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Comment by andrewmcwatters | Hacker News Reader

> Why was Deloitte awarded the project on a no-bid basis? The contracts claim the company was the only “responsible source”[1] to build the tool.

[1]: https://www.acquisition.gov/far/6.302-1

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Deloitte is a whole lot better manipulating and sweet talking the government than it is at building anything, that is for sure.

Surely their track record should see them permanently disqualified?

I'm sure if you actually looked at their full track record, the vast vast majority of projects probably result in "mediocre but workable" systems, you just don't hear about them because that's a boring headline. Deloitte is a $40 billion company, it's not like every single one of their projects is a complete failure.

> Deloitte is a $40 billion company, it's not like every single one of their projects is a complete failure.

Citation needed, see Oracle, many companies have grown that large on the backs of taxpayers by employing the best "Sales" techniques in the biz.

I've worked with many database technologies and many data professionals. I don't recall any instances offhand of technical critiques of Oracle. Pricing and business practices are a different story. Oracle the database is fantastic technology.

In my opinion, pricing is a part of the product. If one company can produce a banana for $1, and another company requires $1,000 to produce a banana, that second company is an outright failure. The banana still tastes great.

When Oracle was born, there weren't many alternatives for a high-performance and production-ready RDBMS. For a long time, Oracle was technically superior to most/all other options. That is less true now.

On the other side, if you get $10,000 of value from a banana, both vendors are viable options. If there is any reason at all preventing you from adopting the $1 banana, you're still better off buying the $1,000 banana than you are scorning it for its price.

>> it's not like every single one of their projects is a complete failure.

But they can all be a bloated, over budget, late mess

Usually government agencies write the contracts in a way that prevents other parties from bidding to streamline the procurement process.

Now what I don't understand, is why wasn't the contract written so the state could refuse broken software, or to get a partial refund if it's doesn't meet the specifications.

Someone got wined and dined pretty well. And government needs better lawyers when dealing with private contractors.

In my limited experience and anecdata, governments have been so trigger happy in getting rid of and/or marginalizing technical staff that there are few qualified individuals in the procurement office who can properly draft RFPs and evaluate proposals to keep bidders accountable. What you're left with is mostly (M)BAs and admin types who can hammer out high-level Word docs of specs but not much else. In that environment, it's not surprising that Deloitte, McKessen, IBM and co (or as I like to call them, the Procurement Vampires) can lowball and BS themselves into these projects. If you don't know anything, better the devil you know, right ?

As the old saying went, "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM".

> And government needs better lawyers when dealing with private contractors.

The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.

"because configuration of the VAMS application is occurring using Deloitte’s propriety GovConnect platform. Therefore, no other contractor has rights or access to leverage the system to carry out O&M activities"

I think that usually comes down to the contract being so specifically tailored for a company that they're the only one who could possibly bid and meet the specs for it.

Which is horseshit (though we know that). I know of another, far smaller, leaner consulting firm that has handled for at least half a dozen states a contact tracing ecosystem tying into DOH, and utilizing the mobile APIs.

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