Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs

technologyreview.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 688 posts

Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs

#131

Post by nojito »

stefan_ wrote: post #94
mdorazio wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These contracts are generally bloated, but if you've never seen how a $10M+ contract for things like this works you're probably thinking about it wrong. The actual development piece is a pretty small portion of the overall work. The bulk of it is figuring out all the requirements, wrangling legacy systems and data into some kind of shape that can either be interfaced with or imported, documentation, support (includin…

When did we have the last nationwide vaccination campaign, whats the "legacy"? Pretty sure that was when IBM still made tabulators. I think you will find that if only there was someone in charge to put their foot down, you can do without a whole lot of these things. But that's part of the problem of course: the government contracting out is just a bunch of clueless people making up a wish list with a partner on the o…

The data flows into legacy systems like VAERS

Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs

#132

Post by amscanne »

walrus01 wrote: post #61
didibus wrote: post #13

I just don't understand these software deals, the price is so high. At 44 million, you can hire 146 engineers each paid 300k for a full year. Trust me, you need much less to build something like this, and there's no excuse for it to suck so bad. I'm also curious, anyone know where the development actually happened? Did Deloitte further subcontracted out? Was it outsourced?

If you want to see another ultimate example of this sort of contracting gone awry, google "canada federal payroll phoenix system" https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=canada+fe... example news URL: https://www.itworldcanada.com/article/phoenix-payroll-system...

Seems like it’s a few hundred million. IMHO Canada has no better example of idiotic spending than eHealth in Ontario. Literally 1 billion spent, and nothing to show for it. (Though they now have something, after effectively restarting.)

Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs

#133

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

didibus wrote: post #13

I just don't understand these software deals, the price is so high. At 44 million, you can hire 146 engineers each paid 300k for a full year. Trust me, you need much less to build something like this, and there's no excuse for it to suck so bad. I'm also curious, anyone know where the development actually happened? Did Deloitte further subcontracted out? Was it outsourced?

I work in defense and I always say the govt pays $100 for $1 of actual work. It makes me pretty angry at times as a taxpayer.

The worst part is that we know government software contracts are done completely wrong but the government doesn't want to change. Too much money to be made.

Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs

#134

Post by damon_c »

billions wrote: post #97

The last time the US government made something to be proud of was 50 years ago with the Apollo program. Counter examples welcome!

TCP/IP is pretty awesome. How about that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite

To be fair... it's also from about 50 years ago. Hmm...

Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs

#135

Post by billions »

ceejayoz wrote: post #123
billions wrote: post #97

The last time the US government made something to be proud of was 50 years ago with the Apollo program. Counter examples welcome!

The Hubble Space Telescope? (and the other "Great Observatories" satellites)

Hubble was funded in the 1970s with a proposed launch in 1983, but the project was beset by technical delays, budget problems, and the 1986 Challenger disaster. It was finally launched by Space Shuttle Discovery in 1990, but its main mirror had been ground incorrectly, resulting in spherical aberration that compromised the telescope's capabilities. The optics were corrected to their intended quality by a servicing mission in 1993.

Meh.

Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs

#136

Post by stefan_ »

nojito wrote: post #131
stefan_ wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did we have the last nationwide vaccination campaign, whats the "legacy"? Pretty sure that was when IBM still made tabulators. I think you will find that if only there was someone in charge to put their foot down, you can do without a whole lot of these things. But that's part of the problem of course: the government contracting out is just a bunch of clueless people making up a wish list with a partner on the o…

The data flows into legacy systems like VAERS

Have you seen the vaccination setups? It's just car queues! I'm sure nothing there "flows" without a whole lot of manual data entry.

So now what, you are reporting this adverse event to VAMS who reports it to VAERS? There is no flow, it's all just duplicate effort from architecture astronauts.

Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs

#138

Post by [deleted] »

bbeesley wrote: post #85
NearAP wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a 'software engineering' thing. If you look at it from a software development POV, then the issue is more of not having 'product managers' whose job it is to - understand the requirements, write the specs, basically champion the POV of the end user (after actually identifying the correct end user). Examples a) The article talked about the software not working on Internet Explorer (IE). Older people still…

Internet Explorer has less than a 2% market share in the US, so under normal circumstances (given the sacrifices you’d have to make everywhere else) not bothering to support is is often a sensible decision. When it’s an access to healthcare issue though you can’t really exclude 2% of users. That said, building something that works well on mobile (re your point b) but also works on internet explorer is a pretty tough…

[deleted]

Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs

#139

Post by smabie »

mikeho1999 wrote: post #116
didibus wrote: post #13

I just don't understand these software deals, the price is so high. At 44 million, you can hire 146 engineers each paid 300k for a full year. Trust me, you need much less to build something like this, and there's no excuse for it to suck so bad. I'm also curious, anyone know where the development actually happened? Did Deloitte further subcontracted out? Was it outsourced?

Full disclosure: I have had the distinct "privilege" on having worked with all aspects of large consulting firms, from working at Cap Gemini, to being a sub for a smaller company on a large gov't contract with Lockheed Martin, to actually competing (and winning) against the large companies with my own, small consulting company startup. In short, the above comment is spot on. Companies like Deloitte, Cap Gemini, PwC,…

I have no experience in this field, but do you think it's more likely they are making crazy profits or that they are just really incompetent? probably a little bit (or a lot) of both I'd imagine.

Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs

#140

Post by amscanne »

bbeesley wrote: post #85
NearAP wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a 'software engineering' thing. If you look at it from a software development POV, then the issue is more of not having 'product managers' whose job it is to - understand the requirements, write the specs, basically champion the POV of the end user (after actually identifying the correct end user). Examples a) The article talked about the software not working on Internet Explorer (IE). Older people still…

Internet Explorer has less than a 2% market share in the US, so under normal circumstances (given the sacrifices you’d have to make everywhere else) not bothering to support is is often a sensible decision. When it’s an access to healthcare issue though you can’t really exclude 2% of users. That said, building something that works well on mobile (re your point b) but also works on internet explorer is a pretty tough…

> No reason you couldn’t build a basic bitches version of the site that works on old devices, then route traffic these based on user agent.

Why isn’t this just the site?

I love Spartan, ugly, functional sites. That’s what the government should build, always. They should have style guidelines that are basically “no style”.

You’re not competing with anyone, there’s no need to look good. Function, function, function.

Post reply on HN