What's a Billion Here or There?

The Department of Defense knows precisely how much its major IT initiatives will cost… give or take $1.6 billion. That's the amount of the discrepancy between two DoD reports found by the General Accounting Office. The full GAO report is here [PDF].

Comments

[OL]

If you consider the H&R post a couple of weeks ago about the FBI not having an enterprise architecture yet, IT contractor for ANY federal agency seems to be a lucrative opportunity.

[auditor]

$6.9 billion to network 310,000 people is
$22,258. Seems rather absurd, with that much
money involved a little creativity (perhaps
encryption sufficient to use less secure physical transport if thats an issue). The folks making
decisions on those size contracts are likely clueless bureacrats who need to be kept an eye on.

[Matt Bruce]

The $1.6B is good for shock value but the important figure is the 6 per cent.

Does anyone know how this 6% would compare to a similar IT budget discrepancy in a Fortune 500 company? Just curious; the reporting seems incomplete, perhaps because the information isn't available.

[.]

"That's a whopping error," said John Gantz, an analyst at AMR Research Inc. in Boston. "You wouldn't expect an error bigger than 5%."

[StMack]

I think i just found my next career - proviting IT services to the Pentagon.

[Jon H]

I wonder how much is due to Windows screwups.

[Montgomery C. Burns]

1.6b? Let me know when they're talking real money!

[James Merritt]

$1.6B???

That'll buy a LOT of black-ops.

[Brendan Perez]

That's OK. I know how much my taxes are for this year, give or take $1.6k.