What Deloitte gets wrong in Government
Deloitte's government IT record is the most documented case of large-scale failure in the industry. Medicaid software failures across more than 20 states. $5.1B in Pentagon-related contract reductions. A decade of transformation programs that transformed budgets without transforming systems. The pattern is consistent: engage at the CIO level, staff with consultants, and deliver documentation when the contract requires deliverables.
The Medicaid management information system failures are instructive. States contracted Deloitte to modernize their MMIS platforms — federally mandated systems that determine healthcare access for millions of Medicaid beneficiaries. The projects ran years over schedule, hundreds of millions over budget, and in several cases produced systems that failed CMS certification requirements. The beneficiaries never received the promised improvements to their claims experience.
Government agencies have finite political tolerance for technology failures. A botched Medicaid system modernization becomes a legislative hearing. A failed DMV system becomes a governor's problem. Deloitte's model insulates them from this accountability because the contract structure distributes responsibility so broadly that no single deliverable failure can be traced to a single decision.
What we deploy instead
We deploy government technology teams who are accountable for system performance, not just delivery. When we ship a Medicaid system integration, the engineers who built it are available to support it. Not a managed services team two layers removed from the original architecture.
Our government engagements use fixed-price structures with defined technical deliverables. A working CMS-certified API integration by week 8. A parallel-run production system by week 16. No ambiguity about what 'done' means.
FEDRAMP and STATERAMP built into the architecture from day one — enforced automatically by ALICE at every commit.
Fixed-price engagements. Production system in 8-20 weeks. No discovery phase. No change orders.
Domain-qualified engineers with government experience. The senior engineer who scopes the engagement is the senior engineer who delivers it.
Full source code and documentation transferred at close. No licensing. No managed services dependency.
The compliance difference
CMS certification requirements, FedRAMP, FISMA, and state-specific compliance frameworks vary by jurisdiction. We deploy compliance engineers who understand the specific requirements for the state or federal agency we are working with — not generic NIST documentation teams.
What switching from Deloitte looks like
Government modernization: 12-24 weeks to a defined production milestone. Team: 8-16 engineers with government technology experience. Fixed price. The scope, timeline, and price are defined before contract execution.
Architecture review and scope definition. We review existing deliverables and identify gaps.
Scope locked, team assembled, first sprint underway. Working code from week two.
First production milestone — a working integration or system component, not a document.
Full IP transfer. Source code, documentation, operational runbooks. Your team runs the system.
Failed Vendor Recovery Playbook
Step-by-step framework for recovering from a failed Deloitte engagement — from emergency stabilisation through full re-platforming. 4-phase playbook covering stabilise, assess, transition, and normalise.