Man it must really suck to be the guy thats only making 100k but doing all the work, and finding out that some guy in the next cubicle negotiated 600k, and he spends all his time dickin' around with the secretary.
NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule
41–50 of 69 posts
Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule
#42Government is a giant Principal-Agent problem.
Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes a small competent team could build the IT system for a fraction of the time and money. However they would only be successful if the business processes were well defined which I'm willing to bet they were not. New IT systems often come along with changes in process, a well defined IT project should produce a system that follows and complements those processes. Instead what we often get are "boil the ocean" project…
Yes a small competent team could build the IT system for a fraction of the time and money A team that can do that AND is willing to navigate the treacherous minefields of internal politics at a government department doesn't exist.
You wouldn't tolerate a stressy messy job for a fraction of 722 million? Say, one tenth?
Sign me up.
Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule
#44State Government RFP opportunities can be frustratingly bureaucratic at first, but there are real opportunities for IT staff augmentation and IT project proposals, but there is a ton of competition for these limited opportunities. For instance: State of Texas has 400+ approved vendors on their roll, S. Carolina has 200+ vendors. Some states are more progressive and permit electronic proposal submissions. Others still require submitting 6 identical binders for each proposal plus a CD or USB drive will all documents in electronic form. Because they can.
Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule
#45Very common situation in government contracts and dealing with consultants in general. I am sure IBM and Accenture are in there some how. NYC government could have created a small crack-team of internal IT people who could build the system for less than a 5th of the current cost. Unfortunately most organizations view IT work as something fit for mercenaries and if you ask any King who has ever had to rely on mercenar…
No, NYC couldn't have created a small, crack team for several reasons:
1) Government Software jobs pay less than civilian. It can take up to 6 months of paperwork to hire someone. While that paperwork is in process the job applicant must wait and can't be hired. Guess what kind of developers the government gets?
2) Requirements, they've never heard of them (sarcasm.) My last project had the language changed 3 times, went from a plug-in to a stand-alone app to an API, and during the 4 years had 3 different "final" decision makers. Feature creep was more like feature tidal wave.
3) Paperwork. There's massive amounts of it. One of my coworkers spent 1 month writing paperwork for 10 lines of code.
I could go on but the government does everything in its power to interfere with rapid development and then wonders why costs overrun.
Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule
#46There is a market for an off-the-shelf system or maybe customizable system with the same core that cities can purchase and install without the need to do development. Maybe with different levels of strictness as far as scanning in employees is concerned (biometric scanning vs. RFID cards, etc).
Most likely it's more than time tracking. It's also paychecks. And once you get into paychecks in government, there are LOTS of nasty little loopholes and special rules that apply only to this small set of people, etc, etc, etc.
Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule
#47Very common situation in government contracts and dealing with consultants in general. I am sure IBM and Accenture are in there some how. NYC government could have created a small crack-team of internal IT people who could build the system for less than a 5th of the current cost. Unfortunately most organizations view IT work as something fit for mercenaries and if you ask any King who has ever had to rely on mercenar…
The thing is here, no-one is incentivized to deliver. The bureaucrats who specify the system don't really care as it's not their money, and they justify their positions by sitting in meeting and writing reports that only each other will ever read. Then there are the consultants who are paid hourly... Typically it goes like this: Bureaucrats: Here is a 1000-page spec document that we have spent 3 years writing. We cap…
No, the thing here its plain robbery
Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule
#48Why does NYC need a custom payroll system? Government agencies are supposed to be staffed by employees who can be trusted by the public not to abuse sensitive personal information such as is contained in tax returns. Yet, these same employees are considered so personally untrustworthy by the government that it is justified in spending hundreds of millions of dollars to design a payroll system whose primary feature se…
Yeah. This seems strange to me as well. If you need biometrics to prevent people from reporting hours when they aren't even in the building, why would you even want them to show up in the first place. If you get them to show up in order to collect a paycheck that doesn't mean they are going to do useful work. I'm guessing the problem is that you can't fire public employees.
Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule
#49Hmm... sounds like an opportunity. Juan Gonzalez says this is happening all around the country with cities and states converting to digital systems. The consultants are being paid $400,000 a year. Nice. Because it is a capital expenditure no one knew what these people were being paid so you have to dig into the city records. For what? Basically a digital payroll and time-keeping system with features such as "biometri…
If you are a startup, leave government contracts for someone else to figure out. By the time it comes thru and makes you a boat load of money, you will be long dead (as a company). This was said by PG or someone definitely smarter than me.
I do know of one Start Up that is making huge amounts of $$$ from the government: http://www.palantirtech.com/government
.
It seems that if you know how to navigate the red tape and can deliver a compelling product you can make millions.
Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I consulted via a firm, they regularly billed clients $200-$300/hr for the work of developers and operations folks who were getting paid ~$20-25/hr. Granted, this was in fly-over country, but the gap between billable-hour and developer-hour is quite often massive.
The upside of this is that their customers are used to paying those rates. If you are self-employed or work for a small consultancy you can undercut them and still make a bag of money.
can you? My experience has been that large corporations, never mind the government, are perfectly happy to pay 2x or 3x the rates in order to deal with someone large.