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Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

arstechnica.com

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Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#151

Post by emperorcezar »

I grew up in West Virginia. I also was pretty involved in the computer operation at my high school. The "head" of IT was a math teacher they suckered into doing all the work.

Anyhow. I remember when they decided they needed a domain server. What they eventually came back with was a two year old model HP tower server that ran over $4k. It was insane. They could have gotten something new for much much less, but all the explanation I could get was that they had a contract and had to buy the items listed in that contract.

There is a culture of corruption and it is prevalent in not only the public, but also the private sector.

Another story is when I was in a diner years later and heard my old social studies teacher asking for a bribe from someone to get a job in the coal mines. I felt pretty bad because I believe he got his money and thus his power from years before when I told him to buy Google and others stock.

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#152

Post by ropable »

nikcub wrote: post #8

I have first hand experience with this, although in Australia. My first job was working for a IT development and solutions shop (this is over 17 years ago) where they won the bid to rollout the internet and network gateways across a large number of Australian government schools. We were doing similar work for private school at the same time, and the process for the public and private school could not be more differen…

Sometimes I feel like the only long-term Australian (state) government-employed IT professional reading HN that doesn't regularly witness widespread corruption, incompetence and overspending. Seriously, in almost ten years, the very worst thing I've seen is someone being fired over stealing an old desktop PC instead of disposing of it via proper channels.

I've always worked with people that, even if not cutting-edge geniuses, are generally more than competent. They don't accept dodgy tender because they know the value of what they're buying, and they certainly don't overspend on gold-plated crap because our budgets are always stretched to the limit.

I would genuinely like to work for one of these mythical government departments where money flows like water. In my experience, the budget is always barely enough to fulfil our role and all these stories about profligate government waste are little more than hearsay.

Then again, I've never worked in the Health or Mining industries.

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#153

Post by crazygringo »

> Getting any of the money back seems unlikely at this point, but the legislative auditor does have one solid recommendation to make. The State Purchasing division should determine whether Cisco's actions in this matter fall afoul of section 5A-3-33d of the West Virginia Code, and whether the company should be barred from bidding on future projects.

Cisco is a public company with a fiduciary duty to make money. You should assume that companies are going to try to fleece you whenever possible. Unless they committed some kind of contractual breach or fraud, they're not the problem.

The fault here is clearly with one or multiple people in the government. This is the kind of gross misconduct for which it feels like firing isn't even close to enough -- this kind of managerial incompetence really deserves at least a short stint in a white-collar prison somewhere.

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#154

Post by RickHull »

jeltz wrote: post #133
InclinedPlane wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government takes money from people involuntarily, corporations receive money due to voluntary transactions. If I never buy a product from Apple or Exxon, there's no problem with that. If I don't pay taxes I go to jail.

Your comparison is incorrect. The citizens of a company are its shareholders, not its customers. And if you are a shareholder the company is indeed spending YOUR money.

This is misleading. Becoming a shareholder is a one-time event. Taxes occur continuously. Governments get nearly all of their income from citizens on an involuntary basis. Enterprise gets a one-time infusion of funds from investors, and then nearly all of their income is from customers, all on a voluntary basis.

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#155

Post by jeltz »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #142
jeltz wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comparison is incorrect. The citizens of a company are its shareholders, not its customers. And if you are a shareholder the company is indeed spending YOUR money.

Becoming a shareholder is voluntary. And if you discover that a company is not doing enough to prevent fraud then you can divest yourself of that company. This in itself is another form of negative feedback which exists much more strongly for corporations than for government. Because individuals divesting themselves of a public stock company will result in the stock price dropping which will have a negative impact on…

Yes, it is easier to switch ownership of companies than it is to move between countries. But that does not change the fact that the closest thing to citizens a company has is its owners.

And as pointed out in another reply a huge difference between companies and most governments is that countries tend to get the vast majority of their funds from taxes while companies hopefully should get their money from customers. But there are exceptions to this rule, some countries do not have any taxes.

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#156

Post by crusso »

tzs wrote: post #30
joshlane4 wrote: post #7

this kind of nonsense is what people want to prevent the federal government from doing...bring on the sequester!

If this is the kind of nonsense you want to stop, that approach is ineffective to the point of idiocy.

Since the sequester is really just a reduction of an increase and not really a cut, how is it ineffective? Seems like it's the only thing that even kind of looks like a cut that might go into effect in our lifetimes.

Funny how the Feds were fine with a 2% increase in payroll taxes for consumers but a 2% cut in the increase of their budget is going to bring on Armageddon.

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#157

Post by papsosouid »

This should surprise no one. This sort of nonsense is the entire reason cisco exists as a company. Their products are underpowered, overpriced, and their software is incredibly unreliable. Scamming big entities with closed bid processes into buying millions of dollars worth of equipment is cisco's bread and butter.

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#158

Post by papsosouid »

MertsA wrote: post #77

Just nit picking but there are several places in the article that are incorrect such as "The West Virginia legislature at peak times can have over 600 internal users and numerous guests accessing "multiple Web servers, up to eight simultaneous live audio webcasts, multiple SQL servers, and multiple Google search appliances located in the Legislature's server farms." Despite all this, the legislature doesn't even use…

Why is that clear? Cisco sells plenty of "layer 3 switches", they are switch hardware with basic routing functionality available in the IOS. It is entirely likely that the quote is referring to a catalyst 29xx or something which is like 1/10 the cost of the routers the article was talking about.

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#159

Post by EliRivers »

rlpb wrote: post #125

From the article: > the legislative auditor concluded that the company "had a moral responsibility"... Since when do corporations have any kind of responsibility, other than to make as much profit as possible? Expecting anything else is futile. If something needs to be fixed, it is in mechanisms to restrain this kind of behaviour where it is in the public interest. Demanding that corporations have morals is not the s…

In some countries corporations effectively do have morals and it does seem to work for them. Many German companies see themselves as a partnership between employees, customers and society.

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#160

Post by wildmusings »

Caveat Emptor. Cisco is out to make as much money as they can, they have no duty to save the government money. West Virginia's procurement process was irresponsible and wasteful and now they want to shift the blame to Cisco in order to cover their own incompetence. If you overpay for something, it's your fault..
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