CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs • Hacker News Board

Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs

#321

Post by acdha » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 6:11 AM UTC

eaton wrote: post #309

ethbr0 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty much what I've learned doing 5+ years of big enterprise consulting (though not government). If the hardest / longest part of any project requires domain knowledge and personal relationships, then why are you outsourcing that part? I don't care if it's not a core competency / something you can do. Make it one.

One of the biggest challenges for large orgs is that the knowledge they need to do a given thing is almost always present inside the organization — but it's fragmented and scattered across different teams, roles, and balkanized administrative boundaries such that the big picture is almost never available. A high-quality consulting partner works to build the relationships and internal lines of communication that are n…

That last dynamic you described is exactly what I saw at a very well known university: upper management knew they weren’t getting the accurate details through the middle management filter, but shied away from fixing the cultural problems. Instead, a major consulting company was charging a considerable amount per hour to have 24 year olds with expensive suits interview the actual workers, summarize what they’d been telling their management for years, and present it directly to the senior level. Fixing the system would have saved millions but required fights they weren’t constitutionally well suited for.

Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs

#322

Post by j45 » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 6:13 AM UTC

acdha wrote: post #317

ryanmarsh wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On engagements like these most billable hours are spent waiting on the client to make trivial decisions or give access to data/systems. Deloitte doesn’t usually hire dummies. IME it’s always the client being a total swamp creature. The high bill rate is for your pain and suffering from having to deal with them.

> Deloitte doesn’t usually hire dummies. IME it’s always the client being a total swamp creature. This has not been my experience, which is really to say that the world is big enough that you can find any combination of blame imaginable somewhere. Once you have misaligned incentives no part of the dynamic can be relied on not to cause problems.

When billing hourly it is more profitable (and not always ethical) to hire average people than top performers in every role.

This is true, too often, in poorly run and ineffective consulting firms who optimize best practices to mean what is best for them.

Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs

#323

Post by NearAP » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 6:14 AM UTC

fractallyte wrote: post #298

nataz wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy gets it. Development is literally the simplest part of the problem set. The intersection of domain expertise, contracting/procurement creativity, and technical evaluation is the tough part to wrangle. Getting to the point where development can start is 95% of the battle in my experience. Not to trivialize the actual development portion of the project, but most missteps happen early, dooming projects before a…

Wait! If there was a sane set of APIs and data interchange formats that was standard across the whole system , development would be the simplest part. It's because they have to shoehorn their solution into a morass of garbage software, that this turned into such a complex task. The real answer is to dump ALL these huge contractors, and their 'solutions', and make something new and better, with proper engineers direct…

>>> with engineers directing the process

This is usually not the solution. You have to understand the requirements/know your actual users. Engineers don’t necessarily do this well. They build with the latest tech but as you see in this example, the primary users are older people who can’t use latest tech

Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs

#324

Post by ethbr0 » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 6:15 AM UTC

acdha wrote: post #321

eaton wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the biggest challenges for large orgs is that the knowledge they need to do a given thing is almost always present inside the organization — but it's fragmented and scattered across different teams, roles, and balkanized administrative boundaries such that the big picture is almost never available. A high-quality consulting partner works to build the relationships and internal lines of communication that are n…

That last dynamic you described is exactly what I saw at a very well known university: upper management knew they weren’t getting the accurate details through the middle management filter, but shied away from fixing the cultural problems. Instead, a major consulting company was charging a considerable amount per hour to have 24 year olds with expensive suits interview the actual workers, summarize what they’d been te…

Absolutely, but this is essentially saying "We're okay paying a 2-10% tax on our revenue, forever."

I think that's the reason you tend to see these unhealthy dynamics in extremely conservative, quasi-monopoly industries (government, financial, healthcare), where there's no real question of if they'll be a going concern. And no real rewards / attempts to outperform at the cost of increased risk.

Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs

#325

Post by angry_octet » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 6:17 AM UTC

pjscott wrote: post #305

eigenvector wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now think of the problem in reverse, from the government's side. Why are they contracting it out when all of the most difficult aspects involve integrating with government systems, policies and personnel - things that government already knows how to do? "Because we don't have the expertise to do software development." The comments in this thread, which I fully agree with by the way, just cement my belief that if gove…

Does the government, in fact, know how to do those things? How would we know if they did or didn't? I notice that they spend oddly large amounts of money on anything for which we know what the cost roughly should be -- e.g. CDC web sites -- and don't seem to do so very quickly or very well. Should we assume that they're a lot more competent at things we know less about?

Agencies are less likely to be competent in non core areas. This should not be surprising. There is no career path for you doing software in an agency like the CDC run by bio science people. Same for the Air Force, which is run by fast jet pilots, the Congress by lawyers and liars, Commerce by thieves, etc. Even banks and trading firms, who live and die by software, are run by accountants and economists.

Unless an organization recognizes the core importance of software and carves out a specialisation stream and C level ownership of it, they rarely achieve more than brief or isolated competence.

This is the reason why SV is so appealing -- nowhere else do SWEs hold sway over entire companies and industries.

Govt can do excellent software if it becomes a priority, they could pay competitive wages (there are special pay scales for doctors and lawyers), but they choose not to because of risk aversion from politicians, who mistakenly believe they can outsource the risk.

For something like this, paying Eventbrite to do it wouldn't have been a bad place to start. But the fat cat consulting firms never have domain expertise beyond getting Govt contracts.

Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs

#326

Post by ddingus » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 6:18 AM UTC

didibus wrote: post #13

I just don't understand these software deals, the price is so high. At 44 million, you can hire 146 engineers each paid 300k for a full year. Trust me, you need much less to build something like this, and there's no excuse for it to suck so bad. I'm also curious, anyone know where the development actually happened? Did Deloitte further subcontracted out? Was it outsourced?

And the government can own the code, publish, and as the site finishes up, that team can proceed to apply all they learned and built to other pressing tasks.

A decade of that, and a whole lot of government would be awesome.

Of course, these arguments have been made many times. Money in politics prevents it.

I have presented them. I have watched large donations and a couple nice dinners make the whole idea go away.

:(

Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs

#327

Post by L_Rahman » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 6:19 AM UTC

eaton wrote: post #309

ethbr0 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty much what I've learned doing 5+ years of big enterprise consulting (though not government). If the hardest / longest part of any project requires domain knowledge and personal relationships, then why are you outsourcing that part? I don't care if it's not a core competency / something you can do. Make it one.

One of the biggest challenges for large orgs is that the knowledge they need to do a given thing is almost always present inside the organization — but it's fragmented and scattered across different teams, roles, and balkanized administrative boundaries such that the big picture is almost never available. A high-quality consulting partner works to build the relationships and internal lines of communication that are n…

Critically, if someone within the org volunteers to organize and manage the cross departmental knowledge they'll be shut down by people within the company for trying to accumulate power or stepping into someone else's turf.

Only an outsider can safely talk to everyone. They aren't a threat because they aren't part of the company and therefore can't take over.

Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs

#328

Post by Gunax » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 6:19 AM UTC

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #30

ndiscussion wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's my money. Not a company's. To anyone who disagrees, how is this statement wrong?

It’s 0.00275% of the income tax paid annually ($44M/$1.6T)and an even smaller amount of the total tax. Assuming you’re an average taxpayer, it cost you about thirty one cents ($44M/143M people). If you’re a median taxpayer it’s even less. This is a giant fuck up, but way out of perspective. Even with all the other fuckups, the wasted portion of your taxes surely isn’t enough for heads to roll.

I want my 31 cents back.

Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs

#329

Post by rewgs » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 6:19 AM UTC

ndiscussion wrote: post #90

mewse wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why can't we speak figuratively anymore? Because it’s less than a month since people stormed the US capital, literally erecting a guillotine and literally calling for politicians they disliked to be hanged. How is this hard for you to understand? If you want to speak figuratively, then maybe don’t do it using exactly the same speech that other people are demonstrably using and acting upon literally. EDIT: “gallows”…

It's okay, the gallows was obviously fake as well. Loving the political downvotes btw, does this gallows, made with 2x4's, look like it would hold a body? https://www.ourquadcities.com/news/national-news/capitol-mob... I don't mean to offend, I don't mean to say that whoever is downvoting is unintelligent, but it clearly won't hold.

It being probably ineffective is not proof that it's fake. In fact, given who we're talking about I'd say that more or less proves that it was intended for use.

Re: CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs

#330

Post by catlifeonmars » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 6:20 AM UTC

ergocoder wrote: post #286

brundolf wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: why doesn't the government have its own internal software development department at this point? One that's familiar with all the regulatory and bureaoucratic hurdles and the legacy systems, but doesn't have the incentive to grift. For the amount of money they spend on these contracts surely they could afford to pay competitive salaries?

Generally, it's much better for the government to outsource. More competency and reduce corruption. I came from a country where government tries to do all these things in house. It was bad. Paying premium isn't a big problem.

Based on the rest of its thread, it looks like the corruption has also been outsourced.