NASA's Outsourced Computer People Are Even Worse Than You Might Expect (arstechnica.com)

Eric berger, writing for ArsTechnica: As part of a plan to help NASA "modernize" its desktop and laptop computers, the space agency signed a $2.5 billion services contract with HP Enterprise Services in 2011. According to HP (now HPE), part of the Agency Consolidated End-User Service (ACES) program the computing company would "modernize NASA's entire end-user infrastructure by delivering a full range of personal computing services and devices to more than 60,000 users." HPE also said the program would "allow (NASA) employees to more easily collaborate in a secure computing environment." The services contract, alas, hasn't gone quite as well as one might have hoped. This week Federal News Radio reported that HPE is doing such a poor job that NASA's chief information officer, Renee Wynn, could no longer accept the security risks associated with the contract. Wynn, therefore, did not sign off on the authority to operate (ATO) for systems and tools.A spokesperson for NASA said: "NASA continues to work with HPE to remediate vulnerabilities. As required by NASA policy, system owners must accomplish this remediation within a specified period of time. For those vulnerabilities that cannot be fully remediated within the established time frame, a Plan of Actions and Milestones (POAM) must be developed, approved, and tracked to closure."

Comments

Who would have guessed?

[HornWumpus]

EDS under a new name is the same old POS.

How do they get contracts? It's not like their incompetence isn't already legend.

The only thing they are competent at is marketing to government and fortune 500s.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> How do they get contracts?

Golf maybe?

>> It's not like their incompetence isn't already legend.

I took part in a state-wide effort to avoid hiring Accenture for some kind of state voting system about ten years, based on their demonstrated inability to complete that kind of project (they were getting sued by other governments during bidding) and their 3-4x run-up of costs at the same time. Guess what happened? The state hired Accenture anyway...got screwed with a system they couldn't use...and got charged about 3x what they were told. Unfortunately as I got older, I noticed that this happens all the time.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because management doesn't listen to IT people, or even consult them about IT-related contracts. Instead, they imagine that they have all the knowledge and experience required to judge the merits of a proposal and end up selecting the one with the slickest marketing.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called lobbying (aka bribery). You funnel lots of money into the campaigns, foundations, or libraries of powerful people (for example....Secretaries of State) and magically you get whatever you want. Big government contracts. Laws that hinder your competitors. Regulations that benefit you personally. Tax breaks. The list goes on and on and on...

Re: Who would have guessed?

[Anonymous Coward]

IT people mostly suck, too. And there's this fallacy that people will actually deliver on contractual obligations; they won't. People that are good at spotting bullshit are usually marginalized as negative influences.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[Anonymous Coward]

They can get the contract because HP is both services and hardware all in one (minimal subcontractors) and they can claim "experience" from Navy-Marine Corps Internet (NMCI, see above AC post). The problem is the Navy and Marine Corps _hate_ NMCI for many reasons, and the network is still a playground for the Chinese and Russians while any"failures" result in EDS^H^H^H HP saying "you didn't pay us enough to do X". X is anything which is not something positive for HP, which means they can blame the Govt / DoD, which means they don't have to declare problems on RFP's for other government agencies (like NASA).

The groups that were hit the hardest in the NMCI transition were RDT&E facilities because they were going to lose their custom software (and did). NASA in particular is going to be hit by this. The NMCI contract also states that HP owns all the hardware, so if they are canned they can literally pick up all the office computers, most printers, and all file servers used by the Navy and USMC and take them back, leaving the USA with a long term national security problem*. I'm guessing the NASA contracts also states this.

* This does not pertain to active military operations computers (i.e. Aegis computers, Blue Force Tracker, etc. are 100% government owned), but it does to all backoffice and logistics systems, including most computers being used for acquisition management and email dissemination.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[EndlessNameless]

The original NMCI contract expired and was replaced by NGEN.

Under NGEN, the government has full network infrastructure documentation and certain hardware assets.

While this particular problem has been addressed, HP got a sweetheart deal because they were basically a shoo-in. Precisely because Navy/USMC botched the original contract.

So while the government apparently learned from its mistakes, the Navy/USMC are stuck with HP for the next few years regardless.

Re: Who would have guessed?

[EndlessNameless]

People that are good at spotting bullshit are usually marginalized as negative influences.

I don't have that problem, so it's probably a question of how you identify BS or how you expose it up the chain.

The underlying issue is that you have to be right. If you call something out---even once---and it ends up doing what they wanted it for, then your credibility is shot.

There's an art to conveying uncertainty in regard to anything management wants.

I have never gotten a bad response from saying, "The suggested product does not have a perfect reputation, so here is an alternative if they can't deliver." And that alternative comes with a summary of the costs, functionality, and tradeoffs so he can justify the change if necessary.

The people I see marginalized as negative influences are the ones who talk shit about proposed solutions without offering one of their own. A business need can't go without a solution, so you're offering either a viable alternative or noise. And an alternative solution doesn't count if it can't check off all the major requirements, including the ones that might not be written down.

Re:Who would have guessed?

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Accenture consistently drives high performance and has a history of satisfaction on projects for the worlds top organizations

No they have a history of bringing in piles of bodies that are only slightly more effective than a rotting corpse in the corner although the corpse may actually smell better.

What sets Accenture apart from the competition are its management.

Translation: We will blow more smoke up your ass than a stationary 2 stroke diesel Fairbanks engine with bad rings at load.

However Accenture Senior Management staff have shown consistently high levels of skill and communication.

See above a blowing smoke up your ass. Skills wise they suck harder than a black hole with daddy issues

Re:Who would have guessed?

[hey!]

Government procurement contracts pretty much preclude the government obtaining goods and services on the open market. Instead it must rely to a large degree on contractors and vendors who have the capability of handling all the special paperwork and requirements.

So if you're on a procurement committee you don't have much choice. Once you discard the vendors who (a) can't absorb the amount of money to be spent on schedule and (b) jump through the statutory federal contractor hoops, what you're left with is a rogues gallery of usual suspects.

Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked for them. They have Linux HA failover setup on single network cable going to the same switch from both nodes. And then they debate why both nodes became master. When it was pointed out by me they stonewall and bounce between teams like engineering vs server ops. Nothing gets done. Engineering is a joke, they only know how to install linux from a CD. No tuning at all. SAN storage, where do I start. They recruit kids who got certifications, who use production as learning platform.

Re:Not surprising

[shaitand]

"SAN storage, where do I start. They recruit kids who got certifications, who use production as learning platform."

Yup, I knew some of those kids while I worked in Albuquerque. HP would poach some of our greenest and youngest people.

Re:Not surprising

[segedunum]

Not surprised at all. I interviewed with them, and they really wanted me mainly because I got the impression they desperately needed someone who knew what he was talking about for something they really needed. However, HPE already have a massive reputation for casting employees aside and I wisely backed out. They are a company that simply don't do anything useful at all but get cash thrown at them for some reason. That's the result.

This is why

[Anonymous Coward]

Some advice that was given to me years ago and has proven very accurate is to always be involved with the core business of anywhere you work. Never be a part of the support staff - accounting, IT, HR, etc.

If you make widgets, be a widget engineer or a widget assembler or a widget repairman.

Support staff is easily outsourced or replaced and you wind up bouncing from job to job and being cut any time your pay nears a livable level. If you work at N

ASA, have something to do with rocket launches or exploration and you'll be fine. IT? Not so much.

Re:This is why

[shaitand]

True but in tech there is no advancement in position anyway, the only way you get a pay increase you'll notice is to get hired at the current market rates by another company. Within 2-3 years you'll pay will have advanced only joke 1-3% amounts while new hires will make as much or more than you.

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

Support staff is easily outsourced or replaced and you wind up bouncing from job to job and being cut any time your pay nears a livable level.

As an IT support contractor for 20+ years, I currently make $50,000+ per year and live in Silicon Valley.

Re:This is why

[Joe_Dragon]

50K is crap in SV

Re:This is why

[__aaclcg7560]

50K is crap in SV

Not if you're living a modest lifestyle. The mistake that most people make is chasing the American Dream: big houses, big cars, big toys, big women, big kids. That gets expensive in Silicon Valley.

Re:This is why

[The-Ixian]

The nice thing about IT work is that all sectors need IT workers.

So you don't have to restrict yourself to one market sector.

Some sectors pay more than others.

For me, it is always a trade off between freedom and burdensome restrictions.

Usually, the bigger the company, the more you can get paid as an IT worker and the less you need to know. However, you also have much less freedom to drive company policy or to even do your job (or what you view to be your job).

OTOH, the smaller the company, the less money you make as salary but the perks may be bigger (retirement, medical insurance, free parking, etc) and you have more freedom to involve yourself in more things (wear more hats). However, the work is harder and you need to know more.

I personally like the smaller companies. I don't make as much as my peers, but I do get to do a lot more interesting things on a daily basis.

Outsourcing vs Inhouse

[Archangel Michael]

If you outsource, you get what you pay for .. maybe.

If you keep it in house, you get what you pay for .. maybe.

The problem isn't outsourcing, it is leadership that is incapable of articulating needs correctly. Or even make a decision without having to have 18 meetings with people who don't give a rip and don't know anything.

Re:Outsourcing vs Inhouse

[chipschap]

Or even make a decision without having to have 18 meetings with people who don't give a rip and don't know anything.

When I becane an IT manager, I instituted a "two meeting" rule. The first meeting to broach and issue and discuss it, and the second meeting to complete the discussion and make a decision.

This enraged people, who wanted multiple meetings spread out over weeks. Great way to avoid accountability but I wouldn't allow it. So people then started coming to me individually, post-decision, trying to get me to reconsider or have another meeting.

Sorry. I would rather have risked a sub-optimal decision than have no decision at all---- and the additional dozen meetings very likely would have resulted in something worse, not better.

I only lasted a few years in that job. Too counter-culture. (I also --- gasp --- got rid of subordinate managers who weren't getting the job done.)

Insider Info

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked at one of the NASA research centers when this contract was awarded. During the Due Diligence phase, HPE didn't even send a representative to our facility, and at other sites the reps were there for one day. We were incredulous; at our site alone there are 3,000+ people and a complex IT infrastructure. How can you do proper due diligence for a multi-billion dollar contract without even visiting the IT environment your going to be taking over, or talking with existing staff and customers?

Lockheed also competed for this contract and lost. (Lockheed was the incumbent on the expiring ODIN contract, and some of us suspected bias against Lockheed because of this.) Lockheed contested the contract award, which is something that is rarely done because you don't want to burn bridges with the government, and the United States government is Lockheed's customer for about 99% of all corporate revenue. Lockheed's position was something like, "you can't be serious! HPE has no idea what they are doing!" But NASA was insistent that they wanted HPE. It's been pure IT hell at NASA ever since.

MORE: During implementation, we found out that HPE's plan was to have a single HPE employee at our location! Any other staff would be outsourced or done via remote desktop sessions.

The problems begin with the letters H and P...

[__aaclcg7560]

I talked to a recruiter a few years ago about an HP help desk position with a high turnover rate at an unnamed company in North San Jose. He refused to explain the turnover situation. I told him that I wasn't going to interview if I didn't know how bad the situation was. I had no problem cleaning up messes but I don't do lost causes. HP help desk at that unnamed company sounded like a lost cause based on what little the recruiter told me.They were also underpaying their techs.

NASA quote low bids

[turkeydance]

It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract. Alan Shepard Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quo...

They are highly competent at getting contracts

[raymorris]

>How do they get contracts? It's not like their incompetence isn't already legend.

They are very good at what they do - they get contracts. They handle thousands of pages of government forms, years of meetings, and of course donating to the right organizations.

I was a contractor for a company which did most of the on-site work for HP, called TCML. HP's competence was getting government contracts. TCML's competence was finding and contracting somewhat competent techs. My competence was with servers, switches, desktops, etc.

I'm not competent at preparing a XYX-7273-HDH-98(b) package for a federal RFP. HP isn't competent at upgrading a router.