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California Cancels $208 Million IT Overhaul Halfway Through
g01d4 writes "According to the LA Times, 'California's computer problems, which have already cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, have mounted as state officials cut short work on a $208-million DMV technology overhaul that is only half done. The state has spent $135 million total on the overhaul so far. The state's contractor, HP Enterprise Services, has received nearly $50 million of the money spent on the project. Botello said the company will not receive the remaining $26 million in its contract. ... Last week, the controller's office fired the contractor responsible for a $371-million upgrade to the state's payroll system, citing a trial run filled with mishaps. More than $254 million has already been spent.' It's hard not to feel like the Tokyo man in the street watching the latest round of Godzilla the state vs. Rodan the big contractor."
HP screwed over Vermont: http://governor.vermont.gov/newsroom-Vermont-HP-reach-DMV-settlement-gov-shumlin in its attempt to redo the VT DMV.
Of course, we end up paying for the incompetence that drives the grossly misnamed Department of Information and Innovation...
how important it was to stay out of the fucking 1980's with IT equipment that serves critical functions
Talk about blanket statements. I suspect that there is quite a bit of 1980s IT equipment in your life that you are not even aware of.
The problem is not what decade the equipment comes from, it is whether or not the equipment meets its requirements. If equipment from the 1980s is continuing to meet the requirements that governments face today, then there is no reason to spend enormous amounts of tax money to replace that equipment unless doing so will pay for itself before the next upgrade. Unfortunately, there are few cases where such upgrades actually do pay for themselves, so in terms of what is best to do with tax dollars, upgrading old equipment that continues to function as needed is questionable.
Now, if the equipment is not working, then it is time to replace it. The real problem is that government contracts are not typically given to companies deemed best for the job, and so these situations arise. Contracts are awarded to companies that bid low and to companies that are well-connected, even when better companies are available.
Palm trees and 8
Having worked on govt projects before, it's all spent on :
a) Management. Lots of it. About 5 times as many managers/sub-contract managers/advisors etc than there will be coders. Because the more management a project has, the harder it is to blame any one person.
b) Paper. Lots of paper. The amount of pages generated on specifications, revisions, reports, recommendations will be able 10 times the number of _lines_ of code created. All to show that no taxpayers money was wasted.
c) Tendering. It costs a lot to tender a bid, which reduces the competition to only the big ones who can afford to throw a million at a 1in5 chance. Whereas, if they were allowed to go to a small consultancy who only has 30 employees, they'd be able to get a much better price.
d) Changes. The requirements are often so written in very complex language that noone really understands it, and then they come along with changes every 2 months which require 3 months of recoding because they didn't fully understand what they were asking for to start with.
e) User acceptance. Don't underestimate the ability of a low level govt employee to refuse to use the new system because 'I've done it this way for 30 years and it worked just fine! This doesn't work like the old one did.'