of users who decide to retire/leave instead of learn something new.
You're spending a dollar to save a penny, it's about the dumbest way to "save" money imaginable.
Re:This will never see the light of day (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh I wasn't espousing the Democrats either. The aim of a smaller government that limits itself to areas where it's actually needed, rather than proliferating, taking ever more money and interfering more in everyone's life. well that aim is admirable in my opinion.
I don't see it being achievable whilst supporting either of the big two parties.
What the US (and most western democracies, thinking about it) needs is a credible, grass-roots movement that brings politics back to the people. New parties. Smaller government. More accountability. Less commercial interference in the form of lobbying and contributions.
At the moment the tea party seem to an outside observer to be a bunch or borderline crazies that thrive on hate for democrats and "liberals" in general. And they are being manipulated by FOX into being just another tool for the Reps and the corporate takeover of society.
(Again, mentioning they're being fooled into voting republican there doesn't mean I tacitly think they should be voting democrat)
Letting your house burn because of a fee (Score:2, Insightful)
This is small government, letting your house burn down:
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/06/tennessee-firefighters-watch-home-burn/ [nytimes.com]
Just scale it up, and imagine what a small USA government can't do. Welcome back to third-world agricultural, Dickens, industrialization-level America.
You gotta pay to be in first-class.
Re:IBM CEO Chair recommends IT overhaul? (Score:3, Insightful)
Contractors don't dictate the contracts, and they can't force a product the customer doesn't want.
This is the contractors trying to change the customer's mind.
Re:Don't see how that would work (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is the gov't more wasteful the private biz ? (Score:3, Insightful)
But they aren't. The money a business wastes is their customers' (obtained through excess profit, if they can waste it) and also their shareholders' (aka "MY retirement funds").
As a rule, only tiny businesses are able to waste primarily their owner/operator's money, and tiny businesses can't actually waste a lot because they're so tiny in the first place.
Modern Monetary Theory (Score:2, Insightful)
Which sounds good, until you realize that there are times when deficit spending is legitimate and necessary for the good of all those that are concerned. It's just when you start wasting money on things like pointless wars and tax breaks for the rich that you start to run into trouble.
I would go even further: there is significant evidence that on average, deficit spending is a requirement for a well functioning economy in a fiat money system - where by well functioning I mean that there are no resources left to idle, in particular it means there is no waste in the form of idle production capacities and involuntary unemployment.
The key is to understand the basic mechanisms that underlie a modern monetary system, as that will forever change your understanding of the function of federal government debt. I recommend the book by economist Warren Mosler 7 Deadly Innocent Frauds [moslerforsenate.com] for a start, it's not too long a read and really challenges your understanding of money in a good way. Once you're through with that, I recommend the blog of Australian economist Bill Mitchell, billy blog [economicoutlook.net].
Re:This will never see the light of day (Score:1, Insightful)
Neither the Republicans or the Democrats can credibly be labelled the party of small government. However, the Republicans over the last 30 years have shown that they're definitely the party for ridiculous government spending. They may spout their "small government" mantra repeatedly, but when they get into office they usually increase government spending and cut taxes for the wealthy.
Re:For only $500 Billion up front! (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope, not true. DOS doesn't run a NOP/sleep thread. Even Windows 3.x & 9x didn't have it. Hence the creation of Waterfall [majorgeeks.com] and other cpu sleepers for those OSes.