The first order problem is the allocation of scarce resources. In other words, prioritizing. The needs are enormous and ever growing. The US government purchases hundreds of thousands of separate items from outside suppliers. Just the list of these goods - not to mention their technical specifications and the documentation which accompanies the transactions - occupies tens of thick volumes. Supercomputers are used to manage all these - and, even so, it is getting way out of hand. How to allocate ever scarcer resources amongst these items is a daunting - close to impossible - task. It also, of course, has a political dimension. A procurement decision reflects a political preference and priority. But the decision itself is not always motivated by rational - let alone noble - arguments. More often, it is the by product and end result of lobbying, political hand bending and extortionist muscle. This raises a lot of hackles among those who feel that were kept out of the pork barrel. They feel underprivileged and discriminated against. They fight back and the whole system finds itself in a quagmire, a nightmare of conflicting interests. Last year, the whole budget in the USA was stuck - not approved by Congress - because of these reactions and counter-reactions. The second problem is the supervision, auditing and control of actual spending. This has two dimensions: 1. How to make sure that the expenditures match and do not exceed the budgetary items. In some countries, this is a mere ritual formality and government departments are positively expected to overstep their procurement budgets. In others, this constitutes a criminal offence. 2. How to prevent the criminally corrupt activities that we have described above - or even the non criminal incompetent acts which government officials are prone to do. The most widespread method is the public, competitive, tender for the purchases of goods and services. But, this is not as simple as it sounds. Some countries publish international tenders, striving to secure the best quality in the cheapest price - no matter what is its geographical or political source. Other countries are much more protectionist (notably: Japan and France) and they publish only domestic tenders, in most cases. A domestic tender is open only to domestic bidders. Yet other countries limit participation in the tenders on various backgrounds: the size of the competing company, its track record, its ownership structure, its human rights or environmental record and so on. Some countries publish the minutes of the tender committee (which has to explain WHY it selected this or that supplier). Others keep it a closely guarded secret ("to protect commercial interests and secrets").