Oregon sues Oracle, claiming fraud over failed Obamacare website
news.yahoo.com
news.yahoo.com
So sad that Oregon couldn't find something other than a soul sucking corporate behemoth.
The question that I had, and continue to have, is who signed off on the deliverables? There should have been numerous deliverables along the way, with a release of funds with each signed off deliverable. In my mind, those who signed off on the deliverables (as working) are ultimately the ones responsible for it's failure..
http://www.opb.org/news/article/legal-recourse-stymied-by-co...
"That kind of contract means Oracle wasn’t being paid for a working website; it was being paid for the time it spent working on the project. It would have been up to the administrator to make sure the website worked, but the state decided not to hire one, and gave itself that role."
So it looks like Oracle (through a roundabout arrangement with Dell) was on price agreement and they entered into a time & materials contract with Oracle and paid them via POs. Jesus christ on a cracker. Now I wonder if the Legislature had to approve OHAs limitation like they did with my Agency? In other words, we had to get permission from the Legislature to spend our own money (outside of normal operating costs).
I had to budget my big IT expenses before each biennium and wrap them up into Policy Option Packages that then got presented to the Legislature to get approval to implement them. Yes, this was for things like new servers, hyper-v, etc.
What I find utterly unfathomable is that the state wrote ONLY 43 POs totalling 132 Million fucking dollars. That means that each PO was over 3 Million dollars (provided it was divided up evenly between each PO). Was there no chain of accountability on these POs? Who approved them? Who had oversight on this process?
Actually since you mentioned it:
"The purchase orders state that the purchase had to be split across multiple POs due to ADPICS controls. OHA explained that this was due to limitation on the authority of the OHA purchaser entering the POs into the ADPICS procurement system."
So they had to split the POs up to get them past the business rules implemented in their accounting platform? Heh.
The report goes on to mention that "the project seemed to lack a consistent, cohesive enterprise approach to managing the project." This sounds like DAS wrote this. It goes on to say, "The focus was on establishing an enterprise solution for the exchange and for the DHS Modernization project.". Again it sounds like DAS wrote this.
A key component (I think) that screwed the process was not keying vendor payment to deliverables, well and paying time & materials only. Fucking unbelievable. If I had been involved in this project, I would have gone on record in the beginning as against this setup and I would have considered it doomed to fail.
It's interesting that they put together an RFP for a Systems Integrator and during the open question process "Carolyn Lawson said that she called potential system integrators and was told that they were not interested in bidding due to the lack of clear requirements and the limited budget (the state requested $96M, but was only funded $48)" So no potential bidders would bid on this fiasco.
Hint: always, always do these on bid. No one ever saves money/budget on consultants working time and materials.
If you do a firm fixed price contract, the contractor takes on all the risk and will charge a much higher price to compensate. You'll also spend a lot more time and energy on writing bulletproof contracts because the stakes are so much higher. Worse, you'll need to do contract negotiations for every requirements change.
It's possible to make either work, though. I don't think using a different contract type would have fixed the root problem here.
They are both to blame. Well Oracle made a pretty penny, so financially they know how to do this.
I once knew an Oracle salesperson. Asked them what they thought of PostgreSQL, including the companies providing paid support for it. And the response was nobody can tough us, because we know how to sell and market our stuff to the top brass. Those at the top listen more to the salesmen like that than to their own employees. Then obviously there is kickbacks and all kinds of incentives.
All that said, a successful lawsuit and even criminal prosecutions won't make a significant sent in similar future cases. Governments have got to start acting like a large, collaborative, transparent monopsony, and to demand that vendors draw on and contribute to a pool of open source software, and to form consortia to audit and maintain that pool. That would be a huge benefit to the technology industry, and to taxpayers.
Those people may have had families or something and so weren't willing to risk their jobs in order to try to get through to the managers about how fucked the thing was.
Actually, most people don't even consider explaining to their bosses how bad things are structured. They just accept whatever box they are put in without even examining it closely. Which is a big problem. But goes back to people wanting to keep their jobs.
The thing is that structures of often so fucked, it literally puts people's jobs in jeopardy in order to fix them. For example, if a PM at one point realized that there was no actual working deliverable after X months, they probably realized it was because of some decisions a boss or another PM had made. So in order to rectify that situation, they would need to say or do something that could potentially get that person fired, or try to convince that person, either of which would mean it was likely they themselves would be fired.
Basically I think that people usually don't want to rock the boat because they are scared, and so its easy for them to say something is someone else's problem and just keep their heads down.
Comes down to politics as much as actual ability or knowledge. Hierarchies make it worse.
When you start with the decision to give millions of dollars to fucking Oracle, you can either have that boss replaced or assume the project is fucked.
This is appalling. The fact that so many here are jaded - I'm jaded too - doesn't change the fact that if you take $240M of a customer's money, you'd deliver a website.
If Oracle can't build a website for $240M it should go bankrupt too. Who cares about people getting healthcare when we can rack up costs. Go Sales!
[1] http://www.wired.com/2010/08/hp-holds-navy-network-hostage/
People spend so much energy covering their asses none is left to actually build anything.
He seemed to be unaware of Visual Studio Express options, so that's a little bit his fault (or more likely, the fault of whoever is overseeing his group).
Again, yes, unrelated to the Oracle thing, except yet one more anecdotal illustration of just how poorly run govt programs can be. I know private enterprise can be as well, but we're not having to fund those directly, and in many cases the market eventually sorts them out.
At some point we have to accept that software is an intimate part of what we do and will be - that there is no "external supplier" for our own core identity.
Either a system and process is totally outsourced and barely even a government function (power generation) or it's intimately connected to what we want from government (and yes Americans, that means healthcare)
So buck up - delivering software at scale is what life is going to be about for the next fifty years - learn that lesson now - don't blame the wolf for eating your chickens.
That's probably an Oregonian saying.
Who appointed you to speak for Americans? I don't want the government involved in or paying for or deciding who provides my healthcare. One of the reasons is I don't want it managed by the incompetence illustrated in this story.
The new Digital Services group is a huge step in the right direction for IT projects all over the spectrum, not just healthcare.
Well obviously. I want affordable everything.
Do most Americans want government-run healthcare?
People with individual or employer health plans paid more out of pocket, had worse access to care"
"Meanwhile, those with employer-sponsored health plans and those who bought their own insurance were nearly twice as likely to report problems with their medical bills than people with Medicare, the study found."
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2012/07/1...
Apparently so.
Obamacare requires health insurance companies disburse at least 80 percent of the premiums they bring in to medical service providers for their members. This effectively turns health insurance companies into quasi-non-profit entities, very similar to Medicare (which has no profit motive).
I don't mind living in a world where you can get better healthcare if you can afford it. I do have a problem living in a world that doesn't have a minimum level of care for everyone.
Difference?
What's your theory for why the insurance companies "volunteered" for this? Altruism?
And you're still trying to change the subject.
toomuchtodo said "The majority of Americans have spoken, and want affordable healthcare.", at which point you started talking about "Obamacare".
btw your attempt to incite a quarrel is funny since your statements agree with lifeisstillgood's and toomuchtodo's statements.
He's the one that's trying to equate it with some magical, mythical "affordable healthcare" system that does not exist in real life.
Nice try, though.
Let's not lie now, shall we?
"The U.S. stands almost entirely alone among developed nations that lack universal health care."
"That brings us to another way that America is a big outlier on health care. The grey countries on this map tend to spend significantly less per capita on health care than do the green countries -- except for the U.S., where the government spends way more on health care per person than do most countries with free, universal health care. This is also true of health care costs as a share of national GDP -- in other words, how much of a country's money goes into health care."
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/06/her...
Not only do we spend the most per capita on healthcare, we consistently deliver lower quality care than other first world countries with universal healthcare spending less than us.
I really don't care to argue with you. Obamacare/ACA is well on its way to pushing the US to universal healthcare, as it should.
Everyone is in favor of "affordable healthcare" for the same reason that everyone is in favor of good weather and world peace.
You are attempting to make "affordable healthcare" synonymous with Obamacare, which it isn't, and suggest that anyone who thinks that Obamacare is a horrible implementation must be opposed to "affordable healthcare".
It is the exact same dishonest argument that's used to shout down someone who (e.g.) thinks that the Patriot Act was a bad idea by implying that the person is in favor of terrorism.
I posted a link that showed that majority of Americans are opposed to Obamacare and always have been (multiple polls).
It got modded down. Which, of course, is even more dishonest.
But, you know, modding people down isn't actually going to make the problem go away.
>Not only do we spend the most per capita on healthcare, we consistently deliver lower quality care than other first world countries with universal healthcare spending less than us.
That has nothing whatsoever to do with whether Obamacare is the best solution for the problem. It isn't. It combines the worst aspects of private health insurance with the worst aspects of socialized medicine, combined with massive payouts to insurance companies at taxpayer expense.
>Obamacare/ACA is well on its way to pushing the US to universal healthcare, as it should.
Obamacare is going to kill real healthcare reform in the U.S. for at least a generation. Maybe longer.
Obamacare has been in negative approval territory since day one, almost.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/obama_and_demo...
Do you have any evidence that the "majority of Americans" ever favored Obamacare?
No, it's a success -- at putting money into campaign contributor pockets, and proving that "government doesn't work".
Now take something like the California death registration system (https://ca.edrs.us/edrs/secureLogin), which, since it was developed by a mere handful of state employees (on-shore, of course) on a modest budget and runs on a single Linux server, completely failed to accomplish those financial and propaganda goals for the corporate 1%-ers. :-)
If stupid, greedy, people run with the project, it's doomed whether you slap "public" or "private" on the work.
http://outspeaking.com/words-of-technology/why-do-government...
However, I expect it will introduce more red tape and ensure the same result. More work for companies like Oracle and more failed projects and waste.
"one formal Oracle employee said the solution "literally garbage" that was seemingly configured by "a kindergartner.""