Ex-Head of Troubled Health Insurance Site May Sue, Citing 'Cover-Up'

itwbennett writes "Carolyn Lawson, the former CIO for Oregon's troubled health care insurance website, is alleging that state officials engaged in a 'substantial cover-up' meant to deflect blame away from themselves and onto herself and the project's contractor, Oracle. Lawson, who was forced to resign in December, this week filed a tort claim notice, which is a required precursor to filing a lawsuit against the state." Claims are made that the state was the typical bad client, refusing to articulate "business requirements" effectively and repeatedly increasing the scope of the project. But then again Oracle was involved.

Comments

It probably went something like this

[ArcadeMan]

How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell - The Oatmeal.

Re:Inadequate experience?

[gstoddart]

At a certain point, "refusing to articulate "business requirements" effectively and repeatedly increasing the scope of the project" becomes the primary reason for project failure.

This invariably gets blamed on the project people and the contractors by the client, but the reality is if the client makes it impossible to get the job done through their own stupidity, blaming everyone else for that failure is just CYA by those who really caused the project to fail.

You can't force the client to actually do what is required, no matter how you'd like to.

I'm betting the exact same things happened with the Federal one.

And I suspect most of us have been there.