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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

#171

Post by dalke »

jeffdavis wrote: post #164
dalke wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did we read different articles? The one I read says "The report finds plenty of blame to go around. The ultimate cause of the fiasco, it says, was the fact the grant implementers did not conduct a capacity or use study before spending $24 million." This does not place the ultimate blame on Cisco. You say "what [West Virginia] wanted", but the article shows how Cisco was unable to show that they knew what WV wanted. F…

"Cisco was unable to show that they knew what WV wanted" Yes, they have a contract. That is the best indication possible that the customer wants what you are selling. If I trust someone else with my money, and they transfer that trust over to a salesperson, then they have violated my trust. I don't want to hear about "blame to go around" and "the salesman should have sold us less stuff". Maybe apply some shame or san…

This is a modified version of the Prisoner's Dilemma. If there is trust then overall costs go down and the number of sales goes up. This is a net win for both sides.

If one side does not follow standard business practices, which the auditor argues happened here, then that one side may get better benefits. But this is actually an iterated prisoner's dilemma, and the standard tit-for-tat strategy of the Prisoner's Dilemma makes good sense. That is, shut out Cisco from future contracts for a period of time.

This encourages future vendors, who want repeat business, to stay in a regime of trust and relieves WV of having to pay for staff with full domain expertise on all contract-related matters. A role of the auditors is to identify these problems after the fact and use debarment as a way to disincentivize this vendors from this behavior.

This isn't naive. It's basic game theory.

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

#172

Post by jlarocco »

Having worked on a government contract before, this doesn't surprise me at all.

They were going to spend all the money the feds gave them. Whether they spent it on over powered routers or "consulting" or something else, it was all going to be spent by the end of the project.

There are enough projects overbudget that being on budget looks really good. And there's always a concern with being under budget that next time the feds won't hand out so much money, and you might really need it then.

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

#173

Post by Oxryly »

yogo wrote: post #83
gchpaco wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those charged with enforcing the rules are not infrequently in bed with those violating the rules; "regulatory capture".

Off-topic comment but it seems like some kind of trend to intentionally use double negatives in comments. I understand that sometimes using the double negative could be an important distinction, e.g. "not uncommon" does not necessarily mean common, but in this case I think one has to go out of the way to say "not infrequently." Maybe it's just me but I had to re-read that sentence to be sure I understood what was sai…

I mentally cross out the "not" and the "un" or "in"; then it reads correctly.

e.g.:

  "not uncommon" becomes
  "      common"

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

#174

Post by tzs »

crusso wrote: post #156
tzs wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Since the sequester is really just a reduction of an increase and not really a cut, how is it ineffective?

It may just be a reduction of an increase if you look at the TOTAL Federal budget, but for many individual agencies it is an actual deep cut to their budgets.

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

#175

Post by gaius »

arethuza wrote: post #161
cynwoody wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>One main difference is that public companies are required by law to have independent auditors. Also, companies can go broke. Compared to that sanction, independent auditors are a band-aid.

"companies can go broke" Apart from the "too big to fail" banks...

Tell that to Lehman Bros. Oh wait, you can't, they went broke.

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

#176

Post by gaius »

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…

I love that this story starts "sleeping with somebody" and ends with "solid relationship". There's a RomCom script in there somewhere, if the IT thing doesn't work out.

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

#177

Post by gaius »

MattBearman wrote: post #97
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…

I've seen examples of this all over the UK as well, when ever it's a Government tender the quotes were always much higher than they need to be, and they always HAVE to have the most expensive, 'enterprise' equipment, whether they need it or not. I've never understood it myself. Governments are funded by tax money, and the people involved in these companies that love overcharging the Government pay taxes. Congratulati…

Most of them are contractors, i.e. they're not on PAYE, they can use the dividend trick.

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

#178

Post by vacri »

arethuza wrote: post #116
vacri wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't want it, ship it to Melbourne! We've been gagging for a light rail link to the airport, which is about that distance away. Unfortunately the too-powerful taxi cartel and the Melb airport corporation keep blocking it because they're making too much moolah.

As far as I am concerned you can have it for £1 billion plus shipping costs.... [NB We will have a spare aircraft carrier going "cheap" as well...]

Nah, we don't take proper care of our aircraft carriers and tend to crash them into things.

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

#179

Post by ripter »

megablast wrote: post #140
jeffdavis wrote: post #99

I was surprised how much blame this article lays at the feet of Cisco. What did they do except sell the customer what they wanted? Sure, they might have been more noble if they put on the breaks in the name of the taxpayers, but that could hardly be expected. It takes a lot of nerve for someone who just wasted my money (federal dollars) to try to blame it on the other party for fulfilling the order.

It is not one or the other, it is both of them. If Cisco wants to be treated like untrustworthy rip off artists, then they acted the right way. People will take note.

If I go to an Apple store and buy a $3,000 computer is it apple's fault that I only needed an iPad? Hell no. I'm the one that ordered a $3,000 computer, signed off on the agreement, and forked over the cash.

Cisco acted like a business, you can't blame them for that.

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

#180

Post by ripter »

'The auditor's office sent off a fairly testy e-mail to Cisco noting that the 3945 routers were not appropriate for most West Virginia deployments—even according to Cisco's own literature. "I would appreciate an explanation as to why you believe the 3945 routers are not oversized and misconfigured for hundreds of locations," the auditor concluded, "and, thus, a significant over expenditure of millions of dollars for Cisco equipment."'

Did I miss some part where they contracted Cisco to visit every location and assess it's needs and build an order according to that?

If you order a bunch of 3945 routers then why is it Cisco's fault for selling you a bunch of 3945 routers?

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