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Lead Contractor On Health-Care Web Site Led By Execs From Troubled IT Company
thomst writes "The Washington Post's Jerry Markon and Alice Crites report that 'The lead contractor on the dysfunctional Web site for the Affordable Care Act is filled with executives from a company that mishandled at least 20 other government IT projects, including a flawed effort to automate retirement benefits for millions of federal workers, documents and interviews show. CGI Federal, the main Web site developer, entered the U.S. government market a decade ago when its parent company purchased American Management Systems, a Fairfax County contractor that was coming off a series of troubled projects. CGI moved into AMS's custom-made building off Interstate 66, changed the sign outside and kept the core of employees, who now populate the upper ranks of CGI Federal.'"
Fire them all with prejudice.
It's not like the 5,734,238,948,351 past failures should be held against the Federal Government! We were promised they'd get it right this time, and we should trust them with our lives.
It's not the clusterfuck the Medicare Part D rollout under the Republicans was. They had LOTS of excuses for THAT. Just sayin'.
The only part of the article that stood out as unusual to me was "AMS-built computer systems sent Philadelphia school district paychecks to dead people". Now that is a seriously innovative program that can find and send a check to someone on the other side.
Just the technology for web sites that can scale to serve dozens of concurrent users.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Government contacts are pretty much always awarded to the lowest bidder. No matter what.
There's alot of money to be made by doing it badly. And then being paid forever to 'fix' it.
Job security.
Why wasn't an American company chosen? I'm sure IBM or Oracle would have cost less, and it
may have worked initially...
Instead what we end up with for 600 Million is the Canadian
"Sorry"
Beltway Bandits
What bid . . .?
Revealed: Michelle Obama's Princeton classmate is top executive at firm that that built disastrous Obamacare website after being awarded no-bid $93m contract
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2477403/Michelle-Os-Princeton-classmate-exec-company-built-Obamacare-website.html
. . . it just shows you where the real value of a good education is . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
same AC here -- disregard that, i suck cock
Well if they choose a lead contractor instead of a gold contractor what are they supposed to expect?
What are you, like 12 years old or something?
No sig today...
If they already had bad experiences with mishandled projects, why would they give them more contracts?
Who are these executives donating to? Who's on the committee that approves IT contracts? When incompetence keeps getting hired, bribery is a sure bet.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Are you hitting on him, pedophile?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well, some go to college to get to know something, others go to get to know someone...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try again.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Such an eloquent argument against privatization (since privatization is the government contracting out its duties, which it can only pay for through tax-payer money).
The self-righteous arrogance of this administration is only surpassed by the previous one.
I'm pretty sure there were some administrations in centuries past that meet or beat 21st-century administrations in this department.
Plus, there are at least 1 or 2 21st-century non-US governments that outdo any 21st-century American administration on this score as well.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This must be Slashdot - this is at least 2 months old.
he is, and what is this?
MOTHER FUCKERS !!
Did you even bother to read it? Did you miss the point that it was Bush administration that approved them for no bid contracts? Did your knee hit your chin? Do you need a dentist?
Liberals hate corporations. Conservatives hate the government.
But when it comes to government contractors like CGI we can all put aside our differences and hate them together.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
i bet they all smoke crack (crackheads in in business suits)
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Is this some hotbed of programming talent and I missed hearing about it?
When I think about politicians hiring programming based on physical proximity, I can't help but think they've reached the AIG level of not giving a damn what anyone thinks of them, because some variant of "close enough to blow me" is what everyone's going to think of the decision making process.
The reason government contracts are broken is because they exist.
For some reason, in the US it is more politically acceptable to pay a private firm $200K per worker for a government contract than it is to pay $150K per worker to hire people to do the job. And this is not a partisan thing, since the biggest area where this kind of silliness happens is obscenely high military budget, and that gets reapproved without much serious question. It creates a lot of opportunity for graft among anybody controlling a government purchase, costing even more public money unnecessarily.
By contrast, the UK government has an IT department that is in charge of all government websites. If they need more people to do the job, they hire them. If they need fewer, they lay people off. And overall, they get better results for less money because that one department can coordinate efforts in a way the multiple US contractors simply can't do.
I am officially gone from
The "experience" looked for in a company looking to win a government contract like this is, well a track record in winning government contracts.
They know the tricks and hoops to go through to get to the end and win the contract. They probably also have good contacts that help them win it in the first place.
Ability to actually manage the contract and deliver the result. Pretty much irrelevant.
Basically good bullsh*tters, bad managers.
It sounds more like no-bid cronyism. Obama's from Illinois, after all, where three of our last five Governors served prison sentences.
Free Martian Whores!
why did the award the contract to the same old cronies who have failed before?
Question: where are the really high-traffic websites primarily developed? Ans. West coast (Netflix, Youtube, Google, Yahoo, etc.). Heck, even Oracle is on the West coast. So if the expertise is on the West coast, why use east coast and Canadian companies with no history of successfully building (in time, on-budget) a high-traffic, complex website to develop and deploy a website that is a critical component of the legislation that you regard as your legacy achievement?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I don't think anybody else that works in Fairfax considers this a surprise. All of our companies have shady backgrounds with government contracts. Overpaying for a shitty website is just a distraction compared to real world problems.
he's not deflecting you are...
the whole 'Obamacare rollout has been awful' is such a misreported story...making a comparison to a rollout of a similar program from the other party helps frame the issue properly
Thank you Dave Raggett
In Montreal, where CGI HQ is based, the organization is referred by many in Quebecois slang "Criss de Gang d'Incompetent" (CGI) == Fucking group of incompetents.
This was taught to me by a former CGI employee.
They are well know (like other three letter oursourcing groups like IBM and CSC) to underbid to get a contract and under deliver. I've heard former high level CGI executives (who after they left) admit this and chuckle about it out loud.
The truth it so many other large firms do the same thing.
yes do this.
I've read through some comments below & really that's all there is to say about this.
Debating 'gov't VS private sector' can be interesting or it can be excruciating. In this case we can surely fault the government for being dumb enough to pay these companies...so there's that...then of course the companies's work was shit...
Bottom line in thsi case is the same w/ most 'gov't VS private sector' debates....private sector can be more 'cutting edge' than government but government has the accountability of the people.
For the 'rollout' of a long-planned government that has State/Federal differences & the insurance industry there's no reason to spend 100's of Millions on routine IT work.
The US just paid these companies to hire IT workers to make the site to specifications. The gov't could have hired IT workers directly.
The problem with the debate is that so many 'government contracts' are basically ***government subsidies of industreis*** with tax dollars for the businesses in a particular political area, not on market forces.
If government contracts weren't doled out as political favors the data wouldn't be so noisy.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Thanks for your effortsl
http://th3apps1.blogspot.com/2013/11/hedgehog-game-for-android_16.html
And what was the graduating class of 1985's size? In 2012, it was about 1200. So let's say in 1985 there were 1000. Given that this is Princeton, it's likely that SOME of them are doing well in their careers, maybe even so far as to be execs at some companies.
Unless there's even a hint of something illegal (or even unethical) going on here, I'm more likely to chalk it up to pure coincidence. What are they supposed to do - disallow any company with executives that happened to have attended school with the Obamas from doing govt work? If that's the case, I doubt there will be many qualified companies left
No, this just looks like guilt by association.
Did you even bother to read it? Did you miss the point that it was Bush administration that approved them for no bid contracts? Did your knee hit your chin? Do you need a dentist?
IT'S BEEN OVER FIVE FUCKING YEARS. STOP BLAMING BUSH.
Face it, Obama's a failure. Continuing to blame Bush for every damn thing is pathetic.
Because you'll all be dead long before you get old. Of course if you aren't, it might be nice if you can afford healthcare. If only young you were around to help you pay for it... I wonder how we could arrange that. No, better to figure you're going to die young and leave a beautiful corpse.
Government workers might be lazy and a few might pocket some cash before they serve jail time for it but the cost is nothing compared with privatized contractors who have a profit margin which they turn around and use to corrupt the government for the next contract and when they get caught swiping money it is "just good business" or if they swipe too much they get... well, nothing if they "bribe" the right people they just make even more money! Best case, some people get fined a drone takes the fall and the company goes bankrupt; then they re-incorporate and get contracts again under another name. Tax payers indirectly funding the downfall of their own government; the best way to destroy a nation!
All one needs to do to get this in the UK is to get corporations to contribute to industry lobby groups and PR firms (aka "think tanks") to sell the gullible public on their own self destruction... that and getting rid of the BBC.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
And this is not a partisan thing, since the biggest area where this kind of silliness happens is obscenely high military budget, and that gets reapproved without much serious question.
The politicians with the purse strings here.dont actually care about the money, but they do care about looking like they do more harm than good. In asymmetric evaluations, its easy to excuse big negatives (such as wasteful overspending) with small positives (such as a working outcome.) This much is obvious given the clearly harmful size of the federal budget yet calls for spending more keep coming out from both the left and right.
"His name was James Damore."
I have experience in both. In a private business contract both parties do their best to meet the terms of the contract. The reason is simple. It's expensive to go to court and bad for future business. I've written unclear requirements. When it was a private contract if they noticed it they would call for clarification and unless it was major there was no charge. A contractor that buckles and dimes you doesn't get a second chance to bid.
A Government contract is different. If there are two ways to interprete a requirement they will always pick the wrong way and do as much work as possible down the wrong path so they get a bigger change order when it's discovered. They never get punished because technically they are right. It just rarely happens in private business.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Pretty sure that the current problems started a long time ago. Time for the US citizenry to stand up to cronyism
it is more likely all for the money, i bet a lot of embezzlement and kickbacks are going on, not just fascist but a fascist-kleptocracy
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
We fucking hate pork.
It was chosen, no-bid, to a political ally of Michelle Obama.
In 5 years, can we repeat that back to you?
Obama isn't a failure. Obama is a more well meaning (at least seeming) version of the previous. McCain would have been worse. His forfeiture of the Vice President seat to Palin nailed that. The republican with dead eyes from last time was not looking out for the population either. It would have been less seemingly well meaning version. Ron Paul would have been the best choice, but the Republican party screwed him over till next Wednesday with their poll antics. Yes, I know Ron Paul wants to do the right thing for the wrong reasons, but the President doesn't make the laws. He can only suggest.
It was chosen, no-bid, to a political ally of Michelle Obama.
By the Bush administration. Before Obama was inaugurated.
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2477403/Michelle-Os-Princeton-classmate-exec-company-built-Obamacare-website.html
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
not a bug.
Seriously, you are 100% correct in what you say, but according to the GOP, the government doesn't create jobs, and thus, the government can't hire qualified people to do work, but instead needs to outsource it all to private industry, all the while not having the expertise needed to even evaluate the private companies it is contracting to do the work.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
I thought women stopped doing that in the 60's.
Yeah, but they are Obama supporters, and that it enough to keep them on the job in this benighted country.
an ill wind that blows no good
They preserved the same consistent process. Let's hear it for repeatable software processes.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
What does being a government approved vendor have to do with anything? Check the right boxes and you can do it too. Twisting facts or plain illiteracy here?
Oh come the fuck on. This reminds me of a customer defending their snake oil purchase. Neither of them have any ill intent. But just because you voted for him doesn't mean you have to go around defending your decision. This is why politics is such a damn soap opera.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
It is counterproductive. If everything is the fault of some guy in the past, long gone from politics, then that lets the current guys get away with whatever they like. We can only hope to improve the decisions politicians make by holding them accountable. If they have an automatic out of "Oh the bad guys in the past did it!" then nothing gets better.
I don't get why people have not yet figured out that most large federal projects are rife with graft - the only difference is you don't hold the crappy $800 hammer that results, unlike everyone who gets to see the substandard work that results from politically connected projects with something like a public facing website.
This is EXACTLY why federal spending must be reduced, because it is for the large part wasted to a far greater degree than state or city level funding (though there is graft there to, it just cannot be at the level federal graft is).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...where failure is rewarded, as long as you can talk a good game.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
Hmm, are the F-22s flying active duty again then? The F-35s, aren't they like 100% over budget and still not ready to deploy?
which totally mishandles the MYR 282 millions project to "transform" JPJ (our version of DMV) from the previous SIKAP system (also done by Heitech) to the new mySIKAP system.
Many months ago, they already knew that the DB2 database won't be able to handle the load, due to poor coding (e.g. SELECT statement without WHERE clause) done by either internal staffs or sub contractors. Instead of getting it fixed, they went live with the new system anyway. Subsequently, the whole nation has been crippled for weeks, as unlike healthcare.gov, there is no alternative to DMV.
The DMV is now asking for taxpayers' money from the government to buy some hefty z12 mainframe from IBM, and nobody has publicly pointed a finger to Heitech.
There are many States that successfully implemented working websites for the ACA. I don't understand why the Feds can't just license the best of these and clone it 36 times for each of the States that refused to implement their own site.
Which begs the pre-Oct 1 question: Why didn't the Feds just test each of the websites developed by the dozen or so states that implemented their own, then license the best one for cloning purpose for each of the other 36 states?
Skill and proficiency in getting awarded a federal IT project contract seems to be inversely proportional to being able to deliver it.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Am I the only person who had to re-read the headline multiple times to understand WTF this article is allegedly about?
I was wondering why this contract was costing so much to do so little.... It is all becoming a log clearer now. These people don't make money off of well managed projects (from the customer's point of view), they make money from BIG projects ... no matter how small they actually needed to be.
I'm sure that the botch is well documented ISO9000 style and all, but success was not necessary for them to get paid.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
For some reason, in the US it is more politically acceptable to pay a private firm $200K per worker for a government contract than it is to pay $150K per worker to hire people to do the job.
Because in aggregate the US believes in private enterprise above all else, to the point where we will hand de facto monopolies to cable television providers or mandate the purchase of health insurance from private companies (and only from private companies) before we'd ever stomach the idea of having government get directly involved in anything.
And this is not a partisan thing
Just because it's not "partisan" doesn't mean it's not a decidedly right-wing idea. And it was most certainly a partisan idea until Ronald Reagan won the most lopsided presidential election since 1792, at which point the party of Roosevelt and Johnson had to start positioning itself as "Republican Lite" in order to start winning elections again.
Contractors are preferred because when the contract is over the workers are not still on the government payroll. If they hire workers directly they would be covered by the civil service rules and be effectively employed for life no matter how bad they were. This shows up all the time when there is a need to change or slow down a program the contractors are in the news because of large layoffs.
Revealed: Michelle Obama's Princeton classmate is top executive at firm that that built disastrous Obamacare website after being awarded no-bid $93m contract
Princeton undergrad class sizes are about 1300 students, so it could well be that Michelle Obama and this other person (who BTW was an EVP, not the CEO) scarcely knew each other.
Gee, what are the odds that ANY top official in the administration at some point was in the same place as ANY senior executive at CGI Federal? Especially when you include people like Michelle Obama, who is in charge of what policy area now? Using that kind of standard, you could probably find a suspicious sounding GOP connection there too.
Wouldn't have mattered if they picked the high bidder. The problem is the law itself, not just the website. The self-righteous arrogance of this administration is only surpassed by the previous one.
With all due respect... pull your head out of your ass. we're talking about the technical aspect of the launch of the website. The only thing that would matter is who's doing the development. Suggesting that the ACA itself is responsible for the poor technical development of the website is just fucking stupid. You may not like the law for whatever reason, but please, use your fucking brain.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
The Federal Government never, ever thinks a State can do things better. This is driver of a lot of problems we have right now.
So by "classmate" do you mean "happened to attend the same school as one of the relatives of the guy who sponsored the bill"? Wheee.
Then the problem is civil service rules.
It's not just women who do that doofus.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
IIRC the guy Chaney shot wasn't a minority.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Until the next government project comes along (usually already starting or running) and they get hired as contractors again because they have experience in government contracting jobs. It's not like there will never be another government software project for them... they are happening all the freaking time. They could just hire the people and contract supplemental workers to work under the full time project managers. The benefit there is that with the same people working on all government projects the more likelihood that out of it will come a more cohesive architecture and even possible interoperability of services.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
i thought a company in Canada designed the website.
An error occurred while processing your request. Reference #97.16e8d93f.1384661959.1e72c0
The reason government contracts are broken is because they were used a tools in the past. Seriously, prevailing wage requirements were not originally there to ensure employees weren't being abused, they came about because most minority contractors weren't large enough to pay prevailing wages while waiting on the contract payouts so it would lock them out of competing for government contracts. Other rules regarding government contracting were in place to protect existing contractors or even government jobs or to bar others from competing also.
What we have is a mess surrounding a lot of playing with the rules for whatever agenda in the past. It actually takes more money to build an identical building if one was built for a government department verses a private sector business not because something will be different on the building but because the contract process has so many requirements to be met in order to do the exact same work. The same can be said about almost any government contract including IT.
The ACA itself is part of the problem because it invests so much power of the law to the interpretations of political appointments like Kathleen Sebelius and Marilyn Tavenner who are also subject to political ideals and the whims of the president. Several of the problems where specifically blamed on delays from these people along with changing specs and such late in the development because of seemingly political decisions.
Also, if the law was not found unconstitutional on the state exchanges mandate, the federal government's website would have had to only worry about a fraction of the traffic that was presented to it. Another problem discovered by the congressional investigations is that a lot of the problems seem to be the insistence of publishing rates adjusted by expected subsidies which is a political decision allowed by the law.
And that is not even getting into what was said about the law verses the reality of the law. Allowing such leeway by the heads of departments or Obama's constant changing of the law by executive order (which some claim is unconstitutional) is built into the law which is also part of the technical problems with the website's roll out.
This is such an inane line of reasoning.
The things that are Bush's fault 5 years ago are still Bush's fault today. They'll still be Bush's fault in another five years, and in fifty years, and in fifty thousand years. The blame doesn't shift to the new guy just 'cause he's now occupying the same address.
If the Bush administration approved this company for no-bid contracts, how the flying fuck can you try to pin that on Michelle Obama? You think Obama's first act of office should have been to throw out every single piece of paperwork filed from 2001 to 2009, and start it all over from scratch?
Your source reveals that 3 other companies put in bids and that 15 other companies are on the same list as approved government vendors. It goes on to say that only CGI was considered. I guess that was also bush's fault somehow.
I suppose you were hoping that no one would read your link?
It's not stupidity. Government employees have no incentive to spend public funds wisely. Many of them may make an effort because they try to be decent people, but that's not enough.
Government contracts will always be doled out as political favors.
Really, if their reputation is so tainted, why oh why in Gods name would you hire them? Yes of course, fire the contractor, but... whoever recommended them? Don't just fire them, destroy them. Make sure they get force out of business, forced out of town. Due diligence was *not* done, these people are a burden and an expense you don't need.
You can't lay off US government employees in most cases, which means the IT department would do nothing but grow regardless of need. It's also hard to fire the incompetent, which has effects that should be obvious.
The Bush administration may have okayed them as a Federal vendor, but Bush had nothing to do with them being assigned to complete a task that wasn't signed into law until long after he left office.
I think Bush is an asshole, but this failure can't be laid at his feet.
So, you're Joey in this scene?
IT does not add "value"
Hence no one has an appropriate IT department. This is the case of expecting the government to be magickally better then 99% of the private firms in the country.
Government hiring a competent in-house body?, socialism. Government paying cronies more than the in-house body would cost?, FREEDOM!
the US Federal 'budget' is in no way, shape, or form analogous to some sort of household or 'Dome book' kind of accounting budget.
plz learn this forever
The US **prints money** & does complex **monetary policy** & just happens to be the **world's reserve currency**, it's standard currency, and that pretty much makes our economy the defining economy in the known universe
the point is hiring these companies was a huge mistake b/c it was routine IT work that could have been done **in house**
rolling out "Obamacare" is essentially like setting up a really, really bit IT infrastructure for a school system...it's well understood and commonly done!
Thank you Dave Raggett
it's possible i could have misunderstood what you meant by 'budget'...sorry if i did
did you mean the Fed's should have used a contractor but kept the budget for the project insanely low (and maybe give it to a 'startup' w/ tons of traffic like imagur.com) thereby forcing the task to be handled properly and with a minimum of effort?
b/c **that** isn't a half bad solution in the context..it's a good way around beauracracy...
i wouldn't plan it that way at all, but I was some project manager I could see considering some crazy solution like that if I knew the project was doomed to failure otherwise...
Thank you Dave Raggett
ok you got me...i'm curious...what do you mean by 'incentive'?
can you give a counter-example? something where a person **would** have the proper incentive as you define it to do *excelent* work on a project like this? how would that look?
you don't need to write a book, just give me an idea of what you mean
also, if you feel like it, can you explain how government contracts will **always** be doled out as political favors? Do you mean 'practically' always or are you saying its inherent? If so do you see any system anywhere that would do it by proper market forces?
Thank you Dave Raggett
Actually this was an example of a no bid contract that was awarded to cronies.
KBR, formerly Haliburton, already had a list of prices that had been approved by the government, then they were the only company that could offer the list of services that the DoD that were requested.The only people that thought there was something wrong with that bid are the hate sites, even KBR competitors said they were the right company for the contract requested and the prices were not bad. All of that is not something you can find for the garbage that this obamacare contract.
Nice on paper but does not work in reality.
Back when former President Clinton pushed for the big change over from federal employees to contractors. Those where all items discussed and found to not actually work. People don't have the training and don't want to move around along with other problems.
sure, I can agree with that, but surely when the contract was up for grabs, nobody thought twice to repeal that specific rule as it's obviously not a good rule to have?
so whilst the fault will always lie with bush, the responsibility for it's continuation will lie with the person who is sitting in the chair and not changing anything
Oh? So George W. Bush hired this company to do work on the Obamacare website before the ACA was even passed? I am glad we have your insight into this issue that sure makes a ton of sense. Yes, George W. Bush traveled into the future while he was president, selected this incompetent company just to make Obama look bad, and than zapped himself back into the past. You are right, this had nothing to do with our president who just sat at his desk and was violated by our previous incompetent president who happens to time travel to pass his incompetence onto other presidents as well. Of course the more logical approach to this issue is to stop spinning it like you are and admit that the incompetent policies started under George W. Bush were continued under the incompetent presidency of Obama who despite having the ability to look back and see the mistakes of George W. instead ignored those mistakes, made them worse and now people are blaming the previous president when we should be blaming the current president for being incompetent as badly as George W. Stop making excuses and admit that the current president is just as incompetent as George W. Bush which is what this shows.
The degree is innocently named "public policy," but the curriculum basically boils down to "How to fleece taxpayers and get away with it, over and over and over again."
And this is sufficient reason to hire them again under a different president when they did not deliver in the past? Unless you are trying to convince us that the Bush Administration is responsible through time travel for this decision to hire them for THIS job.
No idea if M. Obama is to blame or not, but someone made the decision to hire this questionable company after they failed time and time again. Who should we blame? I don't think we can blame George W. Bush for this decision in any way since the ACA was not passed until AFTER he was no longer president. More than likely, its simple incompetence and the blame should be placed on the shoulders of yet another incompetent president who can not seem to do anything properly.
There's more to it than low bid. Federal procurement rules are complicated; they're supposed to make sure that the US government gets the best possible price, but what often happens is that they force the government to buy from a small pool of companies specializing in taking government money, rather than on the open market. Big IT contractors tend to spin off subsidiaries to handle the specialized accounting and project management requirements.
I've seen this first hand working as a contractor with state and local public health agencies when West Nile Virus hit. In truth WNV was no worse than a lot of things they'd already been dealing with, but it was on the news and there was a huge political demand to "do something about it fast", which in Washington terms means "spend this money right away". The problem is that you *can't* just sign a deal with the feds to burn a million dollars (or a thousand dollars, which is practically the same thing in federal terms). You've got already be set up to absorb lots of federal money, fast. What the country needed was just a *little bit more* of marginal funding spent on agencies and companies already working in the field, but politically connected federal contractors who had no idea what they were doing or who to deal with came swarming out of the woodwork because Congress was making it rain. They even shafted *government workers*. The CDC has the top vector borne disease surveillance experts in the world in Fort Collins, but most of the money ended up elsewhere. Fort Collin was a cottage operation that couldn't spend the money fast enough.
The Federal Government has two modes it operates well in: long term projects that require institutional memory and slowly built capacity, and *war*. Most people don't see it, but there are many government operations that are both financially efficient and a bargain, like the Fort Collins vector borne infectious disease center. The government is actually good at those things. It's also good at invading foreign countries and topping *their* governments. It's the stuff in between those extremes the government is lousy at handling. Ordinary projects that aren't part of some long established program become "the moral equivalent of war". Most of the time you don't need the moral equivalent of war, you just need a well-run project.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I love how you are 'born-again' faithful to an ideology that emphasizes *personal action* yet you completely ignore the **one** precious personal action that **any american citizen** can do that **proves your ideology wrong**
VOTE
The kind of rewards people receive for the work they do: increasing personal wealth, continued employment, peer recognition, higher salary, better office, new job opportunities, etc.
Human nature is infinitely more complex than your simple power dynamics.....here's the main theoretical flaw that sinks your argument...
**those aren't the only reasons people do things**...i'm not going to list alternatives, but all of the things you listed are basically different ways to say ***MONEY*** or ***POWER****
Not everyone boils all their decisions down to what will give them the most Machiavellian style power over their surroundings.....because it is a *zero sum game*
Because your conception of 'why humans do things' is reductive and limited it is like a chair with 3 legs...every conclusion you reach after will be off-kilter
"Always" not in the sense that every single one of them is, but in the sense that it is a very common part of government contracting that you cannot eliminate through reforms, regulations, or better government.
If it is caused by bad government then good government will fix it.
If humans in a government system can't adapt and fix it, then **NO SYSTEM** will be any better....because all systems rely on humans.
That's why democracy, where humans can get **voted out** solves your problem.
If you run your own business, you have a strong financial incentive to make it easy for people to sign up with you and do business with you. Furthermore, if you fail to do so, you go out of business. Neither incentive nor mechanism exists for the government. Government services like this are mandatory, and government can't go out of businesses by people choosing to go elsewhere.
I **do** run my own business.
You know that here in America we have elections right?
We **vote** on the politicians and the winner gets to represent us...
That's what you're missing....in a Democracy we ***can vote the bastards out***
and if they are all bastards on both sides we ***can run for office ourselves***
Thank you Dave Raggett
This just says CGI became a federally approved vendor in 2007. What does that have to do with them being awarded a specific contract years later? Basically anyone can become a government vendor.
reminds me of this scene from Office Space: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2_Yi-1Ryf4
'that'll only make someone work hard enough not to get fired'
funny how its so easy to see the same problem of human nature in both 'governent' and 'private sector' situations
Thank you Dave Raggett
There's something very familiar about the disastrous rollout of healthcare.gov. Hype, promises, then fail on launch. Are we sure this isn't an EA product?
Unfortunately it is the law. I don't like it, you seem not to like it, but the first thing you notice is an "Obama link". The executives of fraudulent companies have ties to both parties and our friends there are mostly "staunch republicans", you can look it up.
Once you've created a government bid process that's so complicated that you need a dedicated group of government-specialized vendors to even be able to respond with bids, something is wrong. You've now bastardized the private sector into creating this sector of "specialists", who in fact are only specialists at being able to work with the government's purchasing process -- not necessarily in what you want to hire them to do.
Honestly, the ACA website would have been better executed by ANY moderately-capable incubating start-up than by the group that did it.
I'm consistently hearing things like "Well, it was last minute changes by the government that made it fail." If so, that failure is still on the contractor for not stepping up and saying "This won't work and the website will fail" if those things emerged at the 11th hour. With all the paperwork required up-front to get this business, the contracts MUST have had provisions about changing requirements, timelines, etc. If somebody was really afraid that they weren't going to get paid if they didn't carry through with bad and/or late requirements, it's still on the contractor.
If the Agile movement ever felt like it needed a proof-point for the failure of waterfall and the reason for iterative development, this is it.
Wow. You assholes will throw logic in the toilet at the slightest whiff of Obama impropriety.....
Every heard of Free Trade; e.g. NAFTA? Why should it only benefit American corporations?
No argument about CGI's incompetence. Seen it myself first-hand.
Cool it on the jingoism though.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
People go to Ivy League schools because of cronyism. It's pretty hard to get a top level government job without going to one. I can't say anything about this particular job, but if you don't think jobs are given to fellow alumni over those from fly-over country, you're a fool.
Why do they have to move. Train them. Problem solved. You frame this like most private firms who don't want to spend money training people. One reason people stay at some companies is that the companies train them on new stuff so that the people don't feel stagnant and not worth anything to the company or themselves. Some people think you have to move people to specific project locations. This isn't true. If the majority of the development for an organization is being done in one place, it doesn't matter where the place is (aside from relatively small integration teams when the system is being implemented at a different location). This is what can help provide cohesiveness to all government projects, so that all systems can work together. Too bad no-one thought to do this with law enforcement or the FBI systems would have been able to borrow from other systems and find the 9/11 bombers before they flew, since it is well known that the data was there to catch them, it just wasn't kept in a way to coordinate it to provide useful information (note the use of 'data' and 'information').
Even if there is more than one project. It just matters that they are close to the end user site in terms of time zones, and have the same worth ethics and social and cultural sensibilities as the client. The continental U.S. in this respect is not too big. Since it is the federal government we are talking about, working from Virginia or Maryland are good enough. Sure, a small group of integration specialists on site in other areas of the country could be used, but they are not core and those could be contractors or local hires. There is no reason to make people move in the U.S. to do software projects. It's why Microsoft, or Apple, or Google, or whoever can have their main development shop in one city or region and sell to many clients all over the U.S. and the world for that matter.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
sorry I missed a '/' in there somewhere and the blockquote's got turned off...my last comment must've been confusing...
to cut to the heart of our disagreement:
humans are **infinitely** complex & it scares you....you are wrong to always assume the absolute most machiavellian, short-sighted, perspective when you examine other's behavior...you take an extreme and apply it to everyone **because you don't understand human complexity**
see, a representative can vote for a government contract or policy ****because it is the right thing for the country***** even if it may not be the absolute best for his particular district in that very moment in time!!!!
if a Rep from Houston, Texas has a choice of approving a NASA budget that moves several divisions to say New Mexico....well that's bad for his district, because they loose all the awesome NASA stuff to New Mexico (let's assume his vote is the deciding vote)
or the budget could get rejected and the new Mars missions will never get off the drawing board....
in the short term (wrong) view, you could say voting 'no' keeps him re-elected for another cycle, but that's a **zero-sum game**
in the long term voting to block anything that doesn't keep NASA in Houston **is a horrible decision** for Houston and the country...if NASA doesn't expand into new missions the country won't even see a reason for it to get 1/8th of the funding it gets status quo...
there is no absolute...but there is a **usually**
you are afraid of complexity so you always just assume politicians are behavior at their most **stupid and short sighted** perpetually
that's wrong and uninformed...there are several lawmakers who **prove you wrong**....none of which are in the GOP
Thank you Dave Raggett
Quite the opposite: I'm saying that if we want government to be efficient, government decision makers need to be more short-sighted and ruthless than they are.
And it doesn't "scare me", I'm just explaining to you where your error lies. People like you keep advocating that the solution to humanity's problems is getting better people into government ("fire them all with prejudice"). It won't work because your premise is wrong.
Revealed: Michelle Obama's Princeton classmate is top executive at firm that that built disastrous Obamacare website after being awarded no-bid $93m contract
That is deceptive. A quick google search tells me Michelle Obama graduated from Princeton in 1981, and Toni Townes-Whitley graduated in 1985. Taken that by itself there wouldn't appear to be anything to indicate they were 'classmates', or even that they had ever met.
They are also both members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni, but still no indication that they knew each other. I have no idea how many members that organization has.
And the article you post appears contradictory:
Earlier this month, Washington Examiner reported the Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Medicare and Medicaid handed CGI Obamacare account without putting the contract out to competitive tender.
It has since been revealed four companies submitted bids, but only CGI was considered for the $93 million Healthcare.gov contract.
It wasn't put out for competitive bids, but somehow they received 4?
Another day, another update to a Google android app.
right...i think I found it...see, I don't want to "fire all the bastards" as in just stupidly electing all non-incumbants in the next election....
when I said "fire them all" I was agreeing with the GP's point of firing the contractors on the ACA website
that's all
well, that and all GOP'ers ;)
I think we have alot of common ground on this
Thank you Dave Raggett
Who is Chaney? I keep-up with politics pretty well, and I can't ever remember anyone with that first or last name.
You CONservatives are all like. You make-up shit then lie and claim it is true. There is no one named Chaney that has gone around shooting people. Please stop it with your insane fantasies.
All these consulting outfits have lengthy track records of over budget failures. In my not very extensive experience I've had to clean up the shit left by many of the big names. I'm not trying to exonerate CGI I'm saying a pox on all their houses. The interests of the consultants seem to always diverge from those who hire them
there you go again!
complex situation...your way to understand...reduce it to X or Y
"Either X or Y...either way people are incompetent or corrupt"
that's what's killing you...
ITS MORE COMPLEX THAN THE BINARIES YOU INVENT
stop it...just stop your immature bitching!
as you admit, the Bush admin did 'damage'...popping a baloon is easy...making that popped balloon fill with air again isn't as easy as poking it with a needle to pop it
your false equivalence of arguments is killing you...Obama is doing an **excellent** job overall...comparatively he's amazing...what other politician would be better?
accept reality
accept complexity
accept that your false dichotomies of complex real-world situations are hurting you!
Thank you Dave Raggett
first, you give 'conservatives' waaaay too much intellectual credit...as the product of 18 years of Fundamental Independent Baptist education and a former capitol hill staffer for a Republican...I am sure of whereof I speak
I bet ***YOU*** have given more analytical thought to the arguments of 'conservatives' than 90% of the same
ah horseshit! that isn't a valid response, and it isn't what a 'conservative' would say
in that scenario, you're out all the money, **the job isn't done** and you're stuck with whatever shitty contractors are left...that is in no way some sort of counterpoint to what I said
hell no
the thing is, a real GOP'er wouldn't even be having this conversation...they'd just compete to see who can be more extreme in what part of government/nature they want to commoditize for their political donors
Thank you Dave Raggett
A quick google search tells me Michelle Obama graduated from Princeton in 1981
Michelle Obama '85 . . . graduated from Princeton in 1985 . . . that is what the '85 behind her name means:
http://dailyprincetonian.com/tag/michelle-obama-85/
https://www.princeton.edu/pr/pwb/volume98/issue10/obama/
http://globalcomment.com/michelle-obama-princeton-do-the-hard-work-yourself/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/27/michelle-obama-skips-mile_n_553125.html
Your link, please . . . ?
"Just the facts, Ma'am . . . just the facts . . . " -- Sgt. Joe Friday
Oh, and as to them not knowing each other . . . they were both very active members of the Third World Center at Princeton, a group for minorities . . . and when they say minority at Princeton . . . they mean it with the full sense of the word. The university let them use an old boathouse for their meetings.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
As a Former Fed and current contractor, AMS' problems ran so deep, that the only way to resolve the bad name was to change it! While many of their failed efforts were very public, for those of us on the front lines in Govt, their issues ran the gamut from time sheet fraud, contractors in labor categories they were not qualified to fill and kickbacks, much of which was too embarrassing for the Fed to publicize. In most cases, they got a cure notice and/or a slap on the wrist. Towards the "end", the corruption went high up through the ranks and as such they had no choice but to bail...
"The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing
These are NEW contracts. For maximum TRANSPARENCY and TRUST all NO BID contracts should be reviewed. Get it yet?
âoeWe had military contracts. Who cares whether it worked or not?!?!â â" Dick Jones
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Forgot the catch statement
In politics, it's "catch flack."
you've memorized a narrative instead of trying to understand reality...
you speak only in absolutes & the more your precious notions are threatened, the more you assume things about me and hold tight to your false dichotomies
when did i say this?
I didn't....you're projecting these arguments on me...
It is possible to think government works without thinking it is magic.
so all government policies always fail all the time...
so how does anything ever get done?
Thank you Dave Raggett
What do the folks who were on the board that chose CGI Federal, anyway... and who appointed them to their jobs?
I mean, seeing a story about the QSSI, who was contracted to test the system... and apparently did *NOTHING*, and, oh, by the way, was bought in '12 by United Healthcare, whose campaign contributions were heavily to Republicans, oh, that wouldn't affect their job performance, no, no, ignore the man behind the curtain....
mark "would they stoop to sabatoge?"
seriously, identify specifically the 'failure'
Politics aside, project Obamacare is hurting b/c it does not have a **public option**
Otherwise, the 'rollout' is about what could be expected...want proof?
Proof: Compare Obamacare to Romneycare's rollout
Our nation **has never done this on a Federal level**
Yes, I agree that whoever hired the contractors is an idiot and ***should be reprimanded or fired***....the IT work of the Obamacare website was on par with the IT work needed to wire up a very large school district with an intranet and they paid way too much for bullshit...but that's an implementation mistake by procurement...which can and does happen in **any** system govt or private sector
but the only "problem" with Obamacare is that it doesn't have PUBLIC OPTION
Thank you Dave Raggett
i'm down with single payer system for sure
Thank you Dave Raggett
that's what you're doing w/ your 'progressivism'
you're a sell-out....a bandwagon jumper....
this conversation is over, i'm not interested in talking to a black hole
Thank you Dave Raggett
then lets agree to end this thread
Thank you Dave Raggett