Comment by michaelt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by michaelt | Hacker News Reader

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There's Raytheon, who the government fired after they fell way behind schedule on e-borders.... and the government had to pay £220 million to fire. [1]

There's CSC, who were paid £10 billion for a failed NHS IT project [2] - and Accenture and Fujitsu who made billions from the failed 'NHS Connecting For Health' project [3]

There's HP Enterprise, IBM, Accenture and BT who have so far made £12 billion on the Universal Credit IT system which was supposed to cost £2 billion. And it's still beset by problems, of course. [4]

Obviously, there's a complex set of problems and incentives at work here. For one thing, these contractors are often paid by the hour - so they make more money if a project is late or unreliable. For another, there aren't any companies big enough they could offer a fixed-price contract without going bankrupt. For another, the government generally can't provide a specification that's succinct, clear and watertight because things like benefit systems are so complex, figuring out the requirements is 70% of the work on such a project. For another, most other sectors can lock out customers who are expensive to serve - good luck using Amazon if you're illiterate, or don't have a bank account, or don't have an address - whereas state health and benefit projects can't.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/aug/18/uk-bill-ebor... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/18/nhs-records-... [3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24130684 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Credit#cite_ref-guar...

To add to this: a common problem with these projects is that, even though the requirements are vast and extremely hard to pin down, stakeholders insist on pinning them down up-front anyways because that's how it's always been done.

This is then compounded by a procurement process that sets these requirements in stone as fixed deliverables, as opposed to offering both sides the flexibility to reassess after interim sprints / milestones / etc.

Fortunately, groups like GDS [1] in the UK, CDS [2] in Canada, and 18F [3] in the US are helping shift this mindset slowly but surely. That's where you get initiatives like agile procurement [4]. Procurement aside, these groups are also at the vanguard of introducing modern tech stacks / tools, user-centered design, and agile project management to the public sector. (Yes, these things exist in government, and these groups are really passionate about making sure their adoption goes beyond mere buzzwords.)

Side note: many of these groups are continually hiring, and they've been around long enough by now - and had positive enough results - to gain some clout. If you're tired of selling eyeballs to advertisers, there's never been a better time to use your skills in service of the public good. It doesn't have to be a "lifer" thing - CDS, for instance, has a number of 2-year rotating positions.

Source: I'm an ex-fellow with Code for Canada who's continuing to work in the public sector :)

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/government-digit... [2] https://digital.canada.ca/ [3] https://18f.gsa.gov/ [4] https://www.canada.ca/en/shared-services/corporate/doing-bus...

>Obviously, there's a complex set of problems and incentives at work here. For one thing, these contractors are often paid by the hour - so they make more money if a project is late or unreliable.

You are right about a complex relationship with numerous contractual obligations and SLA's etc. in place; usually loaded in favour of the big contractors, but it is extremely rare for them to be paid by the hour. They might parachute individuals or a team of IT contractors/consultants and pay them on a hourly basis, to clean up some mess or cover up their ineptitude and provide a level of plausible deniability, which almost always involves political machinations.

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