NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule • Hacker News Board

Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule

#21

Post by anamax » Fri, Mar 26, 2010, 3:46 PM UTC

faramarz wrote: post #14

How are these contracts being awarded? Are we talking public RFP's? If so, that should have produced competitive rates per project, no? Unless these 'consultants' were already promised the job and the RFP was just a formality, as is in most city contracts.

> If so, that should have produced competitive rates per project, no?

What makes you think that those rates aren't competitive?

Govt projects have lots of overhead. Some comes from procedures intended to keep them from being cheated. Some comes from trying to make sure that the "right" people get the job. (Some sounds okay, such as"diversity", but is actually a cover for graft.) Some comes from all of the stakeholders. And on and on.

Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule

#22

Post by wallflower » Fri, Mar 26, 2010, 3:51 PM UTC

easyfrag wrote: post #19

Eddk wrote: post #11

Very common situation in government contracts and dealing with consultants in general. I am sure IBM and Accenture are in there some how. NYC government could have created a small crack-team of internal IT people who could build the system for less than a 5th of the current cost. Unfortunately most organizations view IT work as something fit for mercenaries and if you ask any King who has ever had to rely on mercenar…

Yes a small competent team could build the IT system for a fraction of the time and money. However they would only be successful if the business processes were well defined which I'm willing to bet they were not. New IT systems often come along with changes in process, a well defined IT project should produce a system that follows and complements those processes. Instead what we often get are "boil the ocean" project…

One reason companies hire consultants is not to outsource the project but to outsource blame and accountability to IBM, Accenture.

"How could the project fail? We hired some of the most highly recommended and expensive consultants. They didn't deliver."

Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule

#23

Post by faramarz » Fri, Mar 26, 2010, 3:55 PM UTC

anamax wrote: post #21

faramarz wrote: post #14

How are these contracts being awarded? Are we talking public RFP's? If so, that should have produced competitive rates per project, no? Unless these 'consultants' were already promised the job and the RFP was just a formality, as is in most city contracts.

> If so, that should have produced competitive rates per project, no? What makes you think that those rates aren't competitive? Govt projects have lots of overhead. Some comes from procedures intended to keep them from being cheated. Some comes from trying to make sure that the "right" people get the job. (Some sounds okay, such as"diversity", but is actually a cover for graft.) Some comes from all of the stakeholder…

because reading this line is somehow not surprising at all..

"The problem is no one knew how much these people were being paid, because their salaries don’t appear in normal city records."

I've dealt with city contracts and it's a culture where the oldest members of the club always land the contracts, no matter what. Finding ways to bury the actual amounts through loopholes or channels is what keeps city officials at work. ha!

Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule

#24

Post by tbrooks » Fri, Mar 26, 2010, 4:00 PM UTC

Eddk wrote: post #11

Very common situation in government contracts and dealing with consultants in general. I am sure IBM and Accenture are in there some how. NYC government could have created a small crack-team of internal IT people who could build the system for less than a 5th of the current cost. Unfortunately most organizations view IT work as something fit for mercenaries and if you ask any King who has ever had to rely on mercenar…

Yup, a buddy of mine works for Accenture and has been in NYC for 8 months now working on this project.

Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule

#25

Post by dpatru » Fri, Mar 26, 2010, 4:08 PM UTC

Why does NYC need a custom payroll system? Government agencies are supposed to be staffed by employees who can be trusted by the public not to abuse sensitive personal information such as is contained in tax returns. Yet, these same employees are considered so personally untrustworthy by the government that it is justified in spending hundreds of millions of dollars to design a payroll system whose primary feature seems to be innovative techniques for preventing fraud. Is there any evidence that government employees are more untrustworthy than other employees so as to justify such a system?

Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule

#26

Post by jasonlbaptiste » Fri, Mar 26, 2010, 4:12 PM UTC

722m on a fucking payroll system and it's 7 years behind date. Have you ever tried to contemplate counting the amount of stars in the sky or the number of grains of sand in the world? Your mind just gets blown, because you cannot process the scale of information. The same thing just happened to me when trying to figure out how this is possible.

Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule

#27

Post by dasil003 » Fri, Mar 26, 2010, 4:24 PM UTC

dpatru wrote: post #25

Why does NYC need a custom payroll system? Government agencies are supposed to be staffed by employees who can be trusted by the public not to abuse sensitive personal information such as is contained in tax returns. Yet, these same employees are considered so personally untrustworthy by the government that it is justified in spending hundreds of millions of dollars to design a payroll system whose primary feature se…

I'm not sure biometrics is really worth it either, but let's not be naïve here, we don't live in a trustworthy society by and large. If you're hiring people on the scale of a city, you're going to get untrustworthy people. There's no use in them putting their head in the sand and then avoiding doing anything that might suggest that maybe they have a few bad apples.

Also, it's not as if anywhere near the majority of those people have access to any given personal information. How many people does the city employee... 100,000? Every single one of those people will use the payroll system. By comparison, how many people have access to your birth certificate directly... 50? 100?

Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule

#28

Post by dasil003 » Fri, Mar 26, 2010, 4:32 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #17

wallflower wrote: post #16

This in a nutshell is why the new U.S. health care bill is really a stimulus package for the IT and healthcare industries. Integration of systems can be a nightmare. As the UK can attest, large systems fail from sheer complexity, if the politics, internal resistance, and silo mentality don't screw you. One of the reasons SAP succeeded was that in order to implement the software you had to rearrange how your company w…

Are you seriously suggesting that "complexity" was the root problem here? Rather than say cronyism, incompetence and greed? edit: amused to see another comment on a different thread that uses the phrases "cronyism and incompetence". Did I subconsciously read that and copy it, or is it just the most apt description?

I'm sure incompetence plays a part, but two other factors at play are the fact that no one person really understands how things work, and when things start getting that distributed it's probably fairly likely that there are logical fallacies that have been built into the system and adhered to by strict processes for decades. It doesn't take much fudging for a bureaucracy to paper over these edge cases, the accounts shrug and say close enough, and the consultants are then put in an impossible scenario where different parties give them different business logic and no one has the authority or will to reconcile the issues from the top down.

Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule

#29

Post by prpon » Fri, Mar 26, 2010, 4:36 PM UTC

jamesbressi wrote: post #2

Hmm... sounds like an opportunity. Juan Gonzalez says this is happening all around the country with cities and states converting to digital systems. The consultants are being paid $400,000 a year. Nice. Because it is a capital expenditure no one knew what these people were being paid so you have to dig into the city records. For what? Basically a digital payroll and time-keeping system with features such as "biometri…

If you are a startup, leave government contracts for someone else to figure out. By the time it comes thru and makes you a boat load of money, you will be long dead (as a company).

This was said by PG or someone definitely smarter than me.

Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule

#30

Post by gaius » Fri, Mar 26, 2010, 4:46 PM UTC

Eddk wrote: post #11

Very common situation in government contracts and dealing with consultants in general. I am sure IBM and Accenture are in there some how. NYC government could have created a small crack-team of internal IT people who could build the system for less than a 5th of the current cost. Unfortunately most organizations view IT work as something fit for mercenaries and if you ask any King who has ever had to rely on mercenar…

The thing is here, no-one is incentivized to deliver. The bureaucrats who specify the system don't really care as it's not their money, and they justify their positions by sitting in meeting and writing reports that only each other will ever read. Then there are the consultants who are paid hourly...

Typically it goes like this:

Bureaucrats: Here is a 1000-page spec document that we have spent 3 years writing. We captured all the requirements at the beginning Consultants: We can do this project for $X. However it will take a long time and a lot of people for us just to understand your spec, so any changes to it will cost $Y. Bureaucrats: OK whatever.

Consultants: work work Bureaucrats: Wait, we've changed our mind about this! Consultants: lick lips