Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, how to apply and secure governmental contracts and grants is something many educational curriculum miss out upon in life.
How does the process work?
In most countries it works by having a buddy making the choices
CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs
531–540 of 688 posts
Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs
#532Earlier 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…
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…
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Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs
#533I thought we have 18F and USDS to avoid this sort of situation:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/08/11...
Various discussions over the years:
Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs
#534Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was some hubbub in Sweden a while back about the armed forces putting up a _really_ specific job ad, like it was tailored to one person. Well, it turned out it was, because the person posting the add forgot to take out the phrase “Make sure Björn meets these requirements” in the middle of the ad.
This is exactly how American companies game the h1b visa system. When I worked at AVG we would write job requirement so specific to an Israel developers who worked for one of our subsidiaries that it was clear no other human being in the world could qualify for it.
What you call gaming, I call working around the government’s idiotic visa requirements.
Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs
#535Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is endemic in tender processes the world over. I used to work in a role where I had to respond to tenders for the software I led, and it was obvious that if the requirements list wasn’t written by our competitor, the institution had decided they wanted their software and listed every feature they knew only that company offered.
Seems like the software procurement process itself is broken. I guess this could happen with hardware too. But adding more features is much easier in software. Marketing can then argue that it makes a certain product “better”.
It’s not just software. Military hardware procurement is also notoriously corrupt, ditto with local infrastructure projects.
Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs
#536Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, this is not cynical enough. Even the part you mentioned: 'wrangling data for legacy systems' does not cost that much, it's still a small piece of the pie. The 'bulk of it' goes to sales, BD, marketing, profits, layers of excess management, specialist consultants, accountants and lawyers. This contract is an example of 'modern world graft'. Healtchare.gov cost $1-2 Billion and it was also a mess until Google Engin…
> Software is not like Construction where the costs can at least be well estimated and you don't need geniuses. Construction is notorious for cost overruns?
Yes, but measurable, understandable outcomes.
And when it goes way over, it's usually easy to identify the problems, it's just often politically infeasible to address them.
With construction - the numbers are on the table.
And FYI - aside from massive project, municipalities and construction is happening all the time. There usually are not massive overruns for such projects.
Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs
#537Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's an example I learned on Friday: If money is left over, apply to the next available item via (logic). Unless money is sent twice, for two separate sub-items on the same item, in which case if the first amount is insufficient to cover the entirety of the first sub-item, the excess (if any) from the second amount, after being applied to the second sub-item, must be applied to the remainder of the first sub-item.…
To be fair, this sounds like someone having a hard time saying you should apply the money sent to the entire balance.
Nope. That's pretty much what the specs (written by outsourced consultants) said.
In reality, there's one edge case where things needs to be applied in a different, distinct, and very specific order, otherwise (legal consequences).
Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs
#538> 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…
The problem is that any success in delivering past contracts does not guarantee success in future in software technology where a typical software technology becomes obsolete every 3 years.
In software world things change so fast that someone with 6 years of experience developing software will not have enough experience with newest tools, languages, methods, etc. Newer graduates with experience is newest applications in their resume get hired and they sometimes lack real development experience.
Building and delivering software is not like building a road or sidewalk where technology does not change by much every year or decade. They still construct sidewalks like they did say 100 years ago.
So major software contractor's success is pretty much random depending on who gets hired and how good the chosen packages are for the given application and how experienced are the staff in putting it together and having good test specs.
Another problem in software world is that software developers move to new IPOs and so the staffs are ever more transient. Government jobs with complex hiring practices are actually becoming unattractive to developers.
Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs
#539Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the biggest challenges for large orgs is that the knowledge they need to do a given thing is almost always present inside the organization — but it's fragmented and scattered across different teams, roles, and balkanized administrative boundaries such that the big picture is almost never available. A high-quality consulting partner works to build the relationships and internal lines of communication that are n…
Though mostly about ladder climbing and relationship drama, the show 'House of Lies' has some really good scenes where the management consultants do actual work, which is pretty much portrayed as doing the things you've listed. Even as a fictional show, it made it easier for me to understand these situations and not get so flustered when encountering them.
I've been in technical, not management, consulting, but House of Lies felt disturbingly accurate.
Except I usually just stared at bad movies in hotel rooms to decompress after dealing with clients, rather than blow and strippers. Sue me, I'm boring.
Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs
#540"it only works in Chrome"
Thanks, I hate it. I use Firefox. This 50% of my time on the internet.