<story><title>CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs</title><url>https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/30/1017086/cdc-44-million-vaccine-data-vams-problems/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nataz</author><text>Ha, I&amp;#x27;m currently a federal government program manager, so I am thinking about it from the government&amp;#x27;s side right now.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve also been a consultant cog in a mega-corp and run my own small consulting business, so I&amp;#x27;ve seen it from both sides.&lt;p&gt;Tech folks underestimate non tech challenges (basically anything outside of their domain), and clients don&amp;#x27;t actually know what they want. It&amp;#x27;s an age old problem in lots of industries.</text></item><item><author>eigenvector</author><text>Now think of the problem in reverse, from the government&amp;#x27;s side. Why are they contracting it out when all of the most difficult aspects involve integrating with government systems, policies and personnel - things that government already knows how to do?&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Because we don&amp;#x27;t have the expertise to do software development.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The comments in this thread, which I fully agree with by the way, just cement my belief that if government wants to deliver high-quality IT projects they need to start developing the expertise to do it in-house.</text></item><item><author>nataz</author><text>This guy gets it. Development is literally the simplest part of the problem set.&lt;p&gt;The intersection of domain expertise, contracting&amp;#x2F;procurement creativity, and technical evaluation is the tough part to wrangle. Getting to the point where development can start is 95% of the battle in my experience.&lt;p&gt;Not to trivialize the actual development portion of the project, but most missteps happen early, dooming projects before anyone sits down to code.</text></item><item><author>mdorazio</author><text>These contracts are generally bloated, but if you&amp;#x27;ve never seen how a $10M+ contract for things like this works you&amp;#x27;re probably thinking about it wrong.  The actual development piece is a pretty small portion of the overall work.  The bulk of it is figuring out all the requirements, wrangling legacy systems and data into some kind of shape that can either be interfaced with or imported, documentation, support (including phone), client hand-holding, etc.  Yes it&amp;#x27;s a lot of overhead, but this isn&amp;#x27;t a run of the mill green-field SaaS app a few 22 year olds can crank out in a few weeks.</text></item><item><author>didibus</author><text>I just don&amp;#x27;t understand these software deals, the price is so high. At 44 million, you can hire 146 engineers each paid 300k for a full year. Trust me, you need much less to build something like this, and there&amp;#x27;s no excuse for it to suck so bad.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m also curious, anyone know where the development actually happened? Did Deloitte further subcontracted out? Was it outsourced?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TheColorYellow</author><text>I work in a similar sector but have a strong belief that the software delivery can and should become a capability that occurs within the government.&lt;p&gt;They should be diligent in what capabilities they choose to support. And ruthless in continually developing and pivoting these capabilities.&lt;p&gt;This is true of any large organization or enterprise that operates in a software enabled domain, so yes, most industries. The idea that software development is too difficult and should only be contracted out to fleety consultants is one that needs to be properly put to rest.&lt;p&gt;And to be clear, I&amp;#x27;m not saying that consultants have no place. But for the type of technology and delivery as required by the project in the OP - there&amp;#x27;s no excuse.</text></comment>
<story><title>CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs</title><url>https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/30/1017086/cdc-44-million-vaccine-data-vams-problems/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nataz</author><text>Ha, I&amp;#x27;m currently a federal government program manager, so I am thinking about it from the government&amp;#x27;s side right now.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve also been a consultant cog in a mega-corp and run my own small consulting business, so I&amp;#x27;ve seen it from both sides.&lt;p&gt;Tech folks underestimate non tech challenges (basically anything outside of their domain), and clients don&amp;#x27;t actually know what they want. It&amp;#x27;s an age old problem in lots of industries.</text></item><item><author>eigenvector</author><text>Now think of the problem in reverse, from the government&amp;#x27;s side. Why are they contracting it out when all of the most difficult aspects involve integrating with government systems, policies and personnel - things that government already knows how to do?&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Because we don&amp;#x27;t have the expertise to do software development.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The comments in this thread, which I fully agree with by the way, just cement my belief that if government wants to deliver high-quality IT projects they need to start developing the expertise to do it in-house.</text></item><item><author>nataz</author><text>This guy gets it. Development is literally the simplest part of the problem set.&lt;p&gt;The intersection of domain expertise, contracting&amp;#x2F;procurement creativity, and technical evaluation is the tough part to wrangle. Getting to the point where development can start is 95% of the battle in my experience.&lt;p&gt;Not to trivialize the actual development portion of the project, but most missteps happen early, dooming projects before anyone sits down to code.</text></item><item><author>mdorazio</author><text>These contracts are generally bloated, but if you&amp;#x27;ve never seen how a $10M+ contract for things like this works you&amp;#x27;re probably thinking about it wrong.  The actual development piece is a pretty small portion of the overall work.  The bulk of it is figuring out all the requirements, wrangling legacy systems and data into some kind of shape that can either be interfaced with or imported, documentation, support (including phone), client hand-holding, etc.  Yes it&amp;#x27;s a lot of overhead, but this isn&amp;#x27;t a run of the mill green-field SaaS app a few 22 year olds can crank out in a few weeks.</text></item><item><author>didibus</author><text>I just don&amp;#x27;t understand these software deals, the price is so high. At 44 million, you can hire 146 engineers each paid 300k for a full year. Trust me, you need much less to build something like this, and there&amp;#x27;s no excuse for it to suck so bad.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m also curious, anyone know where the development actually happened? Did Deloitte further subcontracted out? Was it outsourced?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rorykoehler</author><text>I’ve been working in enterprise&amp;#x2F;government sector for a few years now and my observation is that they need to focus on better systems design. Everything is too convoluted. Trying to make the software fit the poorly thought out and implemented legacy ERP design from yesteryear is where most of the money is wasted.</text></comment>