Hi, I'm blowing your federal tax money.

Hi Guys...

My university has been getting lots of federal grants lately. We are a small private school out in the sticks. Let me show you how we've been blowing your tax money. Here is what we've bought this year using federal money:

- $15,000 for 20 terabytes of backup tapes, UPS batteries, and a 5 tb attached storage device to store a 10 megabyte MS Access database that is used once a semester to enter student data.

- $2000 to run 5 network lines (cat 5) a hundred feet in dropped ceiling. I offered to run them for free but my boss told me that it's the federal govts money so just hire it done. We hired the most expensive company we could find.

- $20,000 for laptops that will be used one day a year and sit in a large storage cart the rest of the year (departments can't share systems up here, they have to go get their own grant money for laptops if other people want to use them!)

- $350,000 for new network switches so we can have gigabit to each desktop and PoE to each phone. This is ok, except 80% of our PCs don't have gigabit ports, we don't use even the 100 megabit ports we have, and we don't have any PoE devices.

- 200% in consulting fees "to do things the right way". Turns out the person who gets the grants and assigns the money also has a consulting firm. Go figure.

Just thought you'd enjoy seeing where all your tax money goes when the govt is in charge of giving it out. I try to spend it frugally and buy things we actually need, but when administration sees free money, they basically use it for cronyism and buying **** we wouldn't need in a million years.

I feel so guilty. I suppose in the scheme of things it's not much money (it seems like a lot to me). I guess this wouldn't buy 10 seconds worth of iraq war, or a new bridge, or provide healthcare to people so I shouldn't worry about it.

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Comments

CoryS

I also work in Govt and I too am AMAZED at the lavish expenses that are not thought out even close to thoroughly... I came from the private sector with a small budget so when I price something its always the semi-bare minimum for what we need, usually it then heads higher as more bells and whistles get added, luckily the IS director is awesome when it comes to containing costs but watching oversight over other departments makes me feel bad for tax payers.

Must be nice having a sweet infrastructure at your fingertips just waiting to be used, now all you have to do is wait for your 3 year replacement PCs to come in.. then the VOIP phones... then realize that your infrastruct is 3 years old and ask for more grant money. Awesome.

cisco_trooper

Yeah, to the guy with the consulting firm. I think that is illegal.

BeaverC32

cisco_trooper wrote:

Yeah, to the guy with the consulting firm. I think that is illegal.

+1

Looks like a clear conflict of interest here

NetAdmin2436

Wow, that's a bit disappointing it's coming out of our taxes. Although, I'd love to work in a place like that...always have new technology.

....and here I have to send weekly emails to our owner telling him that some of our P2 computers NEED to be upgraded. We are a small design and manufacturing company, and I have found our owner going around and picking up nuts and bolts off the floor to 'save money'.

I guess it's the two extremes....

undomiel

NetAdmin2436 wrote:

We are a small design and manufacturing company, and I have found our owner going around and picking up nuts and bolts off the floor to 'save money'.

That just sounds all too familiar. I sure hope the owner of the company I'm at doesn't have a rabid clone running around somewhere!

pooker

Oh well I guess I have seen worse.

dynamik

Meh. It could have been spent on weapons or prostitutes. This really doesn't bother me when I look at everything in perspective.

cisco_trooper

Yeah, Put in perpective it is not alot of money, and even if it was, anyone making under $100K isn't pulling near their weight as far as paying taxes anyway. You can't be pissed unless you are rich.

pooker

dynamik wrote:

Meh. It could have been spent on weapons or prostitutes. This really doesn't bother me when I look at everything in perspective.

Thats a bad thing

hetty

Very often in governments, budgets get allocated and if you dont spend it, you lose it. And its very hard to get those gains back. Government systems seem to encourage waste.

itdaddy

tape backup yikes! tapes suck! man would rather runs RAID sets of RAID 6 and randomly take USB drives off campus or put in a super dooper fire box tape backups
suck big time man drop a tape and you are lucky to get it working tape rotation
every year or 2 years 50-60 bucks a pop each tape! and they are crap!
just my opinion we just convert to tapeless and no ^$%$$%^*&^%$ veritas backuup any more
to a Evault system seed the OS and then just keep the changes coming on a terribyte server.

but better than nothing i suppose!
but i think the reason they spend so much is becuase it hard to come by
when i was in the air force. we boutht 1000 dollar toilet seats because you were not guaranteed
that money nextyear unless you spent it then you could get more money. if you spent less
you were penialized less money next year! nature of the tooo large government budget
100000000000000000.00 get lost at our expense...I wan to buy an island and create my own government; that is the only way out of our system! or any taxed to death system!

hypnotoad

Yeah, I suppose it isn't a big deal. But I've got 6 guys who are pissed they can't get raises this year because the company has no money, but we can get plenty of gov't money to blow on junk we don't need!

dynamik

Government Money > Equipment > Ebay > Money in your pocket

hetty

dynamik wrote:

Government Money > Equipment > Ebay > Money in your pocket

Ai caramba! Do you know how much those 3750's are going for? Ill take two, cross the pond. Say no more!

nel

i worked for a part of the government in the UK and i think u'll be glad to hear the exact same thing happens here aswell! i was amazed to be quite honest.

jbaello

I just want my money back!!!

Goldmember

dynamik wrote:

Meh. It could have been spent on weapons or prostitutes. This really doesn't bother me when I look at everything in perspective.

Weapons and prostitutes...good or bad?

heh

rfult001

I work for a state university and we are losing $18 million this year. The state is giving to the private schools it seems. Sounds fishy, eh?

JDMurray

rfult001 wrote:

I work for a state university and we are losing $18 million this year. The state is giving to the private schools it seems. Sounds fishy, eh?

No, the private university probably has a better football team than your school, or your congressman's kids go there.