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IBM contract cost for failure-plagued Phoenix payroll system jumped to $185M

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Re: IBM contract cost for failure-plagued Phoenix payroll system jumped to $185M

#21

Post by sjg007 »

Retric wrote: post #9
jlebrech wrote: post #2

where does someone find government contracts to bid on? you could be like the guys from War Dogs but instead of guns and ammo you trade code. How does anyone knows there's something to bid on or do they only tell IBM? In that case it's hardly IBM's fault is it.

The government creates a Request for Proposal (RFP) listing what the government wants. Companies have some listed period that could be as short as 7 days or as long as 6 months to respond with a Proposal of work including costs. Government then reviews and picks one based on the stated criteria. This might seem like a reasonable solution, but it adds significant overhead.

You also have to be registered in the system and some contracts are especially target to women owned, minority owned small business companies etc...

Re: IBM contract cost for failure-plagued Phoenix payroll system jumped to $185M

#23

Post by pjmorris »

lph wrote: post #8

Mind boggling. What could possibly be so complicated about a payroll system? Does anyone here have insight into this problem space?

One for-instance: taxes. Every jurisdiction (sometimes city, sometimes county, state, country) has rules that they, reasonably, expect to be followed. Not all of those rules were written by reasonable legislatures, and the aggregate code to handle all the cases tends to be large, complicated, and subject to revision.

Re: IBM contract cost for failure-plagued Phoenix payroll system jumped to $185M

#24

Post by protomyth »

lph wrote: post #8

Mind boggling. What could possibly be so complicated about a payroll system? Does anyone here have insight into this problem space?

I've found a good rule of thumb for complications is that projects that are governed by the law of the universe (e.g. chemistry, physics) might be super hard, at least the answer will probably be a widely agreed to pass / fail (e.g. the rocket guidance worked and the rocket did not blow up).

On the other hand, software defined by bureaucrats (e.g. payroll, regulation compliance) is going to be complicated with loopholes and journeys into minutia and logic defying requirements. Its all head space with very little logical basis. Everyone has an opinion and its all probably valid, or at least the invalid is disguised fairly well.

Re: IBM contract cost for failure-plagued Phoenix payroll system jumped to $185M

#25

Post by myth_drannon »

Another "failed" project for Canadian government, this time by Adobe. http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/federal-government-to-downsi...

Since the projects were done by consultancies you can't call it a failure from the consultancy point of view. They managed to milk the government for multiples of the estimated budged and this is a great success for them. That's just how it works - underbid, lock in and then massage the client for x10 of the original budget.

Re: IBM contract cost for failure-plagued Phoenix payroll system jumped to $185M

#26

Post by CupOfJava »

kfk wrote: post #11

The mess is probably on both sides. The issue is that management doesn't care about IT until everything breaks apart. This means IT is seen as cost and not worth the trouble to do well and keep in house. Then of course everything starts falling apart and it's easier to put the fault on the vendors. Of course IBM has its faults, but I'd guess they are more on the overselling side (we can do everything and cheaper and…

IBM has no incentive to oversell:

> "IBM Canada was the only company to bid on the government's pay modernization project known as Phoenix."

Re: IBM contract cost for failure-plagued Phoenix payroll system jumped to $185M

#27

Post by protomyth »

jlebrech wrote: post #2

where does someone find government contracts to bid on? you could be like the guys from War Dogs but instead of guns and ammo you trade code. How does anyone knows there's something to bid on or do they only tell IBM? In that case it's hardly IBM's fault is it.

In the US, you can look to the "Federal Register", but you will be digging through a lot of other stuff also.

https://www.federalregister.gov/

Re: IBM contract cost for failure-plagued Phoenix payroll system jumped to $185M

#28

Post by raesene6 »

The public sector in a number of countries seems addicted to these large-scale high risk forms of procurement.

Instead of running a larger number of smaller projects, which would be harder for them to adminster, there's a temptation to lump it all into one mega-project and shift the responsibility to a consulting company.

The problem with that approach is, of course, that its almost impossible to accurately specify all the requirements of the mega-project up front, so there are lots of amendments, and as any consultant knows amendements are where you make your money as by the time they come along the client is committed to the project, so you have the advantage in negotiations.

Unfortunately the litany of failed projects that follow this model, doesn't seem to deter public sector organisations from following them.

I don't doubt similar things happen in the private sector, but failures in the public sector tend to be more visible.

Re: IBM contract cost for failure-plagued Phoenix payroll system jumped to $185M

#29

Post by look_lookatme »

myth_drannon wrote: post #25

Another "failed" project for Canadian government, this time by Adobe. http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/federal-government-to-downsi... Since the projects were done by consultancies you can't call it a failure from the consultancy point of view. They managed to milk the government for multiples of the estimated budged and this is a great success for them. That's just how it works - underbid, lock in and then massage th…

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