These big companies always have a lot of overhead. The middle layers of management are useless. Often the government will try to work with smaller companies that are under 50 people. However, if these small companies land good contracts the big companies will buy them up.
CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs
541–550 of 688 posts
Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs
#542What's it written in?
Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs
#543> 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…
> 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.
They don't even seem to be saying "because Deloitte was successful in the past". It's literally saying "because they're the only ones who have access to their proprietary system that we already locked ourselves in too.... they get the business".
"...so the staffs are ever more transient". Yeah, there's some idea that "company X" does ABC. The people at company X do ABC, but you are at the whim of institutional knowledge and tribal info systems within that company. The superstars who made ABC work 4 years ago may all be gone, and the current people are trying to make a name for themselves by making 'The New Process' so any success from ABC isn't at all guaranteed to translate to your new project.
Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs
#544Earlier quoted context omitted.
For various reasons this wouldn't work, you have the various bands of government salary https://federalnewsnetwork.com/pay/2020/01/more-top-career-e... >But for a GS-15, step 10 in Washington, his or her salary should total roughly $185,509 in 2020. But due to the federal pay ceiling, that same GS-15, step 10 in Washington will make the limit of $170,800 this year. And that's the absolute Max, after you go to the tro…
I hear this sort of objection for all sorts of civil-service employment. TBH, I'm surprised we've never seen a proposal of the form "Federal employee salaries are not subject to income tax." With a single line of legislation, that makes all federal job offers immediately 10-35% more competitive, without actually increasing salaries directly. Once you get that as precedent, I could see it being used aggressively as a…
As far as federal employees go, making their salaries tax-free would cost the government lost tax revenue. It would also make a lot of voters angry because they still pay taxes, but "those bureaucrats in Washington DC exempted themselves from taxes." I can see the speeches now.
Approximately 50% of American politicians are anti-government as an ideology, and use the argument of "cutting overpaid government salaries" as a plank in their economic policy, so having well-paid gov't staff is just "waste" in their minds.
As far as teachers go, they are not employed by the federal government. In most states they are county-level employees and the counties obviously do not have authority to dictate federal income tax levels.
Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs
#545> 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…
This is a major problem with using contractors. They bill by the hour. Their continued employment is not dependent on doing a good job. They half ass everything because it is about billing and being done. Also, doing a bad job means "overruns" for more free money. The government needs a Department of Technology that runs all these systems for all national systems that are needed. This isn't like building a combat fig…
Good people want to work at places with stock options and bonuses for good performance, the government can not offer that. Government is more suited for people interested in management, not pure technical people
Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs
#546> 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.
It reminds me of how during the Iraq war (fiasco), Halliburton, partly owned by dick Cheney, was awarded a huge "no bid" contract (no competitor by design, no bid required) for logistical support in Iraq.
No corruption to see here folks, move along.
Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs
#547> 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.
That's nothing to do with Russia. I had a client make an RFP based on my company's service specs. The entire intent (stated behind the scenes) was to have us get the work. We'd already done other work - they wanted to keep us involved for the next phase of work. We lost to someone local. They charged basically the same as we did, but they were local so didn't have to include travel costs, so they 'won'. The client lost out because there was no consideration for continuation of knowledge/experience - we'd done an initial training course for them - our teams knew each other and had done some informal prototyping already while on site. But... "the other bid was lower".
Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs
#548Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is what usually happens and what causes many public projects to fail: the customer has no competent staff that can a) write requirements or b) evaluate tenders. They're often incompetent enough to even hire someone competent to do those things. The government should maybe have a dedicated unit that assists other units with procurement of IT solutions. Where the staff gets very well compensated when a pro…
US Digital Service. GSA 18f. They already exist. Mysterious why CDC didn't use them. Maybe they are hollowed out after the Trump years. I know I wouldn't have stuck around.
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Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs
#549Earlier quoted context omitted.
Careful with your line of reasoning. There is a difference between "ageism", and "being honest about how hard some problems are to solve". There are a lot of unbelievably brilliant 22-year-olds. None of them have been building enterprise-scale architectures that turn messy, vague, and incomplete requirements that model even more messy, vague, and incomplete business processes for 20 years.
> None of them have been building enterprise-scale architectures that turn messy, vague, and incomplete requirements that model even more messy, vague, and incomplete business processes for 20 years. Exactly! If you’ve been doing that for 20 years I do not want to work with you, since you are apparently perfectly content with that status quo. I’ve been doing it for two years and it’s already too much. My highest prio…
I’m glad you’ve clarified as when you said that it sounded like you’re astonished at the level of apathy and/or incompetence you’re surrounded with and I was worried for a second that you’ve just too little experience to understand that your predecessors have very likely been trying for much of that time to push back against the status quo and have better ideas implemented, likely swimming upstream against resistance you’re wholly unaware of.
But it’s clearly not that after all, which is a relief - I’m glad it’s just a case of everyone else that’s come before you being useless.
Boomers, am I right?
Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs
#550Earlier quoted context omitted.
For various reasons this wouldn't work, you have the various bands of government salary https://federalnewsnetwork.com/pay/2020/01/more-top-career-e... >But for a GS-15, step 10 in Washington, his or her salary should total roughly $185,509 in 2020. But due to the federal pay ceiling, that same GS-15, step 10 in Washington will make the limit of $170,800 this year. And that's the absolute Max, after you go to the tro…
As someone with a degree in software "engineering" and more than a decade of experience in the industry I'd gladly take a stable government job creating or maintaining important applications that help the government provide high quality and necessary services to people. I would take pride in working on such a system as a vaccine administration management platform. Instead those jobs are doled out to contracting firms…
The public sector has a whole layer of complexity that doesn't exist at all (edit: as much) in the private sector, and I can promise you it frequently does NOT feel good at all.
It is difficult to explain but people tend to use the word "bureaucracy" as a catch-all for several dozen discrete problems that crop up in different combinations depending on what level of govt you're operating.
Typical examples might be :
-a developer not having the authority to work on a system
-a developer being ordered to work on a system, but not being given permissions to the necessary tools (even if they're available), or they may prohibit certain common-sense tools, or they may force you to use certain tools.
-a developer being ordered to work on a system where the design is severely irrational, maybe impossible, and but he or she has no authority within the hierarchy to push back on requirements
-a developer being ordered to work on a system that some powerful person wants to see fail
Imagine the "client from hell" that many of us have dealt with before, who doesn't know what they want. Now imagine that person is like 3 levels higher than you, calling the shots, and you're not even allowed to speak to them, much less push back against their crazy expectations.