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

511–520 of 688 posts

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

#511

Post by ThinkBeat »

aasasd wrote: post #400
zaroth wrote: post #115

> Deloitte is the only contractor that can meet the project requirements, because configuration of the VAMS application is occurring using Deloitte’s propriety GovConnect platform. Therefore, no other contractor has rights or access to leverage the system to carry out O&M activities, such as the administration of the system, change and defect management and end user support. As the only contractor with the GovConnect…

Reads like a copy of Russian government contract practices. Put up a contest, list requirements in such a way that only one company would satisfy them without going bust or mad, award the contract to that company. ‘Make the thing using this and that technologies’ does appear regularly.

This is quite common in the US.

For a while my entire job ended up writing proposals and all the related nonsense for federal an state government contracts. I did not like that one bit.

However spending week after week trying to divine the meaning behind phrases and terms.

It shortly became apparent that some parts of the government would consistently have requirements only applicable to one vendor.

That saved a lot of time since I could just skip them whenever they came out.

These types of «arrangements” often go all the way to congress promised pork for donors and secure job for voters.

If I have given the impression I was doing all the work myself that is not intended. We had a big team of all sorts of disciplines

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

#512

Post by GVIrish »

pjscott wrote: post #305
eigenvector wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now think of the problem in reverse, from the government's side. Why are they contracting it out when all of the most difficult aspects involve integrating with government systems, policies and personnel - things that government already knows how to do? "Because we don't have the expertise to do software development." The comments in this thread, which I fully agree with by the way, just cement my belief that if gove…

Does the government, in fact, know how to do those things? How would we know if they did or didn't? I notice that they spend oddly large amounts of money on anything for which we know what the cost roughly should be -- e.g. CDC web sites -- and don't seem to do so very quickly or very well. Should we assume that they're a lot more competent at things we know less about?

There's a couple of reasons government IT projects turn out this way.

In my experience, a lot of the time it's not so much that the contractor is trying to make money by prolonging the problem. It's that the customer doesn't know how to be a competent product owner that prioritizes and scopes things properly.

Then, frequently the software being designed ends up replicating broken/inefficient business processes, so it ends up being difficult to make cleans and efficient software. This becomes worse when there's legacy software in the mix where the customer wants the contractor to port over all of the clunky functionality of the old app. Which of course isn't documented in the first place, so you've got to perform software archaeology to figure out what it did.

Some other show stoppers I've seen are when key stakeholders act as gatekeepers and prevent developers from talking to SMEs directly, so you have to build your requirements based on what the person with the 10,000 foot view knows. So of course you get incomplete and sometimes completely wrong requirements. And you might not find out how wrong they are until after you've spent a lot of time building things

Just those dynamics alone can add an enormous amount of cost or outright doom a project. I could probably fill a blog with all of the dysfunctional stuff I've seen in federal IT, but suffice it to say that these factors can easily balloon costs and timelines to a comical degree. This $44 million failure is actually small compared to some other government IT failures like the billion dollar Air Force accounting system.

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

#513

Post by bbarn »

rishabhd wrote: post #451
zaroth wrote: post #115

> Deloitte is the only contractor that can meet the project requirements, because configuration of the VAMS application is occurring using Deloitte’s propriety GovConnect platform. Therefore, no other contractor has rights or access to leverage the system to carry out O&M activities, such as the administration of the system, change and defect management and end user support. As the only contractor with the GovConnect…

Hate to say this, but having worked in similar industries, RFPs are sometimes deliberately skewed/ created in a manner that make it hard (or downright impossible) for others to participate.

A lot of the time, that's ok. A few people in the know want to avoid a lengthy and wasteful evaluation process for the product or company they already feel confident will meet their needs. Or worse, they're afraid someone might underbid, people without context will pick the lowest cost option, and the product or service will end up being a disaster.

The problem comes in when things like this happen - that a company forces itself to be the only option through unnecessary infrastructure and proprietary software in the public space.

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

#515

Post by GVIrish »

mongol wrote: post #382
rabidrat wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How might you recognize a project like this?

I think a tell-tale sign is if they apply the waterfall approach.

That won't save you at all. A lot of federal IT contracts are now written to mandate using Agile or Scrum. Many other forms of dysfunction that doom projects remain.

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

#516

Post by blackpowder12 »

eigenvector wrote: post #277
nataz wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy gets it. Development is literally the simplest part of the problem set. The intersection of domain expertise, contracting/procurement creativity, and technical evaluation is the tough part to wrangle. Getting to the point where development can start is 95% of the battle in my experience. Not to trivialize the actual development portion of the project, but most missteps happen early, dooming projects before a…

Now think of the problem in reverse, from the government's side. Why are they contracting it out when all of the most difficult aspects involve integrating with government systems, policies and personnel - things that government already knows how to do? "Because we don't have the expertise to do software development." The comments in this thread, which I fully agree with by the way, just cement my belief that if gove…

the UK has done exactly this - to make all Government Digital Services in house. It's been a blockbuster success in my opinion - they have some of the best UX/UI in the world and their websites are ultralight and downgrade well.

There are a few issues with authentication, but there is support. Everything that's related to dealing with the UK government btw is all in ONE website, where everything is explained to you in Plain English - gov.uk

Coming from a country where this doesn't exist, I was blown away by every interaction I've had with the system. It's simply amazing.

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

#517

Post by [deleted] »

ericmay wrote: post #484
kuschku wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's how I procure anything and everything. I go to geizhals.eu, select the category, select my requirements based on comparative testing from test.de, sort by cheapest total, and click buy. Every single piece of electronics I own was bought that way. How else would you buy stuff without being influenced by some subconscious bias caused by some stupid ad?

What makes you think you aren’t?

[deleted]

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

#518

Post by cyberpunk »

blackpowder12 wrote: post #516
eigenvector wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now think of the problem in reverse, from the government's side. Why are they contracting it out when all of the most difficult aspects involve integrating with government systems, policies and personnel - things that government already knows how to do? "Because we don't have the expertise to do software development." The comments in this thread, which I fully agree with by the way, just cement my belief that if gove…

the UK has done exactly this - to make all Government Digital Services in house. It's been a blockbuster success in my opinion - they have some of the best UX/UI in the world and their websites are ultralight and downgrade well. There are a few issues with authentication, but there is support. Everything that's related to dealing with the UK government btw is all in ONE website, where everything is explained to you i…

Every single GDS project I’ve been on is 90% freelancers all via a small handful of companies — it’s not really “in-house” but at least it’s better than absolutely everything going to capgemini, Fujitsu, NTT, ATOS and the like, sure.

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

#519

Post by user3939382 »

aasasd wrote: post #400
zaroth wrote: post #115

> Deloitte is the only contractor that can meet the project requirements, because configuration of the VAMS application is occurring using Deloitte’s propriety GovConnect platform. Therefore, no other contractor has rights or access to leverage the system to carry out O&M activities, such as the administration of the system, change and defect management and end user support. As the only contractor with the GovConnect…

Reads like a copy of Russian government contract practices. Put up a contest, list requirements in such a way that only one company would satisfy them without going bust or mad, award the contract to that company. ‘Make the thing using this and that technologies’ does appear regularly.

Reminds me of an RFP for the Pennsylvania Land Trust Assocation I spent $10k preparing a bid for when I was young and naïve before I understood that RFPs were often a sham to give auditors the illusion of due diligence and that it would have been impossible for us to win the contract.

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

#520

Post by bdavis__ »

mongol wrote: post #382
rabidrat wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How might you recognize a project like this?

I think a tell-tale sign is if they apply the waterfall approach.

they will say "agile", but will mean , "all requirements up front with an increment delivered every sprint".

which works very well if the developers and the customer really know what they want when the project starts.

Post reply on HN