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The most important point: > the initial $500 million contract had been awarded to IBM So IBM accepted a pile of money for the project and didn't get it done.

The most important point: > the initial $500 million contract had been awarded to IBM So IBM accepted a pile of money for the project and didn't get it done. The blame lies solely on them. Sure, there were bureaucratic obstacles, and government officials who didn't do things necessary for the project, but that's no excuse; IBM was responsible for making it happen. I keep hearing people talk about government inefficiency as though it were actual government employees who were failing. But it's usually like this: a failure of the bidding process and of accountability, where a large corporation (it's always one of the same few) collects money for a job and doesn't do it.

_delirium 11y ago
Contracting seems to be a big part of it. The justification for contracting these kinds of jobs out rather than just doing them in-house is that private-sector competition through a bidding process will lower costs, ultimately making the government more efficient. But in many cases I wonder if it wouldn't be cheaper to just hire some in-house developers, rather than bleeding all this money to the likes of IBM, Oracle, etc.
- Symbiote 11y ago
  The point is totally to make it more expensive for the taxpayer, so long as the right outsourcing companies get the contracts. An in-house development team would know the domain, the managers would be much closer to the business and have more authority to make day-to-day decisions. Plus, if the developers are permanent staff, they're aware that they will be responsible for the system once it's live. That's much better for everyone, except the politician, whose wife has shares in IBM.
dragonwriter 11y ago
> I keep hearing people talk about government inefficiency as though it were actual government employees who were failing. But it's usually like this: a failure of the bidding process and of accountability, where a large corporation (it's always one of the same few) collects money for a job and doesn't do it. "The bidding process and accountability" is a function performed by actual government employees, so its failure is a failure of actual government employees, even if that failure is visible through the failure of a government contractor. A big problem is that government often does not have staff that understand enough about IT projects to effectively execute them, so it hires other people to do them: but the same skills that they lack that motivate outsourcing means they also don't understand IT projects well enough to do any of (1) effectively specify what it is that the contractor is supposed to do to allow contractors to bid properly, (2) effectively evaluate potential contractors, or (3) effectively oversee the contractor once one is selected.
mjcohen 11y ago
The problem here, as in most large government contracts (aerospace is a prime example) is that all the bidders know that an honest bid will never win. So, to win, all the bidders knowingly underbid, and hope that they can get adequate funds as an add-on, when the project as bid begins to obviously fail. The only way to stop this would be to punish the contractors of the failing projects in some extreme way.But that, of course, will never happen. Anybody want an F-35?
brokentone 11y ago
A better excerpt: > Agency officials did not complete the basic plans for the computer system until nearly three years after the initial $500 million contract had been awarded to IBM Nothing wrong with a company bidding on a project of undefined scope. They likely properly laid out what that money bought -- hours, months, years of consulting / implementation. If the client did not have the interested in getting to implementation in short order, that is the client's issue. The company (IBM's) clock starts immediately and the dollars start disappearing.

_delirium 11y ago

Contracting seems to be a big part of it. The justification for contracting these kinds of jobs out rather than just doing them in-house is that private-sector competition through a bidding process will lower costs, ultimately making the government more efficient. But in many cases I wonder if it wouldn't be cheaper to just hire some in-house developers, rather than bleeding all this money to the likes of IBM, Oracle, etc.

Symbiote 11y ago
The point is totally to make it more expensive for the taxpayer, so long as the right outsourcing companies get the contracts. An in-house development team would know the domain, the managers would be much closer to the business and have more authority to make day-to-day decisions. Plus, if the developers are permanent staff, they're aware that they will be responsible for the system once it's live. That's much better for everyone, except the politician, whose wife has shares in IBM.

dragonwriter 11y ago

> I keep hearing people talk about government inefficiency as though it were actual government employees who were failing. But it's usually like this: a failure of the bidding process and of accountability, where a large corporation (it's always one of the same few) collects money for a job and doesn't do it. "The bidding process and accountability" is a function performed by actual government employees, so its failure is a failure of actual government employees, even if that failure is visible through the failure of a government contractor. A big problem is that government often does not have staff that understand enough about IT projects to effectively execute them, so it hires other people to do them: but the same skills that they lack that motivate outsourcing means they also don't understand IT projects well enough to do any of (1) effectively specify what it is that the contractor is supposed to do to allow contractors to bid properly, (2) effectively evaluate potential contractors, or (3) effectively oversee the contractor once one is selected.

mjcohen 11y ago

The problem here, as in most large government contracts (aerospace is a prime example) is that all the bidders know that an honest bid will never win. So, to win, all the bidders knowingly underbid, and hope that they can get adequate funds as an add-on, when the project as bid begins to obviously fail. The only way to stop this would be to punish the contractors of the failing projects in some extreme way.But that, of course, will never happen. Anybody want an F-35?

brokentone 11y ago

A better excerpt: > Agency officials did not complete the basic plans for the computer system until nearly three years after the initial $500 million contract had been awarded to IBM Nothing wrong with a company bidding on a project of undefined scope. They likely properly laid out what that money bought -- hours, months, years of consulting / implementation. If the client did not have the interested in getting to implementation in short order, that is the client's issue. The company (IBM's) clock starts immediately and the dollars start disappearing.