- DOGE has turned its focus to the government’s contracts with consulting firms.
- Federal agencies have until March 7 to submit reviews of their existing contracts with 10 major firms.
- The government is the main client of several of the firms in the spotlight.
Amid DOGE’s cost-cutting efforts, federal agencies have been asked to review and justify their spending on consultants.
The General Services Administration (GSA), which manages procurement and real estate on behalf of much of the federal government, has asked procurement officials to review their contracts with 10 major consultancies.
They have until Friday to provide the GSA with a list of which contracts they deem essential and those that can be cut.
“As part of the Trump-Vance Administration’s efforts to weed out fraud and waste, GSA initially asked agency partners to write a short explanation about why consulting contracts were essential for them to fulfill their statutory purposes,” a GSA spokesperson told Business Insider.
“We determined a need for more in-depth responses, and are in the process of collecting additional information at this time,” the spokesperson said.
The 10 major consulting firms under review are:
- Deloitte
- Accenture Federal Services
- Booz Allen Hamilton
- General Dynamics
- Leidos
- Guidehouse
- HII Mission Technologies Corp
- Science Applications International Corporation
- CGI Federal
- International Business Machines Corporation
These 10 firms collectively earn tens of billions of dollars annually from their contracts with the federal government. They’re hired to assess, advise, and implement solutions to help the government save money over time and become more efficient.
In its latest financial year, Deloitte US earned 9% of its total revenue from government contracts
Others rely even more heavily on federal contracts. Booz Allen Hamilton split from its private sector consulting arm in 2008 and now generates almost all of its $11 billion in annual revenue from the public sector.
Leidos Holdings, which provides national security and technology services such as scanners at airport checkpoints, said in January that it made about 87% of its total revenue from US government contracts last year.
With government contracts making up a significant portion of the firms’ income, some consultants at Accenture and Deloitte told BI that they are worried the reviews will lead to layoffs.
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