I worked at some government contractor a few years ago and one of the tasks I was given was to oversee the implementation of a ticketing system for a client. The basic requirements were for something slightly better than using an excel spreadsheet with basic search functionality. After a preliminary sales call with one well known vendor, they told us the next steps to implementing this system was to bring a consultant on-site to assess all the ancillary requirements, at a cost of nearly $100k. I had a little laugh about it with some colleges and my manager and I kind of wept a little inside, because I doubt this is a rare occurrence and it only takes 1 incompetent manager to create a massive amount of useless revenue for some vendor.
I've seen massive government contracts where "Big Consul" has some guy who does nothing else than take all documentation from the previous "Big Consul" and rewrites it according to their own internal format, and they bill €150 an hour for it, for months... And then when their time is up and the new tender starts the next firm does the same thing to rewrite it all in their format...
