NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule • Hacker News Board

Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule

#51

Post by hristov » Fri, Mar 26, 2010, 9:31 PM UTC

Eddk wrote: post #11

Very 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…

I don't agree. If they cannot control their contractors, there is no way they can choose and hire competent software engineers.

What they should do is just create an open bidding system for the work and make sure that the bids are well publicized, so that not only IBM and accenture will bid. And then they will pay the bid amount only when the whole system is ready and functioning according to specs and schedule.

Thus any cost overruns are not NYC's problem.

There is a million time keeping apps out there, I am sure there will be plenty of candidates willing to modify their app to the city's requirements.

Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule

#52

Post by raheemm » Fri, Mar 26, 2010, 9:31 PM UTC

A friend of mine works as a trainer on this project and he does a great job because the software is so convoluted - you need a great trainer.

He likely bills $60/hr to a sub-contractor, who then adds in his likely $100 profit and bills SAIC (the main contractor on this project). SAIC probably bills the city $250/hr for my friend's services!

The numbers are guesses but I spoke to my friend and he said that the vast majority of the billing goes to the main contractor and subcontractors.

At any rate, its a big waste.

Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule

#53

Post by SilianRail » Fri, Mar 26, 2010, 9:33 PM UTC

Eddk wrote: post #11

Very 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…

I read Accenture (coughAccidenture*cough) and IBM and up-voted right away.

Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule

#54

Post by SilianRail » Fri, Mar 26, 2010, 9:39 PM UTC

I've always said that 2 smart people can get way more done than an army of consultants in a shorter amount of time. (for the record, I'm an ex-consultant)

But this is business and this is why these companies make as much money as they do. When you are in charge of such a project and your ass is on the line who better to blame than a large Fortune 500 type of company (i.e. Accenture, Deloitte, IBM, etc). You can't get fired for failing a project with a vendor that is considered the "best" but you can for using "Jim's Custom Development Shack".

Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule

#55

Post by siculars » Fri, Mar 26, 2010, 10:11 PM UTC

tjic wrote: post #34

Eddk wrote: post #11

Very 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…

> 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. So you're arguing that the NYC government is incompetent at running a project done by contractors, but it would be better at both FORMING and RUNNING its own team of contractors? Sounds like nonsense to me.

An internal crack IT team is the only way to make something meaningful happen. Consultants should only be brought in when there is no in house capacity/capability. The best way to make applications happen is to have the programmer intimately know the requirements by being on site and intermixed with the end users.

Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule

#56

Post by cma » Fri, Mar 26, 2010, 10:40 PM UTC

wheaties wrote: post #45

Eddk wrote: post #11

Very 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,…

> 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?

Which New York City law mandates this? (not doubting that there may be one)

Hiring someone for the New York City government can take up to 6 months? What is it typically? (which is the only thing we should care about here without reason to believe it would be atypical)

>3) Paperwork. There's massive amounts of it. One of my coworkers spent 1 month writing paperwork for 10 lines of code.

Do you guys work for the city government in NYC? Somewhere comparable?

Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule

#57

Post by mattiss » Fri, Mar 26, 2010, 10:49 PM UTC

mixmax wrote: post #13

jamesbressi wrote: post #2

Hmm... 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…

The problem isn't the product - the problem is the politics.

You would be surprised. A lot of these guys write the most horrific code you will ever see.

Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule

#58

Post by rbranson » Fri, Mar 26, 2010, 11:10 PM UTC

easyfrag wrote: post #19

Eddk wrote: post #11

Very 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…

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…

^^^ This! I was involved on writing an invoicing system that ended up failing. The real intent of management was to try to bring more control to pricing using the project. Management was unable to negotiate this new process, so it ended up being an overpriced spreadsheet and was replaced a few months later when the company switched to Salesforce.

Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule

#59

Post by rbranson » Fri, Mar 26, 2010, 11:20 PM UTC

aero142 wrote: post #48

dpatru wrote: post #25

Why 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.

This is because you can't always trust management to report things properly. My girlfriend works at a liquor store (small business, <50 employees) and they use a biometrics scanner for their clock in/clock out. It is very efficient and prevents the problems I stated. If sizable groups of your organization are cheating the system and your organization is large enough, it's going to be difficult to figure this out.

Re: NY Pays 230 “Consultants” $722M For Project 7 Years Behind Schedule

#60

Post by wakeupthedawn » Fri, Mar 26, 2010, 11:21 PM UTC

ageanm wrote: post #38

gaius wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In consulting it's typical to get paid a quarter of your billing rate, as a rule of thumb. I've seen places where it's a tenth tho'.

As you ascend the ranks of consulting and get to the top 3 shops (McK, BCG, Bain) it drops down to 1/20th to 1/30th. That is once you take into account the disparity between number of hours billed and the number actually spent doing the work.

That type of strategy consulting is completely different from IT consulting. You don't "ascend" from doing IT work at Accenture or IBM into doing management consulting at MBB.