Slashdot Mirror
Glitches in Massive Government Databases?
HBergeron asks: "Rather then post this as another YRO in the litany of new government datamarts there is a more fundamental question for all the coding Slashdot readers out there. This story, in Government Executive magazine, outlines the range of programming glitches in what is a relatively simple database. As a matter of public policy (and taxpayer money) is this level of non-functionality to be expected in these sorts of projects? Is the contractor just ripping off the taxpayers with bad code? How hard is it to write software like this that works?" The article focuses on the SEVIS database, but have others noticed similar trend in other government information systems?
This is the same old software engineering problem, over and over again.
A user who has never written a *COMPLETE* system specification, acutal has no idea what that is, who only knows what he/she does not want.
Software developers/coders/bodies who are not SME's (subject matter experts), making system / software decisions without either the knowledge or guidance to understand the ramifications of those decisions.
Neither users, nor software development companies want to deal with these issues, they would rather just get the money.
That is why most large software development/ service companies have such bad reputations.
According to SEI, (Software Engineering Insitute) over 70 per cent of all software development projects are terminated as failures.
The quote from the original article:
.NET 2003 server with M$ SQL, etc., etc. We did our best to make them consider PHP and the like, because that's what we normally use, but they were willing to pay extra to have that stuff developed in all-M$ stuff! We were told that the reason for that was because their IT was managing only M$ software, and the server was already there, and they couldn't have anything else (e.g. PHP). Fine, I can understand some bureaucracy in IT - that's cool, but imagine my surprise when, after we shipped them a CD with the project, they called us back and asked if it would work with a win2003 server as opposed to a win2k!!! Not only they didn't have the server yet, (or the infrastructure for that matter), but they didn't even know how to install windows! Which brings me to point #4:
.NET is something that, as they say, they 'have been working on for a while, but haven't got it quite yet'! And, when we give them a database dump they have no idea what to do with it and you have to walk them through the process (right-click on the 'Databases', select 'Create New database', click ok...) And they are paying these people!!! Errr... Let me re-phrase that - We are paying the government to employ those dumbheads! Thatnks goodness the network on which that is installed is not connected to the internet - the same idiots are in charge of security as well.
How hard is it to write software like this that works?
Wow! Well said! My grandma couldn't have done better. In other words, please define 'works' for me. How many blue screens a day constitute 'works' and how many are too many?
Also, since we are at it, I want to reflect back on the latest project we have done. Incidentally, for the government. Before asking if a vendor is ripping the taxpayer off we need to consider how the government mismanages the resources it has. Consider the facts:
1. The project itself was fairly small and simple. I'd say it would normally take about 2 months to develop and deploy, but it needed to be done before the end of the fiscal year, so it was a 'now-or-never' situation, and was a horrible time-crunch. We had slightly more than half the time necessary to do it, but they won't even try to install it till probably the end of the year! The quality of code would've been greately improved if we coded, say 40 hrs/week instead of pulling all-nighters.
2. They tried to keep tabs on the development by scheduling 'technical meetings' over the phone. While there is nothing wrong with that per se, in a time-crunch that was a horrible waste of time. The smartest things we've heard from them were questions like 'Are you using hungarian notation?' or 'is your code well-documented?'....
3. They insisted on
4. Their IT is kick-ass. As in 'their ass needs to be kicked real hard'. Installing a a windows server is a mountain of a task for them. Installing
Yes, it is true that some contractors will rip off the government (and it is really the government's responsibility to make sure that doesn't happen! But that's not the point). The point is that even if they have a perfectly good product developed by honest people, they are still remarkably talented at screwing it up. Bureaucracy and lots of idiots in charge of hiring people are to blame.
Jobs? Which jobs?
> And the government system of going with the lowest bidder is bound to cause some problems
I worked in a state agency, and the fact that we were required to take bids didn't really change who we purchased from. We just chose the vendor we liked best and justified it by writing the project needs around that vendor. They did that with employees too. When a new job opened, they often had someone in line for the position. However, equal opportunity required that the do interviews for the position. To justify the person they desired, they would write the job description and requirements based on the skills of the individual they liked. They would then schedule interviews even though they already had someone chosen for the position, just to meet requirements. I suppose they could have changed their mind if they found someone who was absolutely fabulous, but it's hard to convince an employer how great you are when in the back of their mind they don't think the interview is going to matter anyway.
I've worked on some government contracts, and in my opinion a big part of the problem is in the GSA schedule rate structure that the Federal uses for contractors. It is much more profitable for a contractor on a government project to put many junior people on a project rather than a few senior people, for the same amount of revenue. For instance, a junior developer may cost a contractor $50/hr with overhead, but the contractor is able to bill the government for that junior developer at $150/hr., a spread of $100/hr. A senior developer may cost $100/hr with overhead, but can only be billed to the government at $175/hr, a spread of only $75. Furthermore, the contractor can bill more hours of junior time than senior time under a given budget cap, compounding the effects of the greater spread. Thus, the incentives for contractors are to use as many junior developers as possible on a project, to increase the profit margin.
Unfortunately, It's a rule of thumb in this industry that a few good programmers are a lot more productive than many unskilled ones. The result is that many government IT projects are shoddily built by well-meaning but inexperienced developers who are put in that position by a contracting structure that fails to recognize the realities of the IT industry. Contractors are just responding rationally to the incentives that are presented to them.
These numbers are examples -- in fact the situation may be even worse. Federal government contracts vary in their rate structures, and many are stingier than this. It may well be impossible to bring on a senior developer as a subcontractor because the maximum hourly rate that the government will pay on a project is lower than the cost of the senior developer.
A prime contractor that I worked with staffed a large WebObjects project for the Department of Defense with a dozen or so low-paid, fresh out of community college drones. Every six months -- when a project review was due -- they would bring us on board as subcontractors for six to eight weeks. In that time, two or three of us would take the code base from where it was four months ago and bring it close enough to the required progress to get the contract renewed, and then the prime contractor would say "goodbye" and toss us out. Four months or so would pass by, with their people making little meaningful progress, and we would get a panicked call for six or eight weeks of more work to get by the next project review. (Did I mention that the prime contractor didn't pay the bills for one set of work until they needed us for the next project review? It got so bad that at one point we had to treat them as though their credit rating was zero, and demanded that payment for each week's worth of work be deposited in an escrow account before we would continue.)
By the way, this rate structure is not unique to government IT projects. Other types of government projects display the same professional services rate structure. When I worked for a (then) Big Six accounting firm as an economist, most consulting projects for corporate clients were staffed with a ratio of one partner and two or three senior managers to six or eight associates. However, the Federal government group was staffed with a ratio of one partner and one senior manager to twenty or so associates. I talked to the senior manager, and he told me that (a) the associates in the government contracting group were paid much less than we were on the corporate side since they billed out at a lower rate, and (b) the only way they could make money was to use lots of cheap associates because senior people could only break even at best at government rates.
Ya know, it'd be nice to see a GSA person squirm over this sort of thing in front of Congress some time. Then again, Congress may be part of the problem, as they'd rather generate lots of jobs for constituents, instead of a few.
--Paul