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

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

#641

Post by s1artibartfast »

andrewflnr wrote: post #617
s1artibartfast wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't think of a worse solution. Sure, it effectively raises their salary, but it is full of moral pitfalls. It is already outrageous that government employees are exempt from social security taxes.

Uh, what? Former federal employee here. I've got one of my pay stubs in front of me and there is definitely a social security line.

It is primarily state employees (police & teachers) that are exempt from social security if they have a different state funded pension plan. Take a look at table 2 and chart 1 of this report from the social security administration[1] for some examples of rates in different states.

>In 2018, one-quarter of state and local government employees—approximately 6.5 million workers—were not covered by Social Security on their current job

I find this offensive because one of the main functions of SS is to subsidize the retirement of low earners at the expense of higher earners. As a private citizen, I don't get to opt out of this social obligation just because my 401k gets a better return.

Not only that, but as a tax payer, I will be on the hook for bailing out the public employee pension funds when they go belly up.

https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v80n3/v80n3p1.html

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

#645

Post by aweiland »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #247
aweiland wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the companies that get these contracts pay for the politician's war chest.

Not to mention employ the politician's constituents. I don't know if it's ever been conclusively proven, but it's been alleged for decades that the major defense contractors deliberately structure their big projects into subcontracts that can employ people in as many Congressional districts as possible. There are allegedly people in 300+ districts working on the F-35 program, for example.

Oh absolutely. Boeing "subcontracts" out tons of what they do to as many states as possible. Each state == 2 senators that are worried about "jobs". Turns out in the long run it's cheaper to ship pieces around the country than "lobby" just 2 senators from Washington.

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

#646

Post by nitrogen »

Aeolun wrote: post #497
NearAP wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> with engineers directing the process This is usually not the solution. You have to understand the requirements/know your actual users. Engineers don’t necessarily do this well. They build with the latest tech but as you see in this example, the primary users are older people who can’t use latest tech

> Engineers As far as I’ve seen there’s people that build first, and ask questions later, and the reverse. Only the latter are engineers.

Agreed. This is not a No True Scotsman -- understanding true requirements is a fundamental attribute of engineering. If you aren't doing that, whatever you are doing it isn't engineering.

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

#647

Post by kcartlidge »

silexia wrote: post #630
martincolorado wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This right here “configuration of the VAMS application is occurring using Deloitte’s propriety GovConnect platform.” Because it is so difficult to launch a project and provision the requisite infrastructure in the federal government due to various IT regs and laws and subsequently obtain an Authorization To Operate (ATO) in a timely fashion an existing platform is routinely sole sourced especially when speed is neces…

Government will always be very inefficient. Government certainly has some strong benefits, but you should avoid using government wherever it is not absolutely necessary. Private industry would have done a far better job of handling the vaccine roll out.

> Private industry would have done a far better job of handling the vaccine roll out.

The British vaccine is being rolled out by public bodies and is working pretty good indeed (half a million doses a day).

Meanwhile our track and trace system, misnamed "NHS Track and Trace", is, despite the name, almost completely outsourced to private industry (and barely even speaks to the NHS). It's universally acknowleged to be an absolute mess.

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

#648

Post by nitrogen »

JimBlizz wrote: post #424
didibus wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes it's a lot of overhead, but this isn't a run of the mill green-field SaaS app a few 22 year olds can crank out in a few weeks. I get your point, but also yes it is. The issue is superficial, it's like when I try to Zoom with my mom, it'll take 10 times longer as I need to explain and bring her along every single step of the way. This is the same for these type of contracts. A lot of the slowdowns come from peop…

This is it. Even if the feature set fits perfectly, a private organisation will optimise for profit or growth, not broadest usage. The user that needs help finding a button isn't worth the development cost. Gov services cannot operate that way.

Is Eventbrite Chrome desktop only or is the CDC contracted website? I think you may have read that backward.

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

#649

Post by to11mtm »

smabie wrote: post #139
mikeho1999 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It can be a combination. Often it honestly depends on both sides of the project.

I've seen projects where bad requirements led to cost overruns and/or delays due to required rework.

I've seen projects where due to bad/strict requirements the customer's product basically became the 'learning platform' for a team to use 'the hot new web ui framework toolchain' of the year. I made sure to completely forget what I 'learned' about react/redux after leaving that gig.

I've also seen projects where the contract house threw bodies on that didn't even know the language used. I've seen horror story houses that are code-genies that overcharge to give you exactly what you didn't want.

But in this case My guess it would be a combination of requirements fustercluckery alongside what sounds like an integration nightmare; from my time working in an environment where we had to do a lot of 'etl loads' from different partners and/or acquisitions, you see a lot of snowflake cases.

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

#650

Post by nitrogen »

raverbashing wrote: post #387
jariel wrote: post #291

Earlier 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…

> 'wrangling data for legacy systems' does not cost that much, it's still a small piece of the pie Are you sure? Because I think it might possibly involve: - interfacing with an old COBOL system - interfacing with an old DB2/ORACLE/(legacy database) with a "very creative" Schema and even more creative indexes (or maybe none - who knows). More bonus points if it's not even ASCII encoded - Production system runs on a V…

I've done some of those, 90% by myself, for a modern ecommerce site for a 150-year-old company on a 30-year-old Oracle DB.
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