Anatomy of the VA's IT Meltdown

Lucas123 writes "According to a Computerworld story, a relatively simple breakdown in communications led to a day-long systems outage within the VA's medical centers. The ultimate result of the outage: the cancellation of a project to centralize IT systems at more than 150 medical facilities into four regional data processing centers. The shutdown 'left months of work to recover data to update the medical records of thousands of veterans. The procedural failure also exposed a common problem in IT transformation efforts: Fault lines appear when management reporting shifts from local to regional.'"

Comments

I'm in the outsourcing business

[gelfling]

And I've never heard of anyone running even a piece of a datacenter on Vista. Everyone complains that outsourcing companies are too expensive, but honestly, we're a LOT smarter than the fools who implemented this. We would never have this mistake.

Can't wait.....

[Salo2112]

I can't wait until all of our health care is provided by the government, seeing as how it's being done so well on a smaller scale.

Re:They messed up everything they could mess up.

[Skyshadow]

First off, please read close enough to discern which VISTA they are talking about - it's kinda spelled out there.

Yes, thank you. I caught that from the four posts above yours, all of which pointed that out and the first of which was posted one hour and one minute before this post.

I apologize for my appalling error of seeing the word "Vista" in an article about computing and making the unforgivable error of assuming they were talking about the current OS from the biggest software maker in the world, and I realize that this invalidates anything else I could possibly have to say. I'll flog myself when I get home.

Now, to the point of your post:

Second, this whole "don't touch it - it's new" mindset chafes me to no end. 2-3 years in IT is an EON. For most products that leaves you at 1 or 2 releases behind, with all the security problems and bugs of 2 years ago. (Yep, that product you rely on today has just as many bugs as that new one on the shelf - they're just DIFFERENT bugs.) A product matures by being IN the field, IN use, and ACTIVELY FIXED in response to support calls. It might surprise you that software companies DO actually test their products before releasing them - no amount of testing can hit every configuration of hardware/software/business needs/obscure requirements out there.

This is true. And you're exactly right when you say that a product matures in the field, in use and being ACTIVELY FIXED in response to support calls. In fact, that's almost exactly my point -- the spot where you're incorrect is when you suggest that an OS that's been in the field for 2-3 years will have bugs of the same potential impact as a new OS.

How can I say this? Because after 2-3 years of maturing in the field, in use and being ACTIVELY FIXED, the big serious holes in the OS are going to be found and either fixed by the vendor or at least known. And it's going to be the bugs that the vendor, despite the testing that they DO, will have by definition missed in new releases. No amount of testing can hit every configuration of hardware/software/business needs/obscure requirements out there, after all.

Now, if you're running a system to host your blog or serve as a file server or do any of the mundane tasks that most servers spend their lives doing, this is no big deal. This is not one of those tasks -- this is a MRS (Medical Records System), a system that has literal life-or-death ramifications associated with it. In that situation, it pays to play it safe even when it means you're left dealing with slightly older (and time-tested) tech.

Go to any company that has an absolute mission-critical system and you'll see this in action: Big HMOs and other MRS users are still on older Windows versions for those applications, airlines still use mainframes for their scheduling, etc. Now, that could just be a coincidence, but I doubt it.