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> Minnesota spent about a decade and $100 million to replace its ancient vehicle-licensing and registration software, but the new version arrived with so many g

> Minnesota spent about a decade and $100 million to replace its ancient vehicle-licensing and registration software, but the new version arrived with so many glitches in 2017 that Governor Tim Walz has asked for an additional $16 million to fix it. This raises so many questions.

icedchai 8y ago
Insane. That's like 100 people for 10 years (ballpark...)
- vonmoltke 8y ago
  That's some awful cheap people.
  - icedchai 8y ago
    100K/year average. Consider they are not all highly paid engineers, Minnesota is like 1/3rd the cost of the bay area, a lot of it was outsourced overseas where they're even cheaper.
kiba 8y ago
Raise what questions? It seems par the course for many software projects.
- deanalevitt 8y ago
  Well, my questions are: What was the original budget? Were there cost overruns? Who got the tender, and why? Where was the complexity that made it a $100M, decade long project?
- imtringued 8y ago
  I don't see how cost overruns by more than an order of magnitude are par for the course.
  - growtofill 8y ago
    That’s 16%, not an order of magnitude.
- baybal2 8y ago
  It's regrettable that US has no criminal incompetence offence for civil officials
duxup 8y ago
It was basically a leadership problem. There was nobody really running the project who was responsible. I suspect the leadership who chose to bring it in house straight up had no clue how to manage such a project. https://www.twincities.com/2019/02/14/mn-dmv-mnlars-report-department-driver-vehicle-services/ https://www.twincities.com/2019/02/14/mn-dmv-mnlars-report-d...
- deanalevitt 8y ago
  Fantastic response, thank you. Project officials did not enforce proper code development practices, and there was insufficient testing of the software. Sheesh, I wonder how much of the budget was burned on inflated admin fees?
lovich 8y ago
Most governments are bound by laws and regulations that effectively require waterfall development as every request has to be signed off before work can begin or money is dispersed. They also try to get the cheapest bidder in many cases. The entire industry knows this doesn't work, but there's no political will to fix it because it's easy to attack an opponent for spending money with no defined goal or for wearing anti corruption measures that drive a lot of the regulations that require defining everything up front
- redblacktree 8y ago
  I'm familiar with a company that works on government (specifically municipal) projects, and they simply answer "yes" to every question on the RFP. They say it's easier to build software than to negotiate requirements.
snowwindwaves 8y ago
Have you heard of the Phoenix payroll system for the Canadian federal government? The original estimated cost was 380 million and now they are asking for another 2.2 billion. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_pay_system https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_pay_system IBM
- deanalevitt 8y ago
  the original contract was for $5.7 million, but IBM was eventually paid $185 million. That's some serious scope creep going on.
  - snowwindwaves 8y ago
    It shows the value of getting the relationship with the customer going on a smaller job - it was probably to evaluate the existing system - and then segueing in to something bigger.
    - deanalevitt 8y ago
      That's a seriously important insight.
- james_s_tayler 8y ago
  There are no shortage of government IT projects around the world that end up like this. I've known of several major high profile ones where I'm from that were the exact same story. Always decades to deliver, always hundreds of millions over budget. Never works. I truly do wonder exactly how much software you could produce if you had 2.2 billion dollars to do it. Governments are getting taken for a ride.
justinph 8y ago
Would you, a trained software developer, want to work on a project that was overseen by elected officials? Keeping in mind that Minnesota is a very polarized state where the representatives are always looking for a way to ding one another, and most elected officials have about as much grasp of software and IT as they do of brain surgery. You'd have to pay me a lot to touch that with a 100 foot pole, or I'd have to be a pretty down on my luck subpar developer to touch that. But hey, to the lowest bidder we go!

icedchai 8y ago

Insane. That's like 100 people for 10 years (ballpark...)

vonmoltke 8y ago
That's some awful cheap people.
- icedchai 8y ago
  100K/year average. Consider they are not all highly paid engineers, Minnesota is like 1/3rd the cost of the bay area, a lot of it was outsourced overseas where they're even cheaper.

kiba 8y ago

Raise what questions? It seems par the course for many software projects.

deanalevitt 8y ago
Well, my questions are: What was the original budget? Were there cost overruns? Who got the tender, and why? Where was the complexity that made it a $100M, decade long project?
imtringued 8y ago
I don't see how cost overruns by more than an order of magnitude are par for the course.
- growtofill 8y ago
  That’s 16%, not an order of magnitude.
baybal2 8y ago
It's regrettable that US has no criminal incompetence offence for civil officials

duxup 8y ago

It was basically a leadership problem. There was nobody really running the project who was responsible. I suspect the leadership who chose to bring it in house straight up had no clue how to manage such a project. https://www.twincities.com/2019/02/14/mn-dmv-mnlars-report-department-driver-vehicle-services/ https://www.twincities.com/2019/02/14/mn-dmv-mnlars-report-d...

deanalevitt 8y ago
Fantastic response, thank you. Project officials did not enforce proper code development practices, and there was insufficient testing of the software. Sheesh, I wonder how much of the budget was burned on inflated admin fees?

lovich 8y ago

Most governments are bound by laws and regulations that effectively require waterfall development as every request has to be signed off before work can begin or money is dispersed. They also try to get the cheapest bidder in many cases. The entire industry knows this doesn't work, but there's no political will to fix it because it's easy to attack an opponent for spending money with no defined goal or for wearing anti corruption measures that drive a lot of the regulations that require defining everything up front

redblacktree 8y ago
I'm familiar with a company that works on government (specifically municipal) projects, and they simply answer "yes" to every question on the RFP. They say it's easier to build software than to negotiate requirements.

snowwindwaves 8y ago

Have you heard of the Phoenix payroll system for the Canadian federal government? The original estimated cost was 380 million and now they are asking for another 2.2 billion. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_pay_system https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_pay_system IBM

deanalevitt 8y ago
the original contract was for $5.7 million, but IBM was eventually paid $185 million. That's some serious scope creep going on.
- snowwindwaves 8y ago
  It shows the value of getting the relationship with the customer going on a smaller job - it was probably to evaluate the existing system - and then segueing in to something bigger.
  - deanalevitt 8y ago
    That's a seriously important insight.
james_s_tayler 8y ago
There are no shortage of government IT projects around the world that end up like this. I've known of several major high profile ones where I'm from that were the exact same story. Always decades to deliver, always hundreds of millions over budget. Never works. I truly do wonder exactly how much software you could produce if you had 2.2 billion dollars to do it. Governments are getting taken for a ride.

justinph 8y ago

Would you, a trained software developer, want to work on a project that was overseen by elected officials? Keeping in mind that Minnesota is a very polarized state where the representatives are always looking for a way to ding one another, and most elected officials have about as much grasp of software and IT as they do of brain surgery. You'd have to pay me a lot to touch that with a 100 foot pole, or I'd have to be a pretty down on my luck subpar developer to touch that. But hey, to the lowest bidder we go!