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Inside Team Romney’s whale of an IT meltdown
161–170 of 200 posts
Re: Inside Team Romney’s whale of an IT meltdown
#162Orca had been conceived by two men—Romney's Director of Voter Contact Dan Centinello and the campaign's Political Director Rich Beeson... To build Orca, the Romney campaign turned to Microsoft and an unnamed application consulting firm. This sounds like a lot of failed IT projects in large corporations -- dreamed up by upper management types who don't know anything about tech, then farmed out to consultants and tech…
And yet, despite this disaster, Mitt Romney’s campaign handed out more than $200,000 in bonuses last month to senior staffers, according to new disclosure records filed Thursday. Richard Beeson, Romney’s national political director, received a $37,500 payment on Aug. 31 in addition to his salary, according to records filed with the Federal Election Commission. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/wp/2012…
The bonuses in August were probably due to him winning the nomination. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/29/us/politics/delegates-get-...
He probably also had other unknown milestones throughout the campaign in an effort to keep staffers motivated.
Re: Inside Team Romney’s whale of an IT meltdown
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you don't hire people with adequate management skills to assess risk and take proactive steps to mitigate problems before they become dangerous to the mission, that's a failure at the highest level. Someone should've see this coming, or Romney clearly doesn't know how to delegate responsibility well.
I would point at the campaign manager as the person who should be responsible. The Campaign Manager is the CEO, the candidate is actually the product being sold. Granted, the candidate is being sold with promise that he or she will be a good CEO, but, during the campaign the CM is the CEO.
But then he is a product that can talk back and makes his own decisions for the entire campaign.
While I get your analogy, it simply isn't the way campaigns actually work. The candidate is the CEO - he's making the big decisions based on data fed to him or her by his campaign staff.
Re: Inside Team Romney’s whale of an IT meltdown
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was unclear. I am saying that since it is not the job of a president to micromanage, it is legitimate to criticise him for fuckups he was not directly involved with. If his job were micromanaging, then "Hey, he wasn't in the room" would excuse him of responsibility, but that is not the case. Since his job would be pretty much the greatest opposite of micromanaging I can conceive of, there can be no excuse. The fail…
Let me try: The United States has the following federal executive departments: * Agriculture * Commerce * Defense * Education * Energy * Health and Human Services * Homeland Security * Housing and Urban Development * Interior * Justice * Labor * State Transportation * Treasury * Veterans Affairs Now there is literally no way you can micromanage you way through this. Nobody, and I mean nobody can possibly single hande…
You should read up on how Winston Churchill micro-managed a world war. Interesting stuff, and possible.
Re: Inside Team Romney’s whale of an IT meltdown
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
And then a 18 yo REMF downloads all your secret classified documents and uploads them to the Internet.
Due to security policies ordered by a 48 yo REMF.
Is there really an age gap in basic understanding of the Internet? I submit most 18 yo kids know as little as most 48 yo management types. Or 48 yo teachers, or 48 yo anything-other-than-hacker types. If there is any function that filters Internet literacy, it's self selection of certain people (mostly men) into CS/IT.
Re: Inside Team Romney’s whale of an IT meltdown
#166Orca had been conceived by two men—Romney's Director of Voter Contact Dan Centinello and the campaign's Political Director Rich Beeson... To build Orca, the Romney campaign turned to Microsoft and an unnamed application consulting firm. This sounds like a lot of failed IT projects in large corporations -- dreamed up by upper management types who don't know anything about tech, then farmed out to consultants and tech…
>This sounds like a lot of failed IT projects in large corporations -- dreamed up by upper management types who don't know anything about tech, then farmed out to consultants and tech vendors for the actual implementation. The consultants and vendors then either proceed to wander in the weeds expensively due to lack of direction, or actively seize on the client's ignorance and take them for a ride. In my experience,…
O2 had such a "success" in Germany, to the tune of (IIRC) over 100M€. A colleague who was involved told me it had to be officially successful so they could at least write off the money as expenses.
Re: Inside Team Romney’s whale of an IT meltdown
#167No one should allow a business or non-profit to face a situation like this. Only bad managers put something so important into such difficult circumstances. Why go live the day of the election? Are they insane? Unless the contract (to build this application) had some kind of clause like "This thing must work perfectly or all the money will be refunded" then this is a great contract to get. Let us consider this cynical…
>I wish I could land contracts like this one. Can you imagine building an app that the client will only need for 1 day, and you still get paid even if the thing does not work? The chance for fraud is huge. Who would even allow this? The people pitching this must have been some very talented salespeople... Anecdotally, this is exactly how large consultancies, particularly those who specialize in serving the public sec…
And it is worse in the US because the client is the Romney organisation not the Republican Party - and it definately wont be around next time to learn the lesson.
Re: Inside Team Romney’s whale of an IT meltdown
#168How effective these things actually are in US? Why am I asking... I am in from Czech Republic, where I can't imagine anyone knocking door over door and asking people to vote. Actually, this behavior is so connected here to Jehova's Witnesses (yeah) that it would have only the negative effect. Similarly, I can't imagine any candidate seriously considering calling random people and persuading them to vote. Again, this…
Historically intensive voter contact operations are only cultural acceptable in countries that weren't largely occupied by either the Fascists or the Communists.
So basically it is UK (less Northern Ireland), US, Canada, Australia and a few others. An Italian friend once said to me that if anyone knocked on his door asking how he voted he would stall them at the door, whilst trying to jump out the back window and get away over the hills...
Re: Inside Team Romney’s whale of an IT meltdown
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a stretch to think that a functioning mobile app on election day would have made the difference between Romney winning and losing. The election wasn't really that close. And I say that as someone who voted for him.
It's not a stretch to think that a functioning GOP GOTV campaign could have made the difference in 4 swing states that tipped the election to Obama (CO, FL, OH, VA), where the vote differential was just under 400,000. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/as-natio... https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Au5WjgbQnYrSdFd... Romney had 37,000 field volunteers, plus phone bank. I don't know how many…
The result of Davies fieldwork in UK elections showed that active local party activities (including GOTV) can be worth up to a 2%-4% swing - this is from an election where 2nd generation electoral computing systems were used.
In Scotland we have 3rd generation systems (one system for all elections vertically, local government, Scottish Parliament, Westminster Parliament, European Parliament, and horizontally, 2011, 2008, 2007 back to the 80s).
The US parties be roughly considered as having 2 and half generation systems, so you might expect a difference at the top end of that.
I don't follow US elections that closely but you can work the numbers out.
Re: Inside Team Romney’s whale of an IT meltdown
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
If he can't pick a reliable deputy to manage a single IT project how could he possibly manage a government? The President has to delegate well: Mitt either couldn't or didn't place a key service under someone reliable.
If Romney has to pick n reliable deputies for various things, then for sufficiently large n, he's inevitably going to make a mistake you can pounce on, even if he's really good at picking out people. Good judgement is not an all-or-nothing dichotomy.
Oh, certainly - I would just have thought that getting out the vote is so widely recognized as a key factor in modern campaigns that he'd have put his best people on it. Would we be talking about leadership at all if, say, many of his ads were a little ham-handed?