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Census Bureau's American FactFinder software cost taxpayers $33.3 million

wmhartnett.com

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Re: Census Bureau's American FactFinder software cost taxpayers $33.3 million

#71

Post by cjy »

_delirium wrote: post #40
crusso wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet when anyone talks about cutting a dime out of the federal budget, the cries of "You're starving poor people!" and such dominate the political discussions. There isn't even a little bit of common sense or honesty in the way the government spends our money and people wonder why some of us are so adamantly opposed to raising taxes.

This doesn't really seem like a public/private difference, but an enterprise/non-enterprise difference: Fortune500 firms are no more efficient than government contracting is, really. While it's a lot in other contexts, $33m for a custom enterprise software project, even one that seems like it ought to cost much less, is pretty middle-of-the-road as a price.

Really, you think this would have cost $33M if a Fortune 500 firm was paying? Enterprises overpay a little because managers are spending shareholders money. Governments overpay a lot because bureaucrats are spending tax payers money. There is a lot less accountability in the latter.

Re: Census Bureau's American FactFinder software cost taxpayers $33.3 million

#72

Post by unreal37 »

Working in a big corporate environment which I feel is similar to the way the government must work, you must understand that the "cost to develop the application" does not mean what you think it means. It's not the "cost of the development phase".

Coming up with the idea and getting it approved takes months. Wrapped into the project of creating the web site will be the "what should we create" phase and dozens of iterations on design and IA, which takes most of the work. There will be 20+ people involved in this process and one line of code hasn't even been written for the first 6 months of the project. The idea they had last week is different than the idea they are talking about this week, which will be different than the idea they will talk about next week. Imagine this goes on for 6 months.

Once the code is written, testing, security, infrastructure setup and all the sign-offs on that also takes months.

One person full time for a year will cost IBM $250,000 in real costs (salary, benefits, overhead) that they bill out to the Federal Government at $500,000 per person per year. Can I imagine 25 people working on this for one year, where only 3 of them are developers? And the rest of the money is hard costs and infrastructure? Yes I can. Easily.

Sad though.

Re: Census Bureau's American FactFinder software cost taxpayers $33.3 million

#73

Post by mbesto »

wpietri wrote: post #42
aggronn wrote: post #14

This is disgusting. I've had to use it extensively for research, and while it 'gets the job done', its such a pain to use. I've asked myself who put this together, and I always assumed it was a team of interns working across a decade for each version. I can't believe this is the best they could do for $33 million. I just can't. They better have some slick stuff under the hood.

Good UI comes from collaboration and iteration with users. Apple did something like 100 iterations on the first iPod. Typical consumer electronics companies do 3 to 5. The government RFP and budgeting process is practically designed to prevent iteration and exploration. I can just hear Senator Blowhard of Cornhusk now: "So you want an unknown amount of money to keep building things until users are happy? That's an ob…

> Apple did something like 100 iterations on the first iPod.

I don't doubt you, but do you have a reference for this?

Re: Census Bureau's American FactFinder software cost taxpayers $33.3 million

#74

Post by [deleted] »

grassclip wrote: post #69
wpietri wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure that IBM Federal is as bad as you suggest. But part of that is due to how government works, which is in turn due to how citizens react to things. Think about it like a government employee. If you do your job perfectly well, nobody notices. Despite the bureaucracy, despite unclear success criteria, despite insane budgeting. Nobody notices. That's just what's expected. When something goes wrong, though, you ge…

If your a government employee and something goes wrong you just claim that you didn't have enough money or resources to do the job. At least that's what everyone seems to do and they get away with it.

[deleted]

Re: Census Bureau's American FactFinder software cost taxpayers $33.3 million

#75

Post by [deleted] »

grassclip wrote: post #69
wpietri wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure that IBM Federal is as bad as you suggest. But part of that is due to how government works, which is in turn due to how citizens react to things. Think about it like a government employee. If you do your job perfectly well, nobody notices. Despite the bureaucracy, despite unclear success criteria, despite insane budgeting. Nobody notices. That's just what's expected. When something goes wrong, though, you ge…

If your a government employee and something goes wrong you just claim that you didn't have enough money or resources to do the job. At least that's what everyone seems to do and they get away with it.

[deleted]

Re: Census Bureau's American FactFinder software cost taxpayers $33.3 million

#76

Post by crusso »

wpietri wrote: post #42
aggronn wrote: post #14

This is disgusting. I've had to use it extensively for research, and while it 'gets the job done', its such a pain to use. I've asked myself who put this together, and I always assumed it was a team of interns working across a decade for each version. I can't believe this is the best they could do for $33 million. I just can't. They better have some slick stuff under the hood.

Good UI comes from collaboration and iteration with users. Apple did something like 100 iterations on the first iPod. Typical consumer electronics companies do 3 to 5. The government RFP and budgeting process is practically designed to prevent iteration and exploration. I can just hear Senator Blowhard of Cornhusk now: "So you want an unknown amount of money to keep building things until users are happy? That's an ob…

Yeah, and for $33M they couldn't build in some iterations and bring in focus groups or hire someone competent to get it at least partially right the first time?

These projects are handed out to reward the connected contractors, contributors and lobbyists that know how to work their target politicians and bureaucrats. There are ZERO incentives to do quality work. No one will lose his job over this software travesty. No one will get demoted. Rather than bemoan the waste of $32.9M on the job, politicians will simply push for higher taxes.

Re: Census Bureau's American FactFinder software cost taxpayers $33.3 million

#77

Post by _delirium »

binarycrusader wrote: post #70
_delirium wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $33 million is 500 programmer man-years Where do you live where $66k/yr the total cost of employing a programmer? I don't know what IBM uses for its internal accounting, but based on what several other large tech companies use, $200k/yr is a decent guess (including salary+benefits+overhead). That'd mean 165 man-years, and only a fraction of those 165 would be programmers, since the contract also needs to pay for ma…

The midwest (Kansas, Missouri, so on...)? Seriously. $40K a year annual salary, and if you add in all the benefits, that might hit $66K.

I don't know much about Kansas, but that is definitely not the going rate for enterprise programmers in St. Louis. But in any case, what proportion of software jobs are in the (non-Chicago) Midwest, anyway? The government is basically stuck with whoever submits a bid, which is most likely to be companies in the "IBM and competitors" category, and their cost structures are well into the $200k range (I wouldn't be surprised at $250k-$300k).

Re: Census Bureau's American FactFinder software cost taxpayers $33.3 million

#78

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

wpietri wrote: post #64
tomjen3 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but for a hacker streamlining procurement procedures sounds like a huge and extreemly boring timesink. Wouldn't this be something an mba would love anyway?

I think it would be something awesome to work on. I'm in software to make a difference, and dropping a digit or two off the cost of government projects could be quite an impact.

More money to allocate to the defense budget!

Re: Census Bureau's American FactFinder software cost taxpayers $33.3 million

#79

Post by w1ntermute »

JPKab wrote: post #11

The software is a "steaming pile of shit"? Of course, it was built by IBM Federal. Building software for U.S. gov't contractors is an awful, awful experience. The end result is the talented leave as soon as they can, because working in a red tape environment with ridiculous Information Assurance (that's gov't speak for their own ludicrous security theater that is their IT security process) policies makes you want to…

> defense contractors have to meet quotas for hiring veterans

Wow, that's gotta be one of the most boneheaded govt policies I've heard of. Is this because of some kind of patriotic "duty" to keep veterans off the streets? In my experience, a lot of veterans would have ended up on the streets even if they hadn't joined the military - in fact, many joined the military specifically so they wouldn't end up on the streets.

Re: Census Bureau's American FactFinder software cost taxpayers $33.3 million

#80

Post by _delirium »

cjy wrote: post #71
_delirium wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't really seem like a public/private difference, but an enterprise/non-enterprise difference: Fortune500 firms are no more efficient than government contracting is, really. While it's a lot in other contexts, $33m for a custom enterprise software project, even one that seems like it ought to cost much less, is pretty middle-of-the-road as a price.

Really, you think this would have cost $33M if a Fortune 500 firm was paying? Enterprises overpay a little because managers are spending shareholders money. Governments overpay a lot because bureaucrats are spending tax payers money. There is a lot less accountability in the latter.

Yes, I really do think so. It's a nice theory re:accountability, but I don't think it holds up in the real world, where enterprise-contracting costs, for whatever reason, are extremely high. One possibility is that there isn't as much accountability for managers of large companies as you think (there's been a lot written on that problem); another possibility is that there are somehow inherent scale problems with doing bespoke software development for very large organizations.
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