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

#61

Post by aresant » Fri, Mar 26, 2010, 11:26 PM UTC

wmeredith wrote: post #8

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…

The $400,000 dollars per year isn't all going to product development. $350,000 of it is to compensate the consultants for navigating the nightmarish government bidding process laced with procedural road blocks to newcomers, cronyism and incompetence. Been there and done that, would not do business with again. I used to put together proposals for a huge general contractor as a marketing assistant. The completed govern…

The best part is that the RNPs are designed to create EFFECIENCY in spending by creating a competitive bidding process.

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

#62

Post by aresant » Fri, Mar 26, 2010, 11:34 PM UTC

Accenture, one of the primary beneficiaries of this $722m, operates offshore.

They're now in Ireland after having been in Bermuda for the sole purpose of avoiding paying the US governtment taxes on their international business.

So in reality our tax dollars are going to fund a multi-national conglomerate that's making the spread between the $100/hr consultants and the $400/hr billings.

I can't wait to see the tricks these companies come up with to service the $100,000,000,000 a year that we just dumped in the pork barrel for health care.

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

#63

Post by aswanson » Sat, Mar 27, 2010, 4:40 AM UTC

jasonlbaptiste wrote: post #26

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.

You're right, the scale is ridiculous.

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

#64

Post by aplusbi » Sat, Mar 27, 2010, 4:41 AM UTC

wallflower wrote: post #22

easyfrag wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

What's that old saying? "No one ever got fired for going with IBM."

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

#65

Post by Devilboy » Sat, Mar 27, 2010, 7:42 AM UTC

dkarl wrote: post #39

tjic wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. So you're arguing that the NYC government is incompetent at running a project done by contractors, but it would be better at both FORMING and RUNNING its own team of contractors? Sounds like nonsense to me.

Internal IT people would be able to "cheat" by talking to actual users and stakeholders, doing stealth requirements gathering, examining the current system and how it's used, doing rogue user testing, etc. Basically doing all the things that everyone agrees are required for success on this kind of project, but which in the real world end up being dropped or neutered by bureaucracy. E.g., your "expert user" is the man…

Yea the internal IT people know what the ACTUAL requirements are and how the current system REALLY works. The bureaucrats writing the requirements and other documents usually don't understand the nuances of how the systems work in real life and will fail to capture the details and idiosyncrasies accurately.

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

#66

Post by robryan » Sat, Mar 27, 2010, 1:29 PM UTC

ageanm wrote: post #38

gaius wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In consulting it's typical to get paid a quarter of your billing rate, as a rule of thumb. I've seen places where it's a tenth tho'.

As you ascend the ranks of consulting and get to the top 3 shops (McK, BCG, Bain) it drops down to 1/20th to 1/30th. That is once you take into account the disparity between number of hours billed and the number actually spent doing the work.

And how is this justified, does the companies brand and support structure really outpace the value that consultant is creating by a factor of 20 or 30?

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

#67

Post by wallflower » Sat, Mar 27, 2010, 2:09 PM UTC

ageanm wrote: post #38

gaius wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In consulting it's typical to get paid a quarter of your billing rate, as a rule of thumb. I've seen places where it's a tenth tho'.

As you ascend the ranks of consulting and get to the top 3 shops (McK, BCG, Bain) it drops down to 1/20th to 1/30th. That is once you take into account the disparity between number of hours billed and the number actually spent doing the work.

I don't know the figure now but ten years ago you were expected to bring in at least ten million in business annually to be considered for partner at Andersen Consulting.

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

#68

Post by gaius » Sat, Mar 27, 2010, 8:11 PM UTC

robryan wrote: post #66

ageanm wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you ascend the ranks of consulting and get to the top 3 shops (McK, BCG, Bain) it drops down to 1/20th to 1/30th. That is once you take into account the disparity between number of hours billed and the number actually spent doing the work.

And how is this justified, does the companies brand and support structure really outpace the value that consultant is creating by a factor of 20 or 30?

I'm not sure what he means here - the higher up you get, the better the ratio. For partners it gets inverted - they are making more than their billing rates because they're getting a cut of everyone below them's billing too.

When you buy consulting, you're buying a commodity. The premium is meant to insure you against natural variation, key people quitting, and so forth. Joe Accenture is meant to be interchangeable with any other Accenture consultant. A lot of the overhead is the extremely rigid, prescriptive methodologies that are supposed to make this possible. For multi-year projects, enough budget-holders believe that this is worthwhile for the entire Big Consulting industry to exist.

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

#69

Post by elblanco » Sat, Apr 03, 2010, 10:04 PM UTC

csmeder wrote: post #49

prpon wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I do know of one Start Up that is making huge amounts of $$$ from the government: http://www.palantirtech.com/government . It seems that if you know how to navigate the red tape and can deliver a compelling product you can make millions.

My company as well sells about 80% to the government. Government contracts are not really that big of a deal.

I'd say that our commercial customers are quite a bit higher touch than our government customers. The government also seems to have a much better handle on their business processes than any of the fortune-500 companies we deal with.