Arlington National Cemetery's Many IT Flaws 191
imac.usr writes "A story in today's Washington Post calls to light the utter failure of the nation's most sacred final resting place to modernize its pen-and-paper record system. According to the story, the cemetery's administrators have spent $5 million without managing to accomplish the seemingly simple task of creating a database record of the site's graves. As Virginia senator Mark Warner points out, 'We are one fire, or one flood, or one spilled Starbucks coffee away from some of those records being lost or spoiled.'"
Where do I sign up for that job? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How Sad... (Score:3, Informative)
I have worked as a DoD contractor and I am a vet. I agree it is sad, but failure on these projects is the routine outcome.
Navigating the federal procurement process is a nightmare you have to experience to believe.
Those infamous $300 hammers are a bargain: at least they got delivered and performed the task.
How hard is it really to setup a MySQL database? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How Sad... (Score:3, Informative)
That might almost be reasonable--that sort of thing gets expensive when they're not making them anymore.
Re:That's All? (Score:5, Informative)
And there are already systems available that can manage cemeteries so why not purchase one?
Arlington has 300,000 gravesites on 624 acres.
"In addition to in-ground burial, Arlington National Cemetery also has one of the larger columbariums for cremated remains in the country. Four courts are currently in use, each with 5,000 niches. When construction is complete, there will be nine courts with a total of 50,000 niches; capacity for 100,000 remains." Arlington National Cemetery [wikipedia.org]
Does your off-the-shelf package scale to to a cemetery of that size?
Arlington has extraordinary historical significance. The data base needs to be more than a bare list of names and dates.
Re:$5 million is a good deal. (Score:4, Informative)
Yep, private industry has never wasted a cent. Their track record is spot on.
http://it-project-failures.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
I worked for the National Cemetery Administration (Score:4, Informative)
The interesting thing about the well-functioning VA systems is that they are NOT developed or administered by contractors. They were developed and are maintained by Government employees (civil servants). They are administered daily by civil servants. The programers are all GS employees and the DBAs are all GS employees. Contractors have never touched the systems and hopefully never will. The only thing that contractors did was provide some unskilled labor to do document scanning that was then imported into the system by the Government developers/admins.
VA has had success when they do in-house development with Government employees and dismal failures when they try to contract-out development. Just Google "CoreFLS" to see how a contractor developed system can fail to the tune of $250 Million and then never be deployed. CoreFLS was a $250 Million boondogle worked on by a bunch of H-1Bs that was so bad the Assistant Secretary for IM was fired by the President. If the President of the United States has to be personally notified that you fscked up, its as bad as it gets.