By Edmund Tadros and Markus Mannheim
The federal government has spent half a billion dollars a year on consultants since Labor won office 4½ years ago, an analysis of its contracts shows.
Yet while Finance Minister Penny Wong has warned agencies to slash this spending, few public servants believe it will happen.
The Canberra Times examined every consultancy deal published on the AusTender website in the four years since 2008 – 17,736 contracts worth $2,170,180,096.
Our investigation reveals for the first time which consultants won the most work and which government agencies spent the most. Read more about government spending on consultants at The Canberra Times.
You can find out more about how to interrogate the AusTender database at my site on data journalism, Dataliser.
The Big Spend (interactive charts and table)
- A Canberra Times investigation reveals for the first time which consultants won the most work and which government agencies spent the most.
More stories:
Bureaucracy can’t drop adviser
Opposition sees $50m in outsourcing slash
Download the data (CSV):
Top 100 consultancy contracts
Consultant spending by department
Top 20 consultant firms
Feedback
Belinda Weaver of the University of Queensland blogged about the stories
Politician Malcolm Turnbull also made reference to the stories in a speech
The visualisation made it onto Tableau’s The Top 100 Vizzes of Q1 2012