I remember being at a programming meetup in Oslo with an American speaker. He asked the audience what sectors we worked in. Finance? Commerce? nobody answered. He got confused - had we understood the question? What he didn't realise was that we were all contractors/consultants.

I think most developers in Oslo are contractors. And a _significant_ proportion of these work for the public sector. There can be no better customer for a large consultancy than the Norwegian public sector. Enormous budgets, very little IT knowledge.

But the public sector have caught on; having large consultancies make all the decisions and implement all their software isn't the most cost-effective solution. It's funny to see the consultancies now complaining "It's not fair! They're not letting us get away with it anymore!"