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The article answers it's own question. On the website developed for Obamacare: > The government had spent $400 million over four years - more time than it too

by em500 4y ago

The article answers it's own question. On the website developed for Obamacare: > The government had spent $400 million over four years - more time than it took the U.S. to enter and win World War II - and yet, the dozens of contractors couldn’t set up a website to take sign-ups. So the answer to the headline question (and also the broader problem) is: because the government probably can't develop the project successfully in-house. This is not a particularly American problem. Every few years I read about some super costly government IT disaster here in the Netherlands. I'm sure locals from most other countries will have similar stories to share. So the broader question would be: what makes governments apparently unable to get big IT projects done right? (I'm aware that there is a big selection/reporting bias in the disaster stories.) According to the article, Booz Allen got a 10 year contract. What would it take, when it expires, for the BLM to develop and run this successfully in-house?

emodendroket 4y ago
Have they ever attempted to build the expertise in-house? I feel like the British government has been pretty successful with this.
gnicholas 4y ago
But the failed Obamacare website was also farmed out to a third party contractor. TFA says this, and links to an investigative piece on the debacle: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/10/16/meet-cgi-federal-the-company-behind-the-botched-launch-of-healthcare-gov/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/10/16/meet-...
gamegoblin 4y ago
I think it's a combination of a few things. - Government jobs don't pay well relative to the private sector, especially in software, so the government talent pool is lower quality than industry. - For most government activities, government essentially has a monopoly on their implementation, e.g. infrastructure building. So people don't have as much of a comparison to know how good or badly government is doing. With software, people use government software and use privately developed software and the difference is obvious. - Software, perhaps even more than many endeavors, benefits from having a single decision-maker in charge of the project who has a clear vision of what needs to be done and strong conviction on how to do it. Design-by-committee is not a great way to design good software. Most government projects wind up being some form of design-by-committee, either implicitly or explicitly. Even when the government has software built by private contractors, the requirements are written by committee, the contractors chosen by committee, etc. Very few of the best of anything is designed by committee, but the effects are much more obvious with software than say, a park.
- emodendroket 4y ago
  I think government could offer software engineers the same thing it offers others: not the best pay, but stable employment with a good pension package and a predictable workload. Not for everyone, but it could certainly appeal to some people.
- tengbretson 4y ago
  Another thing to consider is that the fundamental goal of most software is to automate tasks that are done by humans. Having this development take place inside the organization already doing those tasks is going to be met with hostility, and will likely cause projects to settle into non-optimal solutions that typically look identical to the clunky workflows they are replacing, but with an electronic medium of exchange rather than a paper one.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- mjhay 4y ago
  Healthcare.gov was farmed out to well-connected contractors, much like most other similar boondoggles (SLS, F-34, Bradley fighting vehicle, delayed road projects, etc). It says a lot more about corrupt and inefficient procurement (e.g. cost-plus) than it does about rank-and-file government employees. Using many contractors in many different congressional districts, all of whom have little incentive to deliver on time and on budget, or cooperate effectively with each other.
  - crooked-v 4y ago
    I feel it still says something about government employees because one can pretty much take it as a given that the standard employee pool is basically incapable of building relatively basic e-commerce websites.
    - medellin 4y ago
      Being someone who just happened into a government job for my first one out of college that holds true in my experience. No good employee stayed in the job more than two years and most only one before they got so sick of the politics and bike shedding. The government gets good employees it just loses them all very quickly when it fails to compensate them as well as provide them with meaningful work.
chrisseaton 4y ago
> So the broader question would be: what makes governments apparently unable to get big IT projects done right? Signals intelligence people must be building some of the most powerful computer systems in the world. They also historically have innovated and led the industry in areas like crypto. How come they get it right but the rest of the civil service can’t?
- Rebelgecko 4y ago
  It probably helps if your successes and fuck-ups are classified for decades
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    The rest of the civil service seems almost entirely unable to get anything done in computing though. Signals intelligence in the UK and US seem to ship quite a lot of success, from all the history, leaks, and things you can physically see like Bumblehive. Definitely something they’re doing differently than the rest of the civil service.
    - ahepp 4y ago
      How much are they paying? I suspect it may be a shocking premium.
  - sneak 4y ago
    ...and your budget, too. This is probably the most important part. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/11/22/why-cant-the-dod-get-its-financial-house-in-order/ https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/11/22/why-cant-the-do... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_budget https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_budget
tstrimple 4y ago
> what makes governments apparently unable to get big IT projects done right? I wonder why this sentiment is never applied to big IT projects in the private sector. https://faethcoaching.com/it-project-failure-rates-facts-and-reasons/ https://faethcoaching.com/it-project-failure-rates-facts-and... * According to the Standish Group’s Annual CHAOS 2020 report, 66% of technology projects (based on the analysis of 50,000 projects globally) end in partial or total failure. While larger projects are more prone to encountering challenges or failing altogether, even the smallest software projects fail one in ten times. Large projects are successful less than 10% of the time. * Standish also found that 31% of US IT projects were canceled outright and the performance of 53% ‘was so worrying that they were challenged.’ * Research from McKinsey in 2020 found that 17% of large IT projects go so badly, they threaten the very existence of the company. * BCG (2020) estimated that 70% of digital transformation efforts fall short of meeting targets. A 2020 CISQ report found the total cost of unsuccessful development projects among US firms is an estimated $260B, while the total cost of operational failures caused by poor quality software is estimated at $1.56 trillion. I'm in the consulting world and I've been brought in at the tail end of multiple BILLION dollar boondoggle modernization efforts. These are fortune 100 companies that built their fortunes through acquisition and consolidation who have no idea how to steer their ship in any sort of effective way. In a lot of cases, we're cleaning up after other top 5 consulting firms who lead the client on while pissing away hundreds of millions of dollars. It turns out damn near everyone is bad at building large systems but only the government seems to be derided for it consistently.
- HDThoreaun 4y ago
  I think there's a difference between "this product doesn't make money" and "this product does not work". Amazon's alexa is a decent product that is a failure because it doesn't make money. Most failed private IT projects are this. The government isn't trying to make money. Their failed products are in the "this product does not work" category.
panzagl 4y ago
Big IT projects fail. The US federal government for the most part only deals in big projects. There's more to it than that, but they're mostly details compared to this basic truth.
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by em500 4y ago

emodendroket 4y ago

Have they ever attempted to build the expertise in-house? I feel like the British government has been pretty successful with this.

gnicholas 4y ago

But the failed Obamacare website was also farmed out to a third party contractor. TFA says this, and links to an investigative piece on the debacle: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/10/16/meet-cgi-federal-the-company-behind-the-botched-launch-of-healthcare-gov/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/10/16/meet-...

gamegoblin 4y ago

I think it's a combination of a few things. - Government jobs don't pay well relative to the private sector, especially in software, so the government talent pool is lower quality than industry. - For most government activities, government essentially has a monopoly on their implementation, e.g. infrastructure building. So people don't have as much of a comparison to know how good or badly government is doing. With software, people use government software and use privately developed software and the difference is obvious. - Software, perhaps even more than many endeavors, benefits from having a single decision-maker in charge of the project who has a clear vision of what needs to be done and strong conviction on how to do it. Design-by-committee is not a great way to design good software. Most government projects wind up being some form of design-by-committee, either implicitly or explicitly. Even when the government has software built by private contractors, the requirements are written by committee, the contractors chosen by committee, etc. Very few of the best of anything is designed by committee, but the effects are much more obvious with software than say, a park.

emodendroket 4y ago
I think government could offer software engineers the same thing it offers others: not the best pay, but stable employment with a good pension package and a predictable workload. Not for everyone, but it could certainly appeal to some people.
tengbretson 4y ago
Another thing to consider is that the fundamental goal of most software is to automate tasks that are done by humans. Having this development take place inside the organization already doing those tasks is going to be met with hostility, and will likely cause projects to settle into non-optimal solutions that typically look identical to the clunky workflows they are replacing, but with an electronic medium of exchange rather than a paper one.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
mjhay 4y ago
Healthcare.gov was farmed out to well-connected contractors, much like most other similar boondoggles (SLS, F-34, Bradley fighting vehicle, delayed road projects, etc). It says a lot more about corrupt and inefficient procurement (e.g. cost-plus) than it does about rank-and-file government employees. Using many contractors in many different congressional districts, all of whom have little incentive to deliver on time and on budget, or cooperate effectively with each other.
- crooked-v 4y ago
  I feel it still says something about government employees because one can pretty much take it as a given that the standard employee pool is basically incapable of building relatively basic e-commerce websites.
  - medellin 4y ago
    Being someone who just happened into a government job for my first one out of college that holds true in my experience. No good employee stayed in the job more than two years and most only one before they got so sick of the politics and bike shedding. The government gets good employees it just loses them all very quickly when it fails to compensate them as well as provide them with meaningful work.

chrisseaton 4y ago

> So the broader question would be: what makes governments apparently unable to get big IT projects done right? Signals intelligence people must be building some of the most powerful computer systems in the world. They also historically have innovated and led the industry in areas like crypto. How come they get it right but the rest of the civil service can’t?

Rebelgecko 4y ago
It probably helps if your successes and fuck-ups are classified for decades
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  The rest of the civil service seems almost entirely unable to get anything done in computing though. Signals intelligence in the UK and US seem to ship quite a lot of success, from all the history, leaks, and things you can physically see like Bumblehive. Definitely something they’re doing differently than the rest of the civil service.
  - ahepp 4y ago
    How much are they paying? I suspect it may be a shocking premium.
- sneak 4y ago
  ...and your budget, too. This is probably the most important part. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/11/22/why-cant-the-dod-get-its-financial-house-in-order/ https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/11/22/why-cant-the-do... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_budget https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_budget

tstrimple 4y ago

> what makes governments apparently unable to get big IT projects done right? I wonder why this sentiment is never applied to big IT projects in the private sector. https://faethcoaching.com/it-project-failure-rates-facts-and-reasons/ https://faethcoaching.com/it-project-failure-rates-facts-and... * According to the Standish Group’s Annual CHAOS 2020 report, 66% of technology projects (based on the analysis of 50,000 projects globally) end in partial or total failure. While larger projects are more prone to encountering challenges or failing altogether, even the smallest software projects fail one in ten times. Large projects are successful less than 10% of the time. * Standish also found that 31% of US IT projects were canceled outright and the performance of 53% ‘was so worrying that they were challenged.’ * Research from McKinsey in 2020 found that 17% of large IT projects go so badly, they threaten the very existence of the company. * BCG (2020) estimated that 70% of digital transformation efforts fall short of meeting targets. A 2020 CISQ report found the total cost of unsuccessful development projects among US firms is an estimated $260B, while the total cost of operational failures caused by poor quality software is estimated at $1.56 trillion. I'm in the consulting world and I've been brought in at the tail end of multiple BILLION dollar boondoggle modernization efforts. These are fortune 100 companies that built their fortunes through acquisition and consolidation who have no idea how to steer their ship in any sort of effective way. In a lot of cases, we're cleaning up after other top 5 consulting firms who lead the client on while pissing away hundreds of millions of dollars. It turns out damn near everyone is bad at building large systems but only the government seems to be derided for it consistently.

HDThoreaun 4y ago
I think there's a difference between "this product doesn't make money" and "this product does not work". Amazon's alexa is a decent product that is a failure because it doesn't make money. Most failed private IT projects are this. The government isn't trying to make money. Their failed products are in the "this product does not work" category.

panzagl 4y ago

Big IT projects fail. The US federal government for the most part only deals in big projects. There's more to it than that, but they're mostly details compared to this basic truth.

deleted 4y ago
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deleted 4y ago
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