Comment by throwaway743

Having worked for NY gov agencies for 7+ years, it's not that hard to believe really. Vendors overcharge crazy amounts all the time and get away with it without the gov client batting an eye. Experienced it first hand where I was on several projects where I did, without exaggeration, 95% of the work and my employer at the time charged $500,000 for one project and for another $750,000 in a single fiscal year.

Sure, it wasn't $600 million (seems like that $600 million to Oracle had to of been spread out too), but the work was simply formatting their website content from an old template in their busted CMS (pretty sure it was some ancient HP CMS) in HTML and had to write some minor CSS and some minor JS. I ended up automating it locally and then the rest of the time was spent copying and pasting through this convoluted process due to having to connect to their outdated locked down remote desktop with a super slow connection. Additionally, I was only being paid under 6 figures at the time and it took much less time than they were quoted for, though my employer sat on their hands to make it seem like it took that much time.

But yeah what the agencies were charged was unjustified irl... but on paper it was, they didn't push back on it or anything, and the cost of completing the projects was wayyy the hell less than what my employer at the time quoted them for. My assumption is they dont push back due to budgets not rolling over and wanting to maintain/increase their dept's annual budget. So it's not surprising they'd throw away that amount over the course of some years.