Re: "Consultancies" v. independents
Winning government contracts is a complicated skill set, and is totally orthogonal to the services a contractor provides. In Usonia the federal government (which I worked for for fifteen-ish years) has procedures for scoring bids on past performance, but in practice it never happens; actual malicious behaviour by government officers does happen but isn't the main contributor to waste.
What actually is (not an exhaustive list):
- The experience necessary to evaluate technical factors is limited in government because the overwhelming majority of positions that would allow one to develop such expertise are contractor
- Congress wants to minimize the on-paper headcount of the federal government
- DoJ rarely pursues serious penalties
In this case, the settlement only required the alleged offender to pay restitution and 1x damages. Assuming that it was just the immediate management at the contractor who were scamming the government, prosecuting them (civil or criminal) in their personal capacity would be the bare minimum; if upper management is witting of the fraud, the company needs to permanently lose its facility security clearance and said management needs their personnel clearances revoked.
Icon because it's the only way to be sure.