California Cancels $208 Million IT Overhaul Halfway Through 185
g01d4 writes "According to the LA Times, 'California's computer problems, which have already cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, have mounted as state officials cut short work on a $208-million DMV technology overhaul that is only half done. The state has spent $135 million total on the overhaul so far. The state's contractor, HP Enterprise Services, has received nearly $50 million of the money spent on the project. Botello said the company will not receive the remaining $26 million in its contract. ... Last week, the controller's office fired the contractor responsible for a $371-million upgrade to the state's payroll system, citing a trial run filled with mishaps. More than $254 million has already been spent.' It's hard not to feel like the Tokyo man in the street watching the latest round of Godzilla the state vs. Rodan the big contractor."
Re:Sadly (Score:5, Informative)
In fact, this very scenario has happened a decade before [cnet.com], albet with Oracle instead of HP.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Typical of the Federal Government too (Score:2, Informative)
Maybe invest in a dictionary? The word "too" isn't just a random bunch of letters, it means something.
Irony (Score:5, Informative)
This is by far the best line of the article....
"Hewlett-Packard is now run by Meg Whitman, who during her failed campaign for governor in 2010 promised to save California money with better computer technology."
Re:Sadly (Score:5, Informative)
how important it was to stay out of the fucking 1980's with IT equipment that serves critical functions
Talk about blanket statements. I suspect that there is quite a bit of 1980s IT equipment in your life that you are not even aware of.
The problem is not what decade the equipment comes from, it is whether or not the equipment meets its requirements. If equipment from the 1980s is continuing to meet the requirements that governments face today, then there is no reason to spend enormous amounts of tax money to replace that equipment unless doing so will pay for itself before the next upgrade. Unfortunately, there are few cases where such upgrades actually do pay for themselves, so in terms of what is best to do with tax dollars, upgrading old equipment that continues to function as needed is questionable.
Now, if the equipment is not working, then it is time to replace it. The real problem is that government contracts are not typically given to companies deemed best for the job, and so these situations arise. Contracts are awarded to companies that bid low and to companies that are well-connected, even when better companies are available.
Re:Typical of the Federal Government too (Score:3, Informative)
Look, when you're an IT consultant company, your first job is to do a discovery project that is aimed precisely at defining exactly what the project is -- in absence of proper requirements. Heck, if it's a bidding process, you must also do due diligence -- that would typically involve talking to the customer(s), talking to their employees, etc. It's your own fault, as a consulting company, if you can't deliver. You must be able to tell that the customer is too clueless to make it work. It's your fucking job.
Paper. Lots of Paper. (Score:5, Informative)
Having worked on govt projects before, it's all spent on :
a) Management. Lots of it. About 5 times as many managers/sub-contract managers/advisors etc than there will be coders. Because the more management a project has, the harder it is to blame any one person.
b) Paper. Lots of paper. The amount of pages generated on specifications, revisions, reports, recommendations will be able 10 times the number of _lines_ of code created. All to show that no taxpayers money was wasted.
c) Tendering. It costs a lot to tender a bid, which reduces the competition to only the big ones who can afford to throw a million at a 1in5 chance. Whereas, if they were allowed to go to a small consultancy who only has 30 employees, they'd be able to get a much better price.
d) Changes. The requirements are often so written in very complex language that noone really understands it, and then they come along with changes every 2 months which require 3 months of recoding because they didn't fully understand what they were asking for to start with.
e) User acceptance. Don't underestimate the ability of a low level govt employee to refuse to use the new system because 'I've done it this way for 30 years and it worked just fine! This doesn't work like the old one did.'
Re:Why $208 million? (Score:4, Informative)
It all goes here.... not only do you have 40 years of data to port, but you also have 40 years of policies and procedures stemming from the old system that have to be enshrined in the new one. You also have to do the port in a way that has 0 downtime as you switch. And, since you can't magically switch hundreds of locations overnight, you have to make sure that the data, policies, and procedures stay in sync between the two systems during the migration period, because every location needs identical information from both systems.
Combine this with mandates such as "The specs for the new system are to exactly match all the quirks and behaviors of the old system" and you have a recipe for disasters like this.
Re:Typical of the Federal Government too (Score:3, Informative)
This. I hired a popular 'big' construction company to do some renovations on my business. They got as far as fucking everything up and then holding on to the money as long as possible. It took a lawsuit and a solid WEEK in civil court to get them to give ANY of the money back. Once they were court ordered to give the money back, they received extension after extension and after all was said and done, I had my money back and then had to shop for other people to do the work.
Guess what? Very few of them would even continue the conversation after they learned who my company was. So I sat there for three months without a physical location for my business, while the city told me over and over I had to do something with it. Only through extensive paperwork and documentation was I able to prove that I was pretty much blackballed from all the local construction companies. I ended up paying something like 3x the original cost (basically 3x more than market value) for the work.
So you're basically screwed. If you retaliate legally for them not doing their job JUST to end up with your money back, you get blackballed and no one will deal with you unless you pay them a ton more. If you don't retaliate legally, you've basically wasted the money. This is probably where they stand right now.
Re:Why $208 million? (Score:5, Informative)
This has been a complaint too. For a state with a population of 38 million is (figure half of them drive) it's about 119,000 per DMV office. At 250 working days a year, that's 475 per office per day, or about 59 people per hour. That shouldn't be that hard, but the lines there are typically 1-3 hours long. They have a reservation system where you can make an appointment in advance. But the last time my registration came up for renewal, there was a problem which required me to visit the DMV instead of renew by mail. I tried to use their reservation system, only to discover that even though I was trying to make an appointment the day after I got the mailed notice, all the nearby DMV offices were booked solid until 3 weeks after the renewal deadline. I ended up making a reservation at some DMV office in the desert 70 miles away (still had to wait in line 45 min), and used the trip as an excuse to do some sightseeing and visit some friends in the area.
If you have a AAA membership, that's by far the best way to get your DMV stuff done in California (if it's a service they can do - they don't do driving tests and a few other things). I've never had to wait more than 30 min there, and usually they get to me within 5 minutes. They charge a few dollars more, but it's worth it compared to wasting several hours at the DMV.
In contrast, the RMV in Massachusetts and the DMV in Washington had wait times very similar to the AAA. Massachusetts even puts offices in the mall so parking is convenient and you can drop by while getting other shopping done. So I dunno what California is doing wrong, but whatever it is they're doing it very, very wrong.