NYC Drops $722M On CityTime Attendance System

theodp writes "New York City is reportedly paying 230 consultants an average annual salary of $400K for a computer project that is seven years behind schedule and vastly over budget. The payments continue despite Mayor Bloomberg's admission that the computerized timekeeping and payroll system — dubbed CityTime — is 'a disaster.' Eleven CityTime consultants rake in more than $600K annually, with three of them making as much as $676,000. The 40 highest-paid people on the project bill taxpayers at least $500K a year. Some of the consultants have been working at these rates for as long as a decade."

Comments

Cheaper if everybody steals an hour a day

[nospam007]

Isn't it?

Re:Cheaper if everybody steals an hour a day

[The Shootist]

I've been in IT one war or another since the TRS-80 model 1.

Regarding our fate as IT 'professionals' we had a saying then that still holds true, "Never have so many been paid so much to do so little".

Good day.

Re:Cheaper if everybody steals an hour a day

[IICV]

Yes, but you're forgetting something: in America, we are so terribly concerned that some poor person somewhere may be getting something they don't deserve that we're willing to put nearly a billion dollars in the pockets of rich people to ensure that the poor people stay in line.

It's just good conservative fiscal policy.

Re:Cheaper if everybody steals an hour a day

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh please. In liberal America, the mere specter of someone succeeding more than their peers is worth at least seven different studies to examine what predjudice exist to allow this, a handful of laws in the name of "social justice", and several new programs to even the playing field.

This is straight up corruption from a known corrupt government.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

We need more of these articles

[VernorVinge]

This defense contractor SAIC is just a symptom of the special interests that are running this country. Multiple it by 1,000,000 and you understand why our country is going bankrupt. The nature of our DOE, NASA, and DOD budgets allow for this type of uncontrolled spending. People need to take charge of elections and actively support smaller and more responsive government.

Problem = Managers

[magamiako1]

If you RTFA, the people that are getting the highest salaries are "Project Managers". Generally these types of people don't know their ass from a hole in the ground and don't actually contribute to doing any work because they have no idea what it is they're doing. And these people are likely the reason the project isn't actually getting done. In fact, the people actually doing the grunt work on the project are likely making 10% of the stated figures.

This sort of thing happens in many, many businesses. The difference is that many businesses aren't required to report those figures and even then they are under far less scrutiny. I assure you this is about par course for American business in general both public and private.

There are better ways to do things, but until we vastly change the corporate culture that everyone is used to operating under we aren't going to see more efficiencies. The reality is that it's not the "government" wasting money here because this is what everyone that goes into these projects expects to be doing. And this is generally something that scales with said project; so cheaper projects get cheaper prices on management but it is still disproportionately higher than those that are doing the actual work.

Re:Problem = Managers

[magamiako1]

I'm also going to play a bit of a devil's advocate here. If you were the project manager in charge of this project, and you had no relevant actual skill to doing anything productive, would you not milk it for what it's worth also?

If you can milk over $500,000/year from a business (government is a form of business) over the course of a decade without anyone crying foul about it, would you not do it? The same could be said about $100,000/year. You end up with a stable job doing practically nothing and getting a ton of money for it, of course you're going to make it last because you fear reentering the hiring force and having to compete against people who actually have skills going for them.

Re:Problem = Managers

[khallow]

This sort of thing happens in many, many businesses. The difference is that many businesses aren't required to report those figures and even then they are under far less scrutiny. I assure you this is about par course for American business in general both public and private.

Another "but business does it too" remark. There's a lot more difference than merely who business has to report to. Business isn't required by government to report these figures, but they are required by their Board of Directors to report whatever data the Board of Directors wants. Now maybe the BoD is too busy yacht racing or whatever to do their job. That is a problem of the owners of the business. Ultimately, the owners are the ones who lose out when a business gets out of control like this. That's how accountability works in the business world.

There are better ways to do things, but until we vastly change the corporate culture that everyone is used to operating under we aren't going to see more efficiencies. The reality is that it's not the "government" wasting money here because this is what everyone that goes into these projects expects to be doing. And this is generally something that scales with said project; so cheaper projects get cheaper prices on management but it is still disproportionately higher than those that are doing the actual work.

Except that it is New York City, a government, that is squandering public funds on this project. And it's not corporate culture that is the problem, but lack of accountability. This magically holds for government projects like the one of this story too.

Two for the half the price of one

[bradbury]

Hell, I've got 15+ years of experience with computers and some big name corporations (e.g. Time Inc & Oracle) in my resume. I'd be willing to do the job of two of the consultants for half as much.

The real question here is *who* is responsible for the project and is employing these people (who clearly seem to have no interest in getting the job done)? For example, if two or three individuals can rewrite a relatively robust DBMS (Oracle) in less than 2 years (circa 1983-84, the Oracle Version 3-->4 rewrite) having this many people not getting the job done in a decade screams to me of incompetence.

Re:Cool..

[wvmarle]

Well, imagining being one of those consultants, I would make sure this project would never finish! Obviously the longer it takes the more you make off of it. This is a recipe for disaster - and internal sabotage.

Re:Slaves

[WrongSizeGlass]

What is the purpose of an attendance system? To make sure someone is getting to work on time and not leaving before quitting time?

Sometimes people say that government employees should have greater scrutiny due to their being paid by the taxpayers, but I'm uncomfortable turning them into slaves.

I'd bet that if they didn't keep track of anyone's time that many people (maybe even you) would be complaining that people are showing up for work late, leaving early and generally 'working the system'. And they'd be right.

Governments (including NYC) are beholden to their citizens - and this includes making sure that people are showing up for their government jobs. They may not do a very good job at it (serving their c8itizens and/or doing their government jobs) but they damn well better try.

Re:Slaves

[nurb432]

Pubic service is voluntary. It happens by directly applying for a position, appointment, or being elected.

Last i heard no one was forced into working for the government ( well, forced taxation and convicted prisoners not withstanding :) )

Consulting

[McGruber]

Consulting: When you're not part of the solution, there is good money in prolonging the problem.

Re:Slaves

[Svartalf]

No, it's to track the hours they worked so they can be properly paid- the other part is just data that the system provides so that managers can know they're cheating on the system.

Since it's effectively little more than a fancy punch clock, I'd think that it'd not be THAT difficult to do. I'm amazed that they're pouring that much cash into a bottomless pit on this- and then doing more of it instead of pulling the plug and starting over.

Screw egg on face moments here- you're pouring $722 MILLION dollars into what is an overglorified punch clock system. If it's not working by now, it's not going to EVER work right and that's some serious good money after bad that could be put elsewhere.

Re:Slaves | it works both ways yah know

[RobertLTux]

being able to prove that you were in fact clocked in and working from 8:55 to 16:05 on monday (and the other 4 days of the week within about 2 minutes) does real wonders for GETTING PAID FOR THOSE TIMES. or for the cases where you actually left on thursday at 20:00 because something went BANG and you had to handle it.

Re:How hard can it be

[gandhi_2]

Or buy one of the many solutions already available....for about the cost of 1 developer for 1 year.

Re:Slaves

[sycodon]

In 1995, I built a Time and Attendance system using Informix and Powerbuilder 5. I was the sole developer and didn't know Powerbuilder when I started. In less than 6 months, it was up and running in 16 divisions.

Sure, a city is more complicated, but this isn't rocket science.

Re:Slaves

[Martin Blank]

I work at a sizable county government in California, and while our timekeeping systems aren't nearly as fancy as to require millions of dollars of investment, they do have to provide an accounting of what people work on. A good portion of the staff are able to have one- or two-line timesheets, as the work they do comes out of one bucket. Others, like me, may have anywhere from 10 to 30 lines a week as we work on different projects or tickets and have to bill the time appropriately.

However, neither of the two systems (one for employees, one for contractors) tracks when people actually arrive and depart. There are mechanisms to enter that data, but it's done by the staff member, not by the badge-reading system. From a technical perspective, I could show up at 10, take a two-hour lunch, then leave at 2, and say that I arrived at 7am, worked my normal shift with a one-hour lunch, and went home at 5. It's only my work ethic (and to a much smaller extent the fact that I would get caught quickly by my boss) that keeps me from doing it.

the scam of city government continues

[darjen]

the sad thing is that the taxpayers put up with it. and many even defend it.

Re:Cool..

[nurb432]

Right, as long as there are no penalties for overruns and scope creep, there is really no incentive to complete a job on time and within budget. ( this applies to both sides of a contract as there is plenty of blame to spread around )

Not only do you make "more money off it" due to the length of the project, but you don't have to worry about finding your next gig.

Re:Slaves

[moonbender]

You may have parsed that wrong. He says voluntary servitude in a private business is not his concern. Voluntary servitude in a public office, OTOH, is his concern since it is a public affair. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing, just clearing up the difference. I assume involuntary servitude in either situation would concern him.

Re:Government Project Cost Overruns?

[superscalar]

Of course this is disgraceful, but it's by no means limited to government - there's plenty of waste in private industry, we just don't hear about it as much. I have a friend who recently worked as a consultant for one of the big health insurers in California. She talked about a multi-hundred-million-dollar development project on a new IT system that they scrapped before implementing. You'd think someone could have pulled the plug before the project got into 9 figures.

Of course, from a cost standpoint, healthcare is a disaster here in the US (I think we spend about 2x as much per-person as the next highest country, and I suspect it will only get worse under the new reforms). Having relatives who work in healthcare, and seeing the mess that's resulted from multiple, independent providers who don't share data efficiently (i.e. hospitals, doctors and clinics) and multiple, independent insurance monopolies that negotiate separately with each provider, I can't imagine a public healthcare system wouldn't be better than what we have. Of course, half the country seems to think having the government involved in healthcare is 'evil socialism'... at least until they hit 65 and go on Medicare, at which point most of them seem to like it.

When I see how the US reacts to complex debates like this it's hard to believe we've been as economically and militarily successful as we have.

- ss

Re:Government Project Cost Overruns?

[Anonymous Coward]

Teacher unions are evil. End of story.

Teachers will disagree. Strongly.

Apparently their interests and that of others may not align. Who knew? Who could think of such a thing?

And before you say "Well, if School Boards were free to act on their own, then it wouldn't be a problem because they'd educate the students and attract teachers..."

Yeah, Teachers like Unions and School Boards don't always know shit about teaching students either.

This is a *private* sector project

[ph1ll]

I read TFA and saw that a private company called "Science Applications International Corp." was running the project.

So, why is that people are blaming the government when it is the private sector that is wasting all this money? Sure, it's tax-payers' money but aren't we constantly told by various private sector financed think tanks that this public work is best outsourced to the private sector? Well, this is what happens, folks.

And if you think the private sector is any better, you're living in a fantasy land. It's just that they are less liable to scrutiny. When corruption happens in private organizations, it gets brushed under the carpet. Why? Because it looks not only bad for the culprit (obviously) but also the guy who employed him - no matter that he had nothing to do with the scam. Everybody stay silent and nobody gets hurt, right?

I've seen this soooo many times in the private sector - outsourced procurement agencies that charge $1000 for a $500 desktop, outsourced projects that were awarded to a consultancy that was (by shocking coincidence) run by the brother of the guy on the committee overseeing the outsourcing etc etc. In all these cases, it's hard to prove that actual fraud took place (eg, "well, we really did think this was the best offer when you consider all the factors").

And nobody in a private organization is ever, ever going to be prosecuted for these scams. Why would they? Who wants to pursue such cases? The shareholders don't care about such small corruption even if they got to hear of it. The media are not interested (a private company can spend its money as it sees fit). And an employee is only going to ruin his career.

Re:This is a *private* sector project

[mobby_6kl]

Without getting into the whole private/government bullshit debate, in this case it's because the government keeps paying them the money. If they discovered that the company they hired is useless the first year, they should've dropped them (or the whole project) and found somebody else, and not kept pouring money down the drain. But they kept doing just that, so that's their problem right there.

Re:This is a *private* sector project

[ph1ll]

It's a good point - but have you ever tried to take a project away from a vendor some way into the development life cycle?

Outsourced IT consultancies are essentially organized labor. They have collective bargaining powers that can totally fsck you up if you look as if you may start causing them problems.

Basically, you're the victim of a kind of intellectual lock-in. How motivated do you think the outgoing vendor is when transferring all its knowledge to you if they know their contract is not being renewed? They'll give the minimum amount of co-operation they're contractually obliged to. I know. I've been there :-(

The best way of managing an IT project is to keep it all (or at least mostly) in-house. But this flies in the face of all those economic fundamentalists that were bleating outsourcing dogma in the early 2000s. The situation is slowly changing, but not fast enough.

Corruption

[BeanThere]

Is it just me or do Americans seem to have some kind of blind spot when it comes to government corruption? In any other country, this would've immediately been called for what it is, plain old corruption, and would be a scandal. It is obvious what is happening here.

Re:Corruption

[mellon]

This isn't government corruption. It's private enterprise. The idea is that government is fundamentally incompetent. Anything done by a government will not work. So government can't hire employees to work on software projects. Instead, it hires private enterprise to do it. Private enterprise is efficient and effective, and the result is savings.

This way of thinking has brought us multi-billion-dollar FAA upgrades that didn't work, new IRS d-bases that failed utterly, and created a whole industry of government contractors whose sole function in life is to transfer tax money from your pocket to theirs. The sad fact is that five programmers at Lawrence Livermore Labs could have gotten this done in a year for $500k. The outsourcing model doesn't work for us. Tragically, it *does* work for the people to whom the money flows, and so they lobby for it, and we get government contractors instead of government employees doing these projects.

Re:Corruption

[linebackn]

It is obvious what is happening here.

To me it is obvious what has happened here. Some years ago some one probably thought it would be a good idea to implement an automated timekeeping system, without doing a proper cost/benefit analysis, thinking they could just quickly drop some slightly customized system in place and never have to touch it again.

Government agencies usually have many complicated and unusual timekeeping rules that sometimes even change. Often this is the result of various laws they have to deal with that private companies would not have to deal with. They almost certainly underestimated the amount of customization needed for a time keeping program like this, especially if this is based on an existing system that was never designed to deal with their kinds of rules.

Don't blame on corruption what can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Re:Corruption

[Main Gauche]

The idea is that government is fundamentally incompetent.

I know you meant this sarcastically, but in fact, this example demonstrates their incompetence. How often do you see boondoggles like this when two private sector companies write contracts with each other? Maybe it's because when a private sector buyer writes a contract, the contract guarantees delivery of the product. With the government, everything is "renegotiable".

And let's get real. It's not like there isn't any backroom dealing going on here.

The outsourcing model doesn't work for us.

And the antiquated payroll system is evidence that the government can get it done itself?

Re:Corruption

[timmarhy]

you completely misunderstand the concept on such a staggering scale i can hardly reply.

this is a CLASSIC example of why government is incompetent and corrupt, it has nothing to do with wether the job is being done by government employee's or a contractor. a government bureaucrat is the manager of this project, if this project is 7 years late the axe falls squarely on him, not the contractors he's allowed to milk the public purse. the government has bungled this by allowing it to continue, if this was a project being run at any private enterprise it'd have been shit canned years ago.

Re:Corruption

[Blakey Rat]

This isn't government corruption. It's private enterprise. The idea is that government is fundamentally incompetent.

But in this case, they are.

The government hired these contractors who can't get shit done. The government has "renegotiated" the delivery date every single time the project has been late. I mean, seriously, what aren't you getting about this?

Are the contractors to blame? Yes, of course. They shouldn't have taken work they couldn't complete on-time and on-budget. But the government is the one *still paying them*. A competently-run organization would have kicked these developers to the curb ages ago.

This way of thinking has brought us multi-billion-dollar FAA upgrades that didn't work, new IRS d-bases that failed utterly, and created a whole industry of government contractors whose sole function in life is to transfer tax money from your pocket to theirs.

That industry of government contractors exists for two reasons:

1) Because the government *sucks* at managing projects. If they tried to pull that shit in the private sector, they'd be out of business in no time flat. (Dilbert-esque corporations can manage this one too, BTW. But most avoid it.)

2) Governments frequently pass laws to interfere in the process. For example, in Washington State, it's *far* more important for your contracting company to be owned by a minority than to be competent. Someone decided that minority-owned businesses don't do well enough, and so passed a law that gives them a huge head start when bidding for government contracts.

Both of those reasons? Both are the government's fault. The first because the government doesn't oversee projects, and the second because the government doesn't prioritize competence when accepting bids.

Your argument here makes no sense. Does the commercial consulting company deserve blame? Yes. But the government is allowing themselves to get stomped all over by them, and that's much worse.

Re:Government Project Cost Overruns?

[Anonymous Coward]

No little man. Like the company this article is about. It's a joke. Every time the government screws up at something, the "free market solves everything" people claim that the government is inherently incapable of doing anything right, so they should just hand a smaller chunk of money to private industry and everything would be fine.

Well that was what happened here, and it didn't work. The "government sucks" people step right in without skipping a beat. The thought that private industry shares the blame apparently hasn't occured to many of the people posting today.

Re:Government Project Cost Overruns?

[nine-times]

She was laid off and promptly given 2/3rds her previous salary in unemployment benefits. Pretty good for keeping the same employer and just not working anymore. If I tried that it would result in a 100% pay cut.

Yeah, and there's not chance that you'd be able to get unemployment benefits, right? Or is it just that you object to the idea of unemployment benefits.

Re:Slaves

[sycodon]

True, but you can't blame them for catching it...unless they misrepresented things or otherwise acted unethically.

I'm saying NYC pretty much deserves what it gets.

Re:Slaves

[ffreeloader]

Hmmmm.... So you think that perpetrating fraud on the general public by not delivering a product, or in the case of those in charge of the product, not requiring a time limit for a working product, isn't stealing?

No matter what your excuse this is corruption, plain and simple. If the project is impossible to complete because of conflicting requirements, for the developers to not state that it's impossible to deliver a working product and quit, but just continue to accept money for a decade is fraud. They know they aren't going to deliver but keep on taking money as if they are. It's plain old theft from the general public and a blatant example of the problems created where both consultants and project management are ethically-challenged, to put it politically correct term. In real life it's just called theft through a collusion of a bunch of crooks.

Re:Slaves

[sycodon]

I don't know...is it?

If we are talking a bunch of corrupt city officials stringing this project along so their buddies make a killing and then kickback some of the funds to the city official, that's one thing. They all should go to jail.

But if we are talking just incompetent city officials continuing to pay people way too much for way too long, then no, it's not unethical. Again, assuming that the consultants are not padding the numbers, stalling, etc.

Re:Not a waste

[Dragonslicer]

I blame the paradigm of "government". No competition. No alternative sources for their services.

Yeah, those countries that have two competing governments are just a blast to live in.

Re:Slaves

[Jeff-reyy]

Yes, yes it is. If someone offers you exorbitant compensation from public funds and imposes no consequences for failure to deliver, it is unethical to persist once you realize what's going on since you're basically stealing from the public. Both sides of the deal are in the wrong. If the donor were a private entity, then there's no problem.

Re:How hard can it be

[Bigjeff5]

How hard can it be to program a computerized timekeeping and payroll system.

Answer: difficult, but definitely doable in a reasonable time frame.

However, you've obviously never worked on a big bureaucracy-driven project before, because you've asked the wrong question.

Here's the correct question:

How hard is it to program a computerized timekeeping and payroll system when the fundamental requirements change on a monthly basis, individual design changes are made weekly, all because there are fifteen project managers who believe they own the project, since the primary project manager who actually does own the project spends all of his time in asinine meetings with his bosses and doesn't know what the hell is going on?

Answer: virtually impossible.

All that situation needs are a bunch of blind fools in upper management to keep approving the extensions and cost overruns and you have the NYC CityTime project.

It happens all the time in any sufficiently large bureaucracy, and the NYC government is definitely a sufficiently large bureaucracy. Note that this is not a private/public problem, it's a bureaucracy problem. The exact same thing happens to projects in large corporations (I work in a top 100 corporation and see this kind of thing happen all the time, though they are usually much quicker to pull the plug on a project than NYC is in this case).

Re:Slaves

[ffreeloader]

So, your project has now gone on for 10 years with no end in sight? There's also a major difference between spending $10 million on a project, and 3/4 of $1 billion on a failed project.

Are you sure you really want to defend that kind of behavior as just the "normal cost of development" for nothing more than a time management system? Just how can those costs ever be recovered? That no one is standing up in that project and looking out for the public good, as it's public money being wasted, spells nothing but corruption to me.