3 ms·

The crazy thing is that a small team of around 10 really good engineers could probably have put together a robust reliable working Healthcare.gov-like system th

The crazy thing is that a small team of around 10 really good engineers could probably have put together a robust reliable working Healthcare.gov-like system that could handle the potential 300 million users in 1-2 years. If you paid all 10 of them them $300k each a year, for 2 years, that's 10 * 300 * 2 = $6 million. Worst case, Healthcare.gov should have cost 5 times that, $30 million. I feel like the sort of egregious and copious waste in government should borderline be illegal.

fallingknife 3y ago
The craziest part of it is that the 840 million isn't fraud. The contractor didn't pocket that. They actually spent that much money on legitimate development work. And if they had just delivered a working app, nobody would have ever asked any questions.
- winter_blue 3y ago
  In a similar story, USCIS spent $3.1 billion on trying to build a web app to submit forms: https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2017/02/15/billion-dollar-blunder-immigrants-still-cant-rely-on-uscis-electronic-filing-system/?sh=31d461335c37 https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2017/02/15/billion-dol... And they failed at that too. Apparently what would have been a weekend project for a high school student was so hard for a federal agency that they burned $3.1 billion trying to do it. (This level of incompetence is truly despicable.) I wonder if there is something pathologically wrong with government and how government (at least in the U.S.) does spending.
  - fallingknife 3y ago
    And I hear people seriously suggest that the government can't get things done because they are "underfunded"!
- kukkeliskuu 3y ago
  Having worked on the customer-side on large IT projects, some of these large contractors establish policies and development methods that are guaranteed to produce problems. They also hire incompetent and cheap labor, which causes more work.

fallingknife 3y ago

The craziest part of it is that the 840 million isn't fraud. The contractor didn't pocket that. They actually spent that much money on legitimate development work. And if they had just delivered a working app, nobody would have ever asked any questions.

winter_blue 3y ago
In a similar story, USCIS spent $3.1 billion on trying to build a web app to submit forms: https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2017/02/15/billion-dollar-blunder-immigrants-still-cant-rely-on-uscis-electronic-filing-system/?sh=31d461335c37 https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2017/02/15/billion-dol... And they failed at that too. Apparently what would have been a weekend project for a high school student was so hard for a federal agency that they burned $3.1 billion trying to do it. (This level of incompetence is truly despicable.) I wonder if there is something pathologically wrong with government and how government (at least in the U.S.) does spending.
- fallingknife 3y ago
  And I hear people seriously suggest that the government can't get things done because they are "underfunded"!
kukkeliskuu 3y ago
Having worked on the customer-side on large IT projects, some of these large contractors establish policies and development methods that are guaranteed to produce problems. They also hire incompetent and cheap labor, which causes more work.