Slashdot Mirror
West Virgnia Auditor Finds Cisco Router Purchase Not Performed Legally
coondoggie writes "West Virginia wasted millions in federal grant money when it purchased 1,164 Cisco routers for $24 million in 2010, a state audit concluded. A report issued this month by the West Virginia Legislative Auditor found the state used a 'legally unauthorized purchasing process' when awarding the router contract, paid for with federal stimulus funds, to Cisco. The auditor also found Cisco 'showed a wanton indifference to the interests of the public' in recommending the investment in its model 3945 branch routers, the majority of which were 'oversized' for the requirements of the state agencies using them, the report (PDF) stated."
And nothing happens !!
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/05/11/1937235/west-virginia-buys-22k-routers-with-stimulus-puts-them-in-small-schools
They should have bought Apple.
This library has a 3945.
Somebody at Cisco must have made quite a bonus...
And a customer that doesn't know what they're buying? Say it ain't so!
Caveat emptor - get smarter buyers.
I'm holding the government bureacrats and Cisco's feet to the fire on this one BUT... if Cisco hadn't sold "oversized" routers to those government agencies, we'd just be hearing about how Cisco intentionally pawned off "insufficiently specced gear" that would be "obsolete overnight" on the West Virginia government instead... there's no way to win with an inherently bad idea.
Speaking of which, after over $1 Trillion in stimulus to "rebuild infrastructure" (yeah right), the State of the Union address was asking for more money to... rebuild infrastructure. Did it already fall apart again?
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
So they got boondoggled. There's really nothing they can do. Someone is counting their ill-gotten gains at everyone else's expense, and that's business as usual for the world. That's always how it is, people unjustly enrich their pockets at everyone else's expense. It's not illegal to be an unethical crook.
All music is now to be performed in the following key: A minor! With the following instruments: accordion, flute, piano (upright only, NO HARPSICHORDS!) and cowbell. The following names are henceforth prohibited: Jerry, Jerome, Jay, Jason, Jesus, Jill, Jack, James, Julieta, Julie, Jojo, Jayjay, Jayella, Jerkwad. Please confirm your acceptance of these new regulations by commenting below, or by not commenting below. Thanks and HAVE A NICE DAY!
UNITE with the Campaign for a Free Internet because today, our future begins with tomorrow!
"Not Performed Legally"?
"'legally unauthorized purchasing process"?
So, the opposite of legal... would be illegal.
Also: "Cisco showed a wanton indifference to the interests of the public"
Really, a profit driven company tried to fleece the public? I'm shocked, shocked like a man making toast in the bath!
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Spending someone else's money on something they can't afford themselves, and don't really need anyway, in the name of fixing the economy . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
we should make them a superhero class!
- I've got bad karma because I won't parrot everyone else's opinion
Spending someone else's money on something they can't afford themselves, and don't really need anyway, in the name of fixing the economy . . . ?
Only in part. It is also to repair, replace, and create new ifrastructure, thereby allowing businesses to do more. That 'more' dtill requires the businesses to spend on expansion that uses said infrastructure. Right now the only thing businesses spend on this government to buy laws.
Silence is a state of mime.
The people who bought these should be punished. Publicly. Then they should be barred for life from public service.
Then the people who hired these fools should be punished. Publicly. And barred for life from public service.
Come on people. Firing is easy. It is hiring that is hard.
Looking at the regular wholesale price in Germany (which is most likely higher than in the US), a price of $20k per piece would require e.g. a voice bundle. Plus, with a purchase of that many devices, Cisco would allow for a project price that would save at least another 20-30% on the purchase ... ... 29xx series will in most cases handle any "regular" speed used in WAN environments, even with partial 1G speeds ...
As for the oversized, unless they were setting up every site with full 1G or more, they are oversized by at least one or two models
I suspect that was the sentiment among those who opposed the feds subsidizing loans to bring electricity to those bumpkins in the rural areas in '36. See Rural Electrification Act of 1936.
I can attest that while Cisco makes great products their sales folks and technical sales consultants are very unscrupulous at times. At a company I was working for we were looking for competitive bidding on a new Wifi Infrastructure. We were currently using old Cisco equipment however management wanted to have an open process and do a competitive bid. The Cisco sales staff and their channel support did everything they could to undermine the competitors even though our bake off showed that in terms of some features, the competitors had better features and security. Ultimately when they sensed that they would lose, they used a product roadmap meeting with our CIO as an opportunity to throw my management and my entire team under the bus at our "flawed" thinking.
Hard sell techniques? Yes. Unprofessional? Definitely.
In this case, it sounds like the Cisco sales rep was looking at his bonus, which was probably very very lucrative considering the total sales contract price. Any Network Architect or Engineer worth his salt wouldn't have recommended this overblown hardware based on the requirements. Hopefully West Virginia will use this opportunity to fix the holes in their procurement process so this doesn't happen again because I don't see Cisco ever giving them a refund.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I'm not surprised, this is Cisco's M.O.
Every quote I've ever gotten from them has been massively inflated by speccing higher end equipment than is necessary. They always give the big pitch for the bigger product - usually to upper mgmt, whether it is overkill or not. Everyone wants to believe they are "the enterprise", so Cisco talks them into enterprise-grade equipment.
Not to say that the state employees shouldn't have questioned the quote. But odds are that the only technically knowledgable people involved were Cisco's people, and they are the pros at fleecing the sheep.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Yes, because truly, this is the infrastructure America needs to be successful and grow its economy in the 21st century! Oh, and because the money is from the federal government, it's free, and hasn't cost any part of the economy anything ever and it never will. The economics are just like MAGIC, I tell you - that is to say, fake, illusory, and maybe even fraudulent!
uh, mods, this isn't flamebait. It's a good point. The whole ARRA was to push "shovel ready" projects and stimulate the economy. In this case all it stimulated was Cisco's quarterly results.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
24million$ / 1164 = 20618$
What kind of beast is that!? I could understand some bureaus ordering 2 or 4 each, but 1164 at once!?
What the fuck is that about, someone needs the following process:
a) get fired
b) get sued for obviously wasting taxpayer money
c) get barred from working for government ever again.
Whenever you see complaints about bureaucracy and red tape in government, think back to this, and realise it's not all bad.
For contracts and purchasing, you can choose between big piles of paperwork for everything, or running a regional budget like a big petty cash tin.
Yep I am sure this created all kinds job hours over seas keeping the production line printing up router PCBs a little while longer. After being sold at Cisco's (I would guess based on price breaks I have seen them give VARs) 140% markup a whole lot of good US tax payer dollars help fill the deposit capital requirements of a European bank. After all we know Cisco never re-repatriates profits; okay maybe these particular dollars hit US entities and tax roles but they just offset other dollars that would have been brought back for payrolls, dividends, expense otherwise so its wash. Glad Obama is doing so much "investing" in winning our future.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Cisco 'showed a wanton indifference to the interests of the public' in recommending the investment in its model 3945 branch routers
No, please, don't throw millions at us. Here, take this $50 Linksys router instead.
I hate corporate America as much as the next guy, but in this case "Wanton indifference" translates as "performed their legal duty to maximize shareholder value". In a perfect world, should they have said no? Sure. In this world, making that call would have gotten them (rightly) sued by shareholders.
"Cisco 'showed a wanton indifference to the interests of the public' "
On what planet does CISCO bear a responsibility to the 'interests of the public'?
Seriously?
CISCO's responsibility to its shareholders, pretty much* full stop.
*I'd argue it's in its longer-term self interest to pay attention to the interests of its employees, and probably its home-community. But to the 'public in general'? None whatsoever.
The responsibility lies entirely with the 'expert' or 'consultant' hired to run the project. And if that person was so stupid that they hired a vendor as a consultant (ie someone with a vested interest in the result), then perhaps *shock* someone might even get fired for incompetence?
-Styopa
The problem, as I see it, is not in the fact that they used Cisco but that it looks like it was a no-bid contract. There are other companies out there with routing equipment that compare favorably with Cisco products. I've found Cisco fanboism to be as annoying as Apple fanboism.
But the righties are always telling us about this making jobs. I thought giving all the money to the "job creators" is exactly what they wanted to do? Thus they will hire people, not because they have work for them but because they have too much money or something.
Most of the report focuses on dual power supplies. Are those really needed? Maybe. Probably not in most cases.
Dual power supplies perform a couple of useful functions. If a power source fails, the other power supply fed by the alternate source keeps the router running. This is good for critical operations, and in maybe a few circumstances like the state police, it might have been useful to them. The other function is to keep the router running if a power supply dies. I've found this to be rare, but not impossible, with Cisco equipment. Again, it depends on how critical things are. Students and teachers in a school might be quite upset, and some online education processes can be disrupted, but education can still go on with substituted lessons during the time it takes for a replacement to arrive.
As for capacity, the router should have been chosen to match the designated capacity level, which did vary widely. Then when any facility needed to be upgraded to a higher capacity level, the router would be swapped out to match. A hand-me-down approach could be used for another smaller facility to use the bumped out router for their capacity growth. A range of routers in a pool could make that work. OTOH, politicians might also cry foul if a few routers are sitting in storage to support hurried replacement and hand-me-down steps.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
No, the reason that the 3945s were recommended was because the state wanted routers with redundant power supplies, and the 3945 is the lowest model Cisco makes with redundant power...
This really doesn't surprise me. Having worked with a State government in the late 1990's I was in charge of a conversion from Token Ring to eithernet for a moderate sized network for an agency. Cisco seemed to assume that we were all dumb as dirt and insisted that no other brand of eithernet switches would work with their routers which we were already using and which we did want to stay with for the one router we needed.. A classic case of FUD. Fortunately, they were high bid on the overall project by a factor of over two! By using the vendor WE wanted (who also had the lowest total cost) for the switches, and keeping the Cisco router, the conversion went off ahead of schedule and way under budget and worked fine for as long as I was there. My experience taught me that they really didn't CARE what was best for the customer, they just wanted the sale.
Pardon my ignorance, as I'm not a network-admin type in the least, but would there be something wrong with using plain gigabit ethernet switches with an optical module (or something to the effect, not sure of the terminology). Is there any future use for the system that would be hindered by using plain switches instead?
Well, those giant money bins for them to swim in all their cash to build themselves, you know...
The Department of Education told him that it "did not request or require that the routers for the state's schools have internal dual power supplies. Education would not have made this requirement because unless a school has two power sources the feature of dual power supplies would have no use."
Quality network engineer you have there, Dept. of Education.
In all seriousness, this is not new. DHHR in WV just fired some folks because they went public with information about a contract that was awarded to a contractor under mysterious circumstances. As a West Virginian, the answer is plain. Look for the money, tickets, campaign contributions. This is nothing new for the state, unfortunately.
They who wanted dual power supplies? I can see maybe some being used in some places like the State Police. But for all the small schools, too?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
" the state wanted routers with redundant power supplies"
Well, that's what Cisco claims, but they can't document it. The best they could do was show that redundant power was included in some spreadsheets which the state reviewed. People within the state deny making redundant power a requirement, although they did discuss it for "24/7/365 locations such as regional jails and DHHR state hospitals."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I get that you're being sarcastic, but the answer is no. Stimulus is effectively forcing us to borrow money to spend now in the name of fixing the economy and the spending is supposed to be on things of actual value. The classic example is if stimulus is simply about getting money into hands, just hire people to dig trenches with spoons. We don't need trenches and that's a stupid way to get them but it's "creating jobs".
What do you mean, leftist? It's the lefties, all the way down from the President, who are talking JOBS, JOBS JOBS! They're all talking about jobs-- it's just that the jobs are for their cronies and for government.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Now that they have announced which tiny little shanties have $20,000 routers sitting in them unguarded, I wonder who many will walk off... even if its just the employees after they learn how much its worth lol.
Ran into a problem at work. Management told me I could tear out the entire network and rebuild. This is exactly what I had wanted to do for years. Unfortunately I had to inform them the issue was a database issue not a network issue. A quick half hour of tuning fixed the issue just fine.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
1. The president is a center right politician, he is no leftist.
2. The job creators things was basically what Romney ran on. The same supply side argument they always make about jobs.
Being "quite socialist in your views" AND from Capitalist America means you're both a rightwing nutjob --though not as incomprehensibly mouth-frothing as the "tea party", small favours-- to yurpeen and probably Latin American eyes, AND a dirty treehugging pinko hippie commie to your fellows in Capitalist America.
That is, twice suspect. What am I saying, thrice suspect: You gave up a cozy free money job "as a socialist" -- and you're a failure as a capitalist, for you make less now! What is your agenda, comrade citizen?
Also, by now probably well on your way to a cozy place on a few of the many seekrit sekurity lists the TSA checks for subversive thoughts and tendencies.
So, you sure you wished for that?
My experience is this:
1) High level person talks to middle IT (and usually incompetent IT manager) about a bunch of buzzwords they read in an in-flight magazine
2) IT middle manager doesn't bother to say (or know) that buzzword won't work or is inappropriate for location.
3) Peons who actually work on the stuff tell MM all the issues, and as he doesn't understand plows forward anyway.
4) Bid gets put out and approved because its buzzword capable, and its what was the requested specifications.
5) Thing of dubious value gets installed ( or not)
6*) [Bonus!] actual needs aren't met because there no money left becuase of shiny new toy that makes upper level ppl happy that they are "cloud enabled"
ifrastructure
I believe they spell it iFrastructure.
You should see the things the DoD buys, often to never be used.
I work in sales for another company selling servers. It's all in the information in the RFP. Do you think the original requirements document sent out specified individually what each police station or library would require? Never. There's very few employees out there in public or private sector that would go down to that detail.
Oftentimes the purchaser sees the budget they have available to them and hears the age old mantra "use it or lose it." So they buy the biggest and baddest piece of IT gear they can.
The case that I see now is with servers. Let's say some enterprise is building out a new datacenter using vmware and they want to operationally standardize on a single model. A common practice. So they go out a buy a 1000 Dell/HP/IBM servers. They don't go out and buy 17 of model X, 25 of model Y, etc etc all with different memory/disk configurations depending on the specific workload that will be put on each individual server.
If the RFPs specified every single requirement for every single location all customers would get a more accurate proposal. However, they don't.
The ultimate cash cow is the US government especially since they haven't passed a budget in what, 4 years now? They just keep writing checks that we'll all have to pay some day. The government does create jobs in terms of bureaucracy but that's funded out of net productivity from all the other folks paying into the system. I think of it as my out of work brother in law, moving in with his family. He's in my house, eating my lunch, watching my TV and using my razor blades but isn't contributing anything to the household. Yeah, he may serve a function as a watch dog when I'm not around but he's a net expense, a tax on my quality of living.
On the flipside you do have greedy companies and the disparities between how wealthy some of them are vs. the rest of us is discouraging. I'm not a socialist by any means but when you have Apple sitting on $187 Billion in cash, you have to wonder why the system is so skewed. The Tax code does need to be rewritten to encourage investment and growth in jobs for businesses, not some token welfare project and something not tuned to government or aerospace either.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Romney was a Republican, not a righty. Indeed, all that party's conspicuous use of "jobs" as a keyword and their suggestions to use the power of government to subsidize "job creators" at the public's expense, is one of the biggest give-aways that they're not conservative. If you think the primary purpose of government is to manage the economy, then you've got more in common with Lenin than, say, Goldwater.
Republican marketing is supposed to be that when they don't hold power, they're required to speak conservatively prior to their elections. (Then once they're in power, they're free spend in ways that would make LBJ blush. The idea is that rednecks watch campaigns on TV, but don't read news.) Romney got over-confident and didn't even bother to do that, which is why he lost his conservative rep even without winning. Usually Republicans get to keep their right-wing label, as long as they make sure they lose. Romney failed in this regard, which is why he won't be allowed to run again in 2016.
Romney is also center right, just slightly right of the center right president.
I mentioned nothing about being conservative or not, but conservativeness does not traditionally rule out give-aways of tax dollars. Spending is not the primary difference between conservative and progressive beliefs. Nor do those map directly to right and left.
From the beginning Romney was a candidate that could not win. The republicans pretty much knew they had no real shot at it so they let the Mormon run. If they had selected a more right wing candidate their loss would have only been worse. In the same way that Palin basically cost McCain any shot at the election. Once you go that far right the candidate is considered a joke outside some very fringe groups and areas.
Tax payers should be demanding a lawsuit for their money back.
Wait, so you're telling me that my tax dollars were going to be spent on new hardware sized just right for the current load, and instead, my tax dollars were spent on hardware with plenty of additional capacity for future growth?
I'm failing to see how this is not a good thing for me as a taxpayer.
Don't get me wrong, I think that purchasing processes are there for a reason, and I think that it's shifty of Cisco to push this purchase the way that they did, but shit, this sounds like a win for everyone in the long-term.
Jimmy Gianato is the most corrupt of the corrupt here in the great state of WV. There is knowledge out there that he has bribed a high ranking military official to lie under oath and that he squanders more than just Federal funds but also squanders state resources as well in a time when the state is cutting salaries, jobs, and funding to social programs. The sad thing is he will never be called to account for it because, he is protected by the governors office. Must be nice being one of the good ole boys......
Virgnia. Surely I'm not the first to spot this?
Wait, it's Cisco's fault? Did Cisco hold a gun to their heads and force them to make an excessive purchase? Did they not put the design or purchase contract out for bid?
The blame is deserved entirely by the state. Cisco is trying to sell the most product for the most money, as is any company. Why the hell should they not sell the state what it wants? It is the state's problem for not getting a proper design with equipment requirements and for not properly bidding out the procurement.
Who here actually thinks that Juniper, or Dell, or Marvell or anyone else would not have done the same thing? The State of West Virginia wasted millions of dollars, noting more.
I don't know what to do about it either, but I'd suggest giving boni based on remaining under budget, and not necessarily cutting budgets when that was done successfully, so as to not deprive the department from opportunity to earn a bit extra by DingTRT.
Funny how measures to control spending make spending go up. This is widely known yet nobody even tries to fix it. Which, when spending public money, ought to count as criminal negligence.
If the auditor's report shows that illegal activity took place in the awarding of the contract then the AG's office should charge somebody and fine Cisco. Otherwise, it sounds like the findings are more about political gain versus illegal activity.
I seem to remember that North Carolina did the same thing recently, spent like $20M on over-specked Cisco routers when $15 routers would do... and I'm pretty sure there was a /. summary about it. Will someone with search engine skills be kind enough to dig this up and reply with the link? TIA
What's $20 million in moonshine? I need to explain this to Cousin Early.
So if the state succesfully convicts itself for breaking their own law, then.... Ah! *this* is why they have State Prisons!
This is West Virgina we're talking about here. For many, many decades, Senator Robert Byrd *covered* that state in wasteful pork barrel spending, all of it justified with BS about them being poor Appalachian folk (that made out like bandits from his largesse). Given this history, I'm suprpised anyone in W Va government even noticed, let alone complained.
the state wanted routers with redundant power supplies [...] for 24/7/365 locations such as regional jails and
DHHR state hospitals.
And even in that case they would have been better off with two cheaper routers and two data links in a redundant configuration! One of the standard packages for sale at $OLDWORK was/is "1 SDSL line, 1 ADSL line, two 1800-series (formerly 800-series) Cisco routers, with BGP and HSRP set up so that when both lines are up VoIP goes over the SDSL and non-VOIP goes over the ADSL, when one line goes down everything goes on the other automatically and our support is automatically notified". It cost a *LOT* less than USD 20000!
And that requirement was probably put in there so that the more expensive router would be the one chosen. Now maybe that requirement was floated originally by Cisco, maybe the procurement group thought it up themselves, but I doubt anyone really sat down and thought how vital that requirement really was and whether it should just be a "nice to have" checkbox.
I would not judge the guy from Virginia who did the speck *before hearing his version*.
My employer often indirectly black-mouthed by media (including /.) for over-specking sins and it's hard to read totally unprofessional charges and keep silence.
I always over-speck our embedded gear RAM at least by 2.
If I know the HW spec is frozen forever and the SW one is not, I over-speck by x4 and sometimes even more.
Usually such HW freeze happens on gov orders.
I am ready to defend my approach before a Senate Committee.
This points to a huge deficiency in government; no accountability. The sad thing is no matter how irate everyone here is, or how criminal the act. The people responsible- namely Jimmy Gianato- as Fund Manager - he will not even get a slap on the wrist. Until corrupt lifetime politicians go to jail for violating the law; this will keep happening. To much power and no consequences for their actions... I think I might want to change my carrier...... President Protous has a nice ring to it!.
The greatest crime that has ever been commited is the atrosities the goverments of this world commit against the people
OK. So I am normally the last person to defend big corporate, and the first to make excuses for government. However in this case I am inclined to say: WTF?
Since when is it a companies responsibility to have "public interest". There job is to make money. If they sold broken things, or misrepresented the things they sold, then it is on them and their reputation, which will hurt them later on.
Nobody held a gun to the head of government and said "You must buy this CISCO router!"
Did they not put out competitive bids? Did they not do their research? Do the procurement people not know what they are doing? Does the IT staff not know? Did none of the afore mention communicate with each other?
It does sould like Cisco seriously upsold government in this case, and that is sort of a real jerk thing to do, which if I were government again looking for routers or network whatever, and bids came in, I might make a arguement for not selecting Cisco based on previous work. However the blame does seem to fall on incompatance in this case in whoever was in charge of the tech procurement, either not understaning the job, the requirements, or perhaps something even illegal like a nice kick back from Cisco.