Networker: What do consultants do?

Ever wondered what a “consultant” does? You must have heard of them.
They are the “experts” who grow and prosper with every government move.

Closing down schools? You need a consultant. Handing over government
assets to big business friends? Better hire a consultant. Want to kick
women out of hospitals as soon as they give birth? Commission a consultant
to invent “best practice birthing”.

According to one reference (Dilbert), the word consultant originates
from a combination of the words to “con”, as in to cheat someone, and “insult”.

Theoretically, it is possible to imagine a role for groups of workers
with arcane and rarely required skills providing advice. In practice, consultants'
functions have an almost mystical character, in keeping with the vast sums
of money their companies are paid. Many consultants work for large companies
consisting of thousands or tens of thousands of consultants, such as PricewaterhouseCoopers,
KPMG and Anderson Consulting, three of the “big five”. These companies
had their origins as accountancy firms.

It isn't just ordinary people who are mystified about the role of consultants.
The Australian National Audit Office in September reported that it could
not work out what a team of consultants, from the US law firm Shaw Pittman
Potts and Trowbridge, had been doing to deserve almost $16 million from
the Australian government.

This mystery relates to the Labor-initiated handing over of federal
government's information technology assets to its big business friends.
Not surprisingly, the Coalition government continued this activity through
the Office of Asset Sales and Information Technology Outsourcing (OASITO).

The government announced that it would achieve savings of $1 billion
by handing over information technology assets and a mountain of money to
private business. More than half way through the process, claimed savings
are just $30 million.

Although the audit report doesn't mention this, the hundreds of government
information technology officers who sat locked in OASITO offices evaluating
proposals, and the thousands of other information technology workers they
talked to, know where the “savings” came from. OASITO cooked the books,
for example, by delaying the announcement on the health sector outsourcing
bid until the proposal figures had been fudged to show more savings.

According to a Sydney Morning Herald report, a law firm was initially
brought in as an “outsourcing consultant” and later as a “strategic adviser”.
It ended up providing “technical assistance”. What the Sydney Morning
Herald failed to note was that this is how consultancy firms work.
The process even has a name: “business development”. That means that no
matter what a consultant is brought in to do, from guessing the future
to sacking staff or telling women to have babies faster, their primary
purpose is to get more business for their company.

The attractive feature of consultants, whether hired by governments
or corporations, is that they will say things that are simply too awful
for a permanent manager to say, such as advice on how to sack workers or
how to make their lives hell. Consultants cost a fortune, but it's better
than doing the dirty work yourself.

This would all be a problem if the purpose of the federal government's
information technology outsourcing had been to save money. The real purpose
was to turn government information technology spending into a source of
profit for big business.

BY GREG HARRIS

From GLW issue 425