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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

#661

Post by p_l »

sul_tasto wrote: post #578
ThinkBeat wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What I don’t understand is why auditors can’t or won’t put a stop to this.

It's hard to put down a technically legal, as far as text of law goes, practice. Especially when there are no complaints to use as a base because all contenders for the contract were similarly shady. And sometimes some $RANDOM gets the contract because nobody serious will take it, thanks to anti-corruption/anti-loss measures that the populous voted in that made the contract impossible. So Honest John Federal takes the contract and finds a suitably desperate student/outsources it to cheapest vendor possible.

Meanwhile auditors (unless burned out) would love to get the contractors and buyer staked in court, but technically all checkboxes on the checklist are checked (pun intended) and there's no obvious better candidate to use as counter example.

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

#662

Post by p_l »

hef19898 wrote: post #482
8bitsrule wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geez, I thought the whole idea is that 'government is the problem. We need to let the private sector handle all these things.' Making the CDC look bad appears to have been part of that program last year. Shame the price has been so high.

From my experience with the german government, it is more the bureaucracy that is the issue and not government per se. And that bureaucrcy, on the governmen side, wasn't that far of from what I saw in companies like Siemens back the day. I think government is just sitting on the extreme end of bloated bureaucracy, with everthing defense related taking the cake.

And the voters will easily vote for more of such bureaucracy, wrapped in words about controlling spending, avoiding corruption, preventing money going to few private contractors, ensuring cheapest bid wins, etc. etc.

This is combined with how various voter-friendly "cheap government" initiatives go on for all kinds of internal purchases, not just big dollar projects like this.

Printers that needs servicing all the time because "cheapest bid" means you have low-quality shady consumables used.

Cars that end up constantly in service because the provider is cheap and thus couldn't do the right job servicing a Land Rover Discovery 2, taking away critical machine for reaching accident sites for aviation accident investigation.

Purchase of new cars for the same org and purpose - the freshly elected government leaked "appropriate" story to one of the newer tabloids to make it look like excess that they are curbing.

I still tell the story of SCAAI investigator buying a plane ticket for international flight because office responsible for finances in appropriate ministry refused to arrange diplomatic courier. So an investigator booked an international flight, left the plane, gave the CD full of confidential data to his local counterpart, turned 180 and went back to the same plane back.

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

#663

Post by animex »

JoBrad wrote: post #561
animex wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US Digital Service Assemble!

Exactly. We need someone to “Amazon” the shit out of our governmental computing systems (e.g. APIs everywhere), especially those designed to interact with other systems. They should be required to use an accessible API with published schemas and documentation. I’m surprised someone hasn’t identified this as a stability and security risk for our government.

Yeah, we need the US Digital Service for oversight and prevent this type of failure as much as we need them to parachute in after-the-fact. Prevent Vendor-Thanos from ever finishing the Infinity Revenue Gauntlet.

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

#664

Post by mbrodersen »

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 companies go bankrupt all the time. Large public companies (like telcos) are slow, inefficient, monopolistic etc. Large defence contractors in the US are responsible for bribing officials and corrupting the US democracy. My point is that large organisations fail all the time. It doesn’t matter if it is public or private.

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

#665

Post by smsm42 »

imtringued wrote: post #468
smsm42 wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the thing is that when the government takes tax money and allocates it to private companies via obscure and arguably corrupt procedures, you get the worst of both worlds. Inefficiency and rigidity of the government, combined with opacity and greed of the private companies. When people say privatizing things could be a solution, they don't usually mean "take tax money and award it through a no-bid contract to a…

Isn't the problem that the compensation structure is wrong? By paying lump sums you are basically encouraging your contractor to screw you over. You should compensate them based on metrics that align with your goals. For example, pay $1 (random number) for each vaccinated citizen.

If the governmental body is not interested in ensuring efficiency, than no matter what structure is chosen it will be abused - by inflating counts, or costs, or some other way, because people who have incentive to get money and no counter-incentive to follow the rules will cheat. Not all of them - but enough of them to cause serious damage. Look what happened in California recently - about 27% (!!!) of unemployment benefits is now thought to be fraudulent. This is what happens when people are incentivized to cheat and people who oversee the public coffers aren't incentivized to guard them. You'd expect that there would be some consequences for CDC leadership for their numerous failures - but that's not happening.

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

#666

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

bob1029 wrote: post #566
info781 wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The government absolutely could offer competitive incentive packages if the appropriate legislation can be passed. At some point it will become obvious that software complexity is a national security issue. I feel that point still hasn't arrived, for whatever reason. Perhaps the realization has arrived, but those offering the realization have biased the reports to favor themselves (i.e. Deloitte, et. al.)

https://media.defense.gov/2019/May/01/2002126690/-1/-1/0/SWA...

"U.S. national security increasingly relies on software to execute missions, integrate and collaborate with allies, and manage the defense enterprise. The ability to develop, procure, assure, deploy, and continuously improve software is thus central to national defense."

We already know it's a national security issue. Nothing is done about it.

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

#667

Post by ohnoesoes »

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?

explain that to WAANK managers

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

#668

Post by wiseleo »

A large portion of legacy systems integration can be solved by asking the question “which data must be updated in real-time and which can wait for batch processing?”

Screen scrape data from legacy terminal apps, export into SQL middleware, have the new app interact with the SQL middleware via modern APIs. All legacy data gets batch updated back into legacy systems, all new data gets stored and accessed in middleware. Eventually, the middleware becomes the primary data source and the entity can save on the electric bill.

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

#669

Post by smsm42 »

narrator wrote: post #436
smsm42 wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the thing is that when the government takes tax money and allocates it to private companies via obscure and arguably corrupt procedures, you get the worst of both worlds. Inefficiency and rigidity of the government, combined with opacity and greed of the private companies. When people say privatizing things could be a solution, they don't usually mean "take tax money and award it through a no-bid contract to a…

>you get the worst of both worlds. Inefficiency and rigidity of the government, combined with opacity and greed of the private companies. This is what is being referred to when a politician used the words "public/private partnership.'

By itself, there's nothing wrong with government buying services from private companies - in fact, it's inevitable, unless the whole economy is controlled by the government, certain services will have to be bought on private markets. It is when the unique power position of the government is leveraged to give certain companies unearned advantage, and the government acts not as mere consumer among others, even if with deep pockets and special needs, but seeks to promote some companies at the cost of suppressing others, is where the trouble lies.

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

#670

Post by Trias11 »

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…

Yup. Allocate budget. Hire few $10/hr offsore guys to craft some frontend in a few months. Transfer money. Deliver kickbaks. Shutdown project. Rinse and repeat.
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