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The US’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, just ordered the termination of IT and consulting contracts with companies like Accenture and Deloitte, calling it “wasteful spending.”
In a Department of Defense memo, Hegseth said he would cut a Defense Health Agency contract “for consulting services from Accenture, Deloitte, Booz Allen, and other firms that can be performed by our civilian workforce.”
Also on the chopping block is the Air Force’s contract with Accenture to “re-sell third-party Enterprise Cloud IT Services,” which Hegseth says the government can “already fulfill directly with existing procurement resources.”
In the memo, Hegseth also said he was terminating 11 other contracts for “consulting services” that support “non-essential” activities, like Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), climate matters, and the Pentagon’s COVID-19 response.
Hegseth said the terminations “represent $5.1 billion in wasteful spending” at the DOD and would result in nearly $4 billion in savings.
The savings would be reallocated, Hegseth said, to serve “critical priorities to Revive the Warrior Ethos, Rebuild the Military, and Reestablish Deterrence.”
He did not specify in his memo which Pentagon projects this money would go to.
In response to a request for comment, the DOD directed BI to an X video of Hegseth talking about the terminations.
“By the way, we need this money to spend on better healthcare for our warfighters and their families, instead of $500 an hour business process consultant. That’s a lot of consulting,” Hegseth said in the video.
Representatives for Accenture, Deloitte, and Booz Allen did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
