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

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

#121

Post by wpietri »

nateabele wrote: post #120
redcap wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If (most of) the rest of the developed world can do "socialized" medicine reasonably well, then what's so special about the US that would prevent this? Just the size and scale for fuckups? There are occasional health system scandals in Australia and the UK, for example, but even with this everyone gets coverage. So why the US needs to drag its heels in this is beyond me. But if you do think the public service will ma…

Okay, to be clear though, exactly which segment(s) of the developed world are doing socialized medicine and not going bankrupt (or on the verge of going bankrupt) in spectacular fashion?

If the US adopted any of the systems of other nations, we'd be paying a lot less, so we'd at least be going bankrupt a lot slower. We pay way more than anybody else for outcomes that are basically the same.

Great data and analysis here:

http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/what-makes-the-u...

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

#122

Post by wpietri »

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.

Agencies can claim that. Because we never fire or sideline agencies.

But individuals don't have the same out. Somebody who took a risk and failed may never get fired, but for somebody with ambition and vision, getting demoted to a pointless job with no power is worse than getting fired.

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

#123

Post by nateabele »

nateabele wrote: post #120
redcap wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If (most of) the rest of the developed world can do "socialized" medicine reasonably well, then what's so special about the US that would prevent this? Just the size and scale for fuckups? There are occasional health system scandals in Australia and the UK, for example, but even with this everyone gets coverage. So why the US needs to drag its heels in this is beyond me. But if you do think the public service will ma…

Okay, to be clear though, exactly which segment(s) of the developed world are doing socialized medicine and not going bankrupt (or on the verge of going bankrupt) in spectacular fashion?

wpietri: Yes, I read that series quite some time ago. I'm very familiar with the ridiculousness that is the US healthcare system. This, however, is totally irrelevant to my comment, which was regarding other developed countries that are going bankrupt over their entitlement programs.

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

#124

Post by JPKab »

w1ntermute wrote: post #79
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…

They have HUGE incentives for hiring veterans, as well as any kind of "disadvantaged minority" (read: not white or Asian)

My best friend for 20 years, who is probably the smartest and most capable guy I've ever known, graduated with a software engineering degree (and a crappy GPA due to his pursuit of non-school software stuff at the expense of his school projects). He happens to be black, and he couldn't get hired anywhere due to his GPA. He goes to DC, immediately gets interviews. Now, here's the funny part: These assholes who called him for phone interviews were asking, multiple times!, if he was indeed "African American"? One of the females who called him from a very,very large contractor I shall not name said the words, "ok, I was just confirming because you don't sound like it." (meaning she didn't think he sounded black.)My buddy, ever the cleverest guy around, responded "I'sa do the numbahs too mastah." LOL

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

#125

Post by MBCook »

redcap wrote: post #119
MBCook wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like single payer in theory, but I'm with briandear on this one. There is already enough monkeying with what Medicare should and shouldn't pay for. My fear is the more money is involved, the less science/data/evidence based the decisions will be. That's why I'm torn on the whole thing. I think for-profit should be able to do it better, but the current system clearly isn't structured in a way that encourages…

If (most of) the rest of the developed world can do "socialized" medicine reasonably well, then what's so special about the US that would prevent this? Just the size and scale for fuckups? There are occasional health system scandals in Australia and the UK, for example, but even with this everyone gets coverage. So why the US needs to drag its heels in this is beyond me. But if you do think the public service will ma…

My concern is the size of the entrenched interests would prevent things from being setup reasonably. If the government could truly start over, I would have more confidence. Instead I would think we'd get all sorts of pressure that, for example, treatments proven not to beat placebos (or do worse) should still be paid for because people want them, and unless it's so dangerous the FDA bans it.

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

#126

Post by DanielBMarkham »

yen223 wrote: post #103
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #93

It's really hard to overstate how bad the government is at software development. I've worked in several contracts with various agencies, and I know people who still stay in the game, and the best ones I've seen are ten years behind everybody else and spending about 50x what they should to get things done. They're simply swamped in bureaucratic molasses. For instance, even though the "business" of the government (thin…

Ex-employee of Accenture here. Accenture basically earns most of their money selling horrendously overpriced "solutions" to customers who don't care about cost. The thing is, the bureaucracy that you mentioned, it's not just the government. Too many large companies, especially non-IT ones, assume that you can complete a project by throwing 100 mediocre programmers at it.

Your point is well taken. It is not just the government.

The thing is that most private systems operating like this go broke -- unless they have lots of federal protection. You can't spend billions in the private sector without people noticing. The same is not true in the government sector. While all big organizations are like this, the government wastes money on IT at another level entirely. (I know, I've worked with lots of both government agencies and large organizations)

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

#128

Post by specialist »

sliverstorm wrote: post #118
freehunter wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or a better solution, everything that's eligible for a FOIA request should just be made available on the existing Open Government page [1] rather than making people request it and go through the process. What is the point of this security by obscurity nonsense? If it can be released under FOIA, there's no reason to not release it without a FOIA request. [1] http://www.whitehouse.gov/open

there's no reason to not release it without a FOIA request. How about the cost of digging up that information? Or the effort to ensure each piece of information released is indeed safe for release? Or the effort to put it all together in a coherent set? The government has a TON of records. Releasing them is not as simple as picking the "public" checkbox in the settings pane. There might also be a general concern that…

I accidently upvoted you. So please mentally -1 for this post.

I'd characterize your reply as concern trolling.

I've done my share of FOIA requests. I imagine I've heard most every excuse. Including "We lost the backup tapes."

Being charitable, the reason public records requests are hard, expensive to fulfill is because efficient records management is rare, making finding and retrieval difficult.

Someone may chime in suggesting CMS, workflow, sharepoint, whatever. Yea. If it was just that easy, everyone would be doing it.

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

#129

Post by binarycrusader »

_delirium wrote: post #77
binarycrusader wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 surp…

Who said anything about enterprise programmers?

I have no idea why my parent comment was downvoted; I posted something based on my own (painful) experience and knowledge of what various other people I know made in programming jobs at the time.

There's actually a lot of programming jobs to be had in the midwest; courtesy of companies like Sprint, Oracle, credit card processing companies, large furniture service companies, and others.

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

#130

Post by sliverstorm »

specialist wrote: post #128
sliverstorm wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's no reason to not release it without a FOIA request. How about the cost of digging up that information? Or the effort to ensure each piece of information released is indeed safe for release? Or the effort to put it all together in a coherent set? The government has a TON of records. Releasing them is not as simple as picking the "public" checkbox in the settings pane. There might also be a general concern that…

I accidently upvoted you. So please mentally -1 for this post. I'd characterize your reply as concern trolling. I've done my share of FOIA requests. I imagine I've heard most every excuse. Including "We lost the backup tapes." Being charitable, the reason public records requests are hard, expensive to fulfill is because efficient records management is rare, making finding and retrieval difficult. Someone may chime in…

I'm not sure I follow. Are you agreeing with the things I mentioned, or claiming they are not valid?
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