Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This all will pass in a year. Are FFRDCs a bit bloated? Probably. Is it worth the risk to demolish them? No. Freeze their ceiling and step up audits.

What risk? Are you paying attention to what's happening in government?

If there’s another terrorist attack after all of these RIFs and resignations, who has the analytic shop to advise on what to do next? That shop takes decades to cultivate. Get rid of it and see what alternatives you have. That my friend is the risk.

How many analysts sit around twiddling their thumbs?

I have noticed staff from some of the studies and analysis FFRDCs are very very young - like a year out of undergrad + 1 year MA in security studies. They have no work experience besides writing a term paper or two in school.

Are these the folks my office is shelling out $800k+ to advise us on grand strategy with a 70%+ multiplier for overhead?

Have you figured out about McKinsey yet?

+1. You beat me to it. All MBB for that matter.
And Booz, Deloitte, etc. although the quality there is even lower.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This all will pass in a year. Are FFRDCs a bit bloated? Probably. Is it worth the risk to demolish them? No. Freeze their ceiling and step up audits.

What risk? Are you paying attention to what's happening in government?

If there’s another terrorist attack after all of these RIFs and resignations, who has the analytic shop to advise on what to do next? That shop takes decades to cultivate. Get rid of it and see what alternatives you have. That my friend is the risk.

How many analysts sit around twiddling their thumbs?

I have noticed staff from some of the studies and analysis FFRDCs are very very young - like a year out of undergrad + 1 year MA in security studies. They have no work experience besides writing a term paper or two in school.

Are these the folks my office is shelling out $800k+ to advise us on grand strategy with a 70%+ multiplier for overhead?

There's one FFRDC... that won't be named... who seems to be hiring a lot of very young, inexperienced FTE and placing them on our task orders. They are energetic but their work just isn't sophisticated, on average. What's worse, it seems this particular FFRDC is now letting these kiddos talk to news outlets and write articles in the press with minimal supervision... often about topics related to the task orders we are paying them to do. Sometimes they are saying the most idiotic things to get attention and I know the report we paid them for will have their names as coauthors on it, which just invites the current administration to give us even more hassle. It's incredibly frustrating.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This all will pass in a year. Are FFRDCs a bit bloated? Probably. Is it worth the risk to demolish them? No. Freeze their ceiling and step up audits.

What risk? Are you paying attention to what's happening in government?

If there’s another terrorist attack after all of these RIFs and resignations, who has the analytic shop to advise on what to do next? That shop takes decades to cultivate. Get rid of it and see what alternatives you have. That my friend is the risk.

How many analysts sit around twiddling their thumbs?

I have noticed staff from some of the studies and analysis FFRDCs are very very young - like a year out of undergrad + 1 year MA in security studies. They have no work experience besides writing a term paper or two in school.

Are these the folks my office is shelling out $800k+ to advise us on grand strategy with a 70%+ multiplier for overhead?

Have you figured out about McKinsey yet?

DP. The argument “we do something suboptimal but so do others” isn’t compelling.

There's no "we" here. But that is famously the McKinsey model, and it's not the FFRDCs.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The demand signal for a lot of FFRDC work changes fast and substantially (for example, focusing on terrorism to great power competition to immigration enforcement). It’s hard for FFRDCs to keep quality labor around if there’s no stability in work so the only options are to expand portfolios so you have a place to park this expertise until they are needed or increase overhead to pay for them.

That sounds like an FFRDC trying to be all things to all people to justify size/growth. Perhaps it would be better if each were separately operated and in a much more narrowly focused way.

Perhaps if the FFRDC was for IRS, but the mission set of DOD and DHS is very broad.

Trying to do everything DoD does is like trying to boil the Ocean. So maybe don't try to do the whole DoD.

Instead pick something more narrow and focused. Already CNA only does Dept of Navy, while Aerospace does Dept of Air Force. For DHS, maybe the FFRDC supporting CISA is completely separate (i.e., no common parent organization) from the FFRDC supporting biologic protection. This is not rocket science.

Better hope you pick the right topics and sponsors OP, otherwise your FFRDC lacks the necessary skills for the topics you failed to prioritize.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The demand signal for a lot of FFRDC work changes fast and substantially (for example, focusing on terrorism to great power competition to immigration enforcement). It’s hard for FFRDCs to keep quality labor around if there’s no stability in work so the only options are to expand portfolios so you have a place to park this expertise until they are needed or increase overhead to pay for them.

That sounds like an FFRDC trying to be all things to all people to justify size/growth. Perhaps it would be better if each were separately operated and in a much more narrowly focused way.

Perhaps if the FFRDC was for IRS, but the mission set of DOD and DHS is very broad.

Trying to do everything DoD does is like trying to boil the Ocean. So maybe don't try to do the whole DoD.

Instead pick something more narrow and focused. Already CNA only does Dept of Navy, while Aerospace does Dept of Air Force. For DHS, maybe the FFRDC supporting CISA is completely separate (i.e., no common parent organization) from the FFRDC supporting biologic protection. This is not rocket science.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This all will pass in a year. Are FFRDCs a bit bloated? Probably. Is it worth the risk to demolish them? No. Freeze their ceiling and step up audits.

What risk? Are you paying attention to what's happening in government?

If there’s another terrorist attack after all of these RIFs and resignations, who has the analytic shop to advise on what to do next? That shop takes decades to cultivate. Get rid of it and see what alternatives you have. That my friend is the risk.

How many analysts sit around twiddling their thumbs?

I have noticed staff from some of the studies and analysis FFRDCs are very very young - like a year out of undergrad + 1 year MA in security studies. They have no work experience besides writing a term paper or two in school.

Are these the folks my office is shelling out $800k+ to advise us on grand strategy with a 70%+ multiplier for overhead?

Have you figured out about McKinsey yet?

DP. The argument “we do something suboptimal but so do others” isn’t compelling.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This all will pass in a year. Are FFRDCs a bit bloated? Probably. Is it worth the risk to demolish them? No. Freeze their ceiling and step up audits.

What risk? Are you paying attention to what's happening in government?

If there’s another terrorist attack after all of these RIFs and resignations, who has the analytic shop to advise on what to do next? That shop takes decades to cultivate. Get rid of it and see what alternatives you have. That my friend is the risk.

How many analysts sit around twiddling their thumbs?

I have noticed staff from some of the studies and analysis FFRDCs are very very young - like a year out of undergrad + 1 year MA in security studies. They have no work experience besides writing a term paper or two in school.

Are these the folks my office is shelling out $800k+ to advise us on grand strategy with a 70%+ multiplier for overhead?

Have you figured out about McKinsey yet?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This all will pass in a year. Are FFRDCs a bit bloated? Probably. Is it worth the risk to demolish them? No. Freeze their ceiling and step up audits.

What risk? Are you paying attention to what's happening in government?

If there’s another terrorist attack after all of these RIFs and resignations, who has the analytic shop to advise on what to do next? That shop takes decades to cultivate. Get rid of it and see what alternatives you have. That my friend is the risk.

How many analysts sit around twiddling their thumbs?

I have noticed staff from some of the studies and analysis FFRDCs are very very young - like a year out of undergrad + 1 year MA in security studies. They have no work experience besides writing a term paper or two in school.

Are these the folks my office is shelling out $800k+ to advise us on grand strategy with a 70%+ multiplier for overhead?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This all will pass in a year. Are FFRDCs a bit bloated? Probably. Is it worth the risk to demolish them? No. Freeze their ceiling and step up audits.

What risk? Are you paying attention to what's happening in government?

If there’s another terrorist attack after all of these RIFs and resignations, who has the analytic shop to advise on what to do next? That shop takes decades to cultivate. Get rid of it and see what alternatives you have. That my friend is the risk.

How many analysts sit around twiddling their thumbs?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The demand signal for a lot of FFRDC work changes fast and substantially (for example, focusing on terrorism to great power competition to immigration enforcement). It’s hard for FFRDCs to keep quality labor around if there’s no stability in work so the only options are to expand portfolios so you have a place to park this expertise until they are needed or increase overhead to pay for them.

That sounds like an FFRDC trying to be all things to all people to justify size/growth. Perhaps it would be better if each were separately operated and in a much more narrowly focused way.

Perhaps if the FFRDC was for IRS, but the mission set of DOD and DHS is very broad.

Anonymous wrote:The demand signal for a lot of FFRDC work changes fast and substantially (for example, focusing on terrorism to great power competition to immigration enforcement). It’s hard for FFRDCs to keep quality labor around if there’s no stability in work so the only options are to expand portfolios so you have a place to park this expertise until they are needed or increase overhead to pay for them.

That sounds like an FFRDC trying to be all things to all people to justify size/growth. Perhaps it would be better if each were separately operated and in a much more narrowly focused way.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:CNA has high overhead.

They’ve tried to lower it by getting rid of offices and combining or creating additional cost centers, etc.

This is happening to many FFRDCs.

RAND’s overhead is even higher than CNA. They have 20 Vice Presidents!

I think RAND’s overhead is like 80%, but I could be mistaken.

Is this correct? That seems really really high.

I think it might be even higher

That’s a problem if the overhead rate at RAND is so high.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The demand signal for a lot of FFRDC work changes fast and substantially (for example, focusing on terrorism to great power competition to immigration enforcement). It’s hard for FFRDCs to keep quality labor around if there’s no stability in work so the only options are to expand portfolios so you have a place to park this expertise until they are needed or increase overhead to pay for them.

I believe FFRDC contracts shouldn't be allowed to be pure IDIQs. They need to have some floor STE/FTE/dollar amount/... so there's a baseline stability, so the Feds have skin in the game, and FFRDC employees/FFRDCs can be more beholden to their mission - do what's right for the Government no matter what the Fed project manager thinks.

I agree with you. Isn’t they what core funding does? Sadly, that’s been under attack too.

Anonymous wrote:The demand signal for a lot of FFRDC work changes fast and substantially (for example, focusing on terrorism to great power competition to immigration enforcement). It’s hard for FFRDCs to keep quality labor around if there’s no stability in work so the only options are to expand portfolios so you have a place to park this expertise until they are needed or increase overhead to pay for them.

I believe FFRDC contracts shouldn't be allowed to be pure IDIQs. They need to have some floor STE/FTE/dollar amount/... so there's a baseline stability, so the Feds have skin in the game, and FFRDC employees/FFRDCs can be more beholden to their mission - do what's right for the Government no matter what the Fed project manager thinks.

The demand signal for a lot of FFRDC work changes fast and substantially (for example, focusing on terrorism to great power competition to immigration enforcement). It’s hard for FFRDCs to keep quality labor around if there’s no stability in work so the only options are to expand portfolios so you have a place to park this expertise until they are needed or increase overhead to pay for them.