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posted by martyb on Wednesday October 21 2015, @12:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the start-buying-old-boxes dept.

The Obama Administration has ordered US federal agencies to hold off on purchasing new PCs in hopes of patching up a broken ordering system.

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has put a hold on new desktops and notebooks while it sorts through what it says are "thousands" of new system orders every year.

OMB said that because agencies lack a standardized way to order, maintain, and replace their IT infrastructure, officials are forced to seek out their own contracts and purchase orders to get new PCs, leading to huge accumulated costs in waste.

"There is no need for thousands of contracts to purchase common laptops and desktops," the OMB said in its order late last week.

What answer do you predict the US government will reach, "Surfaces for everyone!"?


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 21 2015, @01:18PM

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Wednesday October 21 2015, @01:18PM (#252714) Homepage
    And I suspect it won't even save $1. It might, if they're lucky, break even. My money's on it costing them more. Centralising things that can be done locally is rarely a win unless there's an economy of scale that can be exploited, and no logistical downside. 10 computers from HP, or whoever's been providing the best strip-club trips recently, costs the same as 10 times the cost of 1 computer from HP - there's no economy of scale that I've seen. However, 1 computer from HP does cost 2 times the cost of a PC from a local supplier, one which can provide next-day support. HP could also provide next-day support, but that makes the price go from 2x to 3x.

    I see nothing but overhead in this. Someone must be taking a cut...
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by tibman on Wednesday October 21 2015, @01:50PM

    by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 21 2015, @01:50PM (#252723)

    I agree. Most centralizing projects i've seen are merely land grabs and empire building. On paper they look more efficient money-wise but they never are. Now people have to work through the new red-tape to get things that use to be simple to get. Yes, it directly costs the organization less but how much is your people's time worth? Taking a week to do what use to take a day or two is actually costing the organization hundreds per instance. That is a net loss, not a gain.

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    • (Score: 2) by scruffybeard on Wednesday October 21 2015, @03:54PM

      by scruffybeard (533) on Wednesday October 21 2015, @03:54PM (#252807)

      Not to mention that there may be some offices that have a need for a different configuration. I have seen instances where there were 10 different configs, boiled down to 2, neither of which meet anybody's needs. It looks great on paper because they saved 5% on the cost of the hardware, but then people are screaming because they don't have enough disk, or RAM to do their job.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 21 2015, @03:59PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 21 2015, @03:59PM (#252811)

      That comes out of a different pot. "We saved $X million on computer purchasing!" "But now you spend $2X million buying them because of the extra overhead in the new process." "Yes, but I saved $X million on computers."

      I work for the US federal government, and I love what I do, but I've come to the conclusion that the government has no understanding of the concept of overhead. For example, we recently implemented a new time-and-tracking system. I told my boss, "So, let's say you expect it'll only take an extra hour a week for everyone to do it. Doesn't seem like much, right? But that means, for every 40 people you now need to hire ONE MORE PERSON." (Actually, it's a bit more than that, but it makes the example easy to understand.) Do you think we got that extra person? Do you think our schedules were all adjusted out a bit to compensate? And they wonder why people are frustrated, upset, and morale is low.

      I've considered making a list of the overhead tasks my employees do. I bet each one loses several weeks of productivity every year to overhead. Some of that overhead is necessary - time sheets, everyone wants to get paid. Certain training. But do we really need to learn (repeatedly) about how the No Fear act affects HR, considering we don't work in HR? Nope.

  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 21 2015, @02:56PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday October 21 2015, @02:56PM (#252781)

    You are missing the opportunity to standardize the "security" aka snooping software.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday October 21 2015, @05:54PM

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday October 21 2015, @05:54PM (#252849) Journal

    Centralising things that can be done locally is rarely a win unless there's an economy of scale that can be exploited
     
    I'm sure there are absolutely no economies of scale that could be leveraged by one of the largest organizations on the planet.

    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 21 2015, @07:04PM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Wednesday October 21 2015, @07:04PM (#252873) Homepage
      You have absolutely no idea how large organisations, and their providers, work, have you?
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