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Oregon vs. Oracle: the Battle of Blame Heats Up
Rambo Tribble (1273454) writes "The ongoing efforts to assign responsibility for the disastrous attempts to create the Cover Oregon health exchange, the primary contractor for which was Oracle Corporation, have entered a new round, with Governor John Kitzhaber calling on State Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum to initiate legal action against the firm. Kitzhaber has also sought the help of Washington D.C. in sanctioning Oracle, though Oregon's own management of the project and the terms of their contract with Oracle muddy the waters, considerably. Although the AG's office hasn't committed to filing suit, yet, AG Rosenblum has said, 'I share your determination to recover every dollar to which Oregon is entitled.' Although the outcome of this is uncertain, it is likely heads, both corporate and political, will roll."
Another goverment run software development project not delivered, way over budget, and fully into the blame part of the project. The only loser here are the poor people living in that state.
~^\-/^|-|^\-/^~ May the force be with me!
Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll destroy each other.
She did not commit to filing suit, but said, "I share your determination to recover every dollar to which Oregon is entitled."
You can say a lot of words without promising anything. I particularly like "recover every dollar to which Oregon is entitled". It could be $0 or $1 or $100M, because she didn't mention how much that is in her opinion.
Anytime a large project goes down in flames like this, both the 'company' and the contractor are at fault.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Shoulda went with SAP
that this differs from any software development project anywhere else. Of course, blaming the government for the faults of large corporations is the usual tactic for the corporate brown-nosers, as they think it makes it easier for them to refuse to admit that their masters are clueless.
I live in Washington state, and I think we're to blame - at least in part. All those Oregon programmers kept coming north to smoke weed here. I was a bit surprised Oregon didn't have plenty of its own already, given its reputation; but no, you'd see those guys all over the place asking "where can I find the good stuff, man. The GOOD stuff! I need a hookup, man!"
Our own health insurance exchange did well after the first week - that's when we fired all the stoners and hired every Mormon coder we could find.
#DeleteChrome
People who smoke weed made the music you listen to.
People who smoke weed designed the car you drive.
If you're driving a car not built in the US then people who smoke weed built the car you drive.
People who smoke weed came up with all those funny shows you like on TV.
People who smoke weed wrote parts of Oracle's code and people who smoke weed work for the State of Oregon.
Don't blame weed for this or any failure.
stop giving contracts to grifters, also quaintly known as the private sector.
They're all incompetent. Oracle's consulting branch is completely incapable of doing an adequate job. This isn't news. Anyone who's worked with them knows this. Oregon hired them anyways, which means the people in charge of that project are also idiots. So, to paraphrase Obi-Wan, who is the more idiotic: the idiot or the idiot who hires him?
With it seems like all the health care sites having the same problems, I can't help wondering how much of it sabotage caused by the republicans and the insurance companies.
Oregon produced an audit of the Oracle Debacle here: http://www.oregon.gov/DAS/docs... The audit answered the wrong questions. It accepted the magical notions and vapor roles of Oracle's corporate propaganda. For example, it focuses on the need for a 'systems integrator', as if every engineer should -not- be responsible for integration. The two big problems: 1) The computer industry's current authoritarian obsession with subdivided tasks, specialization, core competence, detailed requirements, 'no surprises' (meaning no good surprises, either), and dogmatic 'best practices' has created a generation of corporate slaves who aren't allowed to use their minds or take responsibility for anything important. 2) Which brings us to motivation. Oracle and other corporate oligarchs only want money. They have no responsibility to do anything else. Maximizing the bill is the sole priority. Three programmers, picked at random, who live in Oregon, and who have friends that need insurance, would have finished this job with FOSS, not proprietary software, in half the time a fraudulent Oracle and a corrupt State's office took to generate a broken system.
Or:
Another contract which was contracted out to a large corporate entity has not delivered, way over budget, and fully into the blame part of the project.
But, but, it's the private sector. The market always makes sure private companies do things better than the public/government can.
Oracle is less likely to get future government contracts in other states or levels if they have the reputation for being a drama queen and "difficult", regardless of fault. They may be better off quietly negotiating a compromise and eating some of the costs in the short term. Is the loud approach part of their Ellison bravado culture?
Table-ized A.I.
The government hires contractors so they have someone to throw under the bus when everything goes wrong a few years later. The national healthcare thing did it with CGI. Contractors are a layer of plausible deniability, much like spammers who create a web of third parties (companies, rented mailing lists, mailers, affiliates, and so on) all of which are shadowy finger-pointers to the extent you can't really figure out who did what if you do want to hold someone liable. Basically anything can be blamed on contractors!
they also want to dump money into a lawsuit? I don't think they'll recover more from Oracle than they spend suing them.
I'm even more sure that some Oregon bureaucrat probably signed a contract that fails to properly cover their arses.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
That was only legalized recently. It's being a state with no state income tax next to a state funded only by state income tax, which has been the ongoing situation for many years. More of the people with brains enough for a high paying job left in Oregon don't care so much about money. Among the smart people left who do care about money, there's doubtless a higher percentage of financial predators feeding on the higher percentage of financial gullibility in the surrounding population. This reinforces the "money people are evil" stereotype and the "tax 'em" response to it, maintaining the situation.
They should fire and sue whoever was stupid enough to even seek a quote from Oracle let alone the person who decided to go with them. Oracle is a bunch of lying, scamming, unintelligent scam artists who go 2-3x over their budget on every large project they have ever worked on in all of human history. Plus, the end result never works correctly. If a contracted suggested I get Oracle to work on a project for my company, I would laugh for about 20 seconds straight then ban them from the project. We even had a course in college that should have been titled "Do not hire Oracle for anything." It was case studies of horribly failed SDLC cycle projects.
stop outsourcing and stop hiring h1b's.
With outsourcing you get a lot of contractors and subcontractor that at times can be locked into one part of a big project and it times all the layers of PHB's and other stuff may it take time for issues to work there way from one team to an other team.
When Oregon’s new Chief Information Officer, Alex Pettit,was on our show recently, we asked him what stood out from his move from Oklahoma to the northwest. He said there were some expected cultural differences, but that in terms of IT he was caught by surprise:
I was surprised that things like open source wasn’t as bigin government as it is in the East Coast, or in Oklahoma, where I was. I was surprised that transparency wasn’t a bigger issue. It’s certainly a big issue in Oklahoma, and it’s less so here.
This was striking because Oregon is known for its open source community — at Oregon State’s Open Source Lab, at the annual OSCON Conference, and among many programmers. And his comments came right before an Oregonian op-ed argued that open source software could have prevented the Cover Oregon fiasco.
http://www.opb.org/radio/progr...
The only mistake that may have been made by Oregon State gov. tech people was letting Federal officials talk into going outside Oregon for the website project.
I don't see anyone else commenting on Oracle... they're fucking awful. I've been through EXACTLY what the state of Oregon has with Oracle. The exact same thing happened to me.
Good luck Oregon. I think dudes sailboat is worth more than your state.
With almost 1 million "Barak Obama"s registered in the Cover Oregon health exchange many questions must be answered.
Why did persons, ip address, from the White House register "Barak Obama" in the Cover Oregon health exchange ?
Why is Barak Obama desperate to fraud the Cover Oregon health exchange ?
Why does Barak Obama need to fraud and defund the state of Oregon through the Cover Oregon health exchange ?
It does appear clear that Mr. Obama's vision of healthcare is the vision that he enacted at the VA Administration hospitals.
I wrote a few words about this: http://pdxjjb-econ-politics.blogspot.com/2014/05/cover-oregon-and-oracle.html
As an Oregonian and engineer, I was so surprised when they went the Oracle route. For a situation like this, you've basically started out guaranteeing the result they've seen. Oregon state politics is interesting enough as it is without getting contractual corruption and national party machinery in the mix. I also happen work in the defense industry, where contracts and results like this are practically de rigueur, and it really makes me wonder how blind/naive/ignorant you have to be to expect anything other than what happened. Vote 'em out, fellow Oregonians, and replace them with two rub-able cents!
Couldn't happen to a nicer company... a company that has become highly litigious and greedy. Certainly a company I won't let in the door.
Believe it or not, there are US government agencies that have escorted Oracle sales reps out of their buildings before. (I.e., thrown them out) There is a real push from within Washington DC to get away from that company's products. Only the most mismanaged agencies still feel confident in that company.
I used to work at the State of Oregon Datacenter. Open source is highly avoided. When I was there a few years ago, there were only about 150-200 Linux machines (virtual and physical), if memory serves. There were thousands of Windows servers, many of which could have just as easily been Linux. The entire atmosphere is that of, "avoid Linux, avoid open source." It's as if management is intent on spending lots of money. Even though I still live in Oregon, I've been laughing every time something new comes out with this Oregon vs. Oracle debacle. Knowing how the state's data center runs, it's hard for me to imagine a scenario where the crux of the problem lies with Oracle (and I am no fan of Oracle).
(I realize that Linux is not synonymous with open source. There are plenty of other open source projects, many/most of which can run on Windows as well. My use of Linux is just as a general example of how, generally, open source is handled there. Also, while I think their decisions to avoid open source are problematic, the greater issue is their overall inability to manage people. When I left that job, morale was at an all-time low, as management kept discovering new ways to make their employees' work lives more difficult.)
There were no deliverables in the terms Oracle was hired under.
The entire open bidding process was subverted and Oracle was handed an open ended time and materials deal.
Now that the feds are looking into going after the responsible parties Kitzhaber is back pedaling.
I was also told the states attorney will not be taking action, a private attorney will be runnng point on this action.
Not that I am any fan or Oracle's I think they may be in the clear on this one.
Kitzhaber should fall on his sword.
Rick B.
So what you're saying is, whoever loses, we win?
"The only mistake that may have been made by Oregon State gov. tech people was letting Federal officials talk into going outside Oregon for the website project."
should read
"The only mistake that may have been made by Oregon State gov. PROJECT MANAGERS was letting Federal officials talk into going outside Oregon for the website project."
Like the other response, I also worked at the state data center, and even had input into the design (much of which was never followed, shocker). The tech side of the SDC had problems, due to poor management, and many SMEs have left including myself. The IT infrastructure powering the healthcare applications, however, worked reliably even if the applications didn't.