Slashdot Mirror
Open Source Could Have Saved Ontario Hundreds of Millions
Platinum Dragon writes "Ontario's auditor-general released a blistering report this week detailing how successive governments threw away a billion dollars developing an integrated electronic medical record system. This CBC article highlights an open source system developed at McMaster University that is already used by hundreds of doctors in Ontario. As one of the developers points out, 'we don't have very high-priced executives and consultants,' some of whom cost Ontario taxpayers $2,700 per day."
The McMaster University researchers claim their system could be rolled out for two percent of the billion-dollars-plus already spent on the project. The report itself (PDF) also makes note of the excessive consultation spending: "By 2008, the Ministry’s eHealth Program Branch had fewer than 30 full-time employees but was engaging more than 300 consultants, a number of whom held senior management positions."
I worked (through a contract company) at the Ontario Ministry of Health during the Y2K crunch, doing upgrades and support, handling a small team of guys.
It was a decent place to work, but the waste is incredible. We were getting paid 18 to 20 bucks an hour, but the companies handling us were either 2 or 3 deep. And each one took a cut.
One overheard phone call indicated that the top company in the food chain was getting over a hundred dollars an hour for some of us.
And another guy who was getting paid directly was whining on the phone about only making 125 dollars an hour managing the operation... though none of us ever saw him lift a finger to actually manage anything. The managers we reported to were great though.
So the contract companies took way too much money. That was issue number one.
The other was that for the amount of cubicles they had filled, it sure didn't seem like there was enough work to keep everyone busy. And as government employees they get good pay and LOTS of vacation.
And some people were getting paid WAAAY too much for what they were doing at work. Nothing like finding gigabytes of japanese teenagers pissing on things, and bestiality porn on a directors computer.
They must have buried that little discovery because when I Googled him last he was still working there.
Of course, on the plus side, since I was one of the more experienced guys I tended to stick by the phone to manage and support the other team members, and got to read Slashdot all day between phone calls and running down to help when one of the guys ran into trouble.
I wonder if I could get back on there.... :)
Does your car-insurance company try to screw you the same way?
Insurance companies (car insurance included) are renound for trying to screw over their customers and weasel out of paying out. As an example, if I crashed and wrote off my car tomorrow, the money I get from my insurance company will in no way buy me a car of the same age and condition - they will pay me the amount it'd cost me to get a rust-bucket of the same age at auction. Sure, it's better than nothing, but it still sucks. Luckily, so far all my insurance claims have been for stuff that was very clearly another driver's fault (there wasn't any weaselling-out-room) and didn't result in my car being written of, so the damage got fixed at no cost to myself.
Every year my car insurance company puts up my premium by about 50%, and so I cancel the policy and apply for a new one as a "new customer" - this isn't just one insurance company, *every* car insurance company I've used does this, on the assumption that the customer is too lazy to shop around. IMHO this sort of "disloyalty bonus" constitutes "screwing over the customer".
As another example, in the news today - the regulator has just slapped down a lot of mortgage payment protection insurance companies (i.e. those that pay your mortgage when you get made redundant) for doing too much weaselling out of payouts after the recession hit.
http://blog.nexusuk.org