Ha, no kidding? I didn't think anyone was building anything new on Banyan. When I hear that name it's like you said "They're implementing a new Novel network." "Hey boss, the new token-ring setup is really sweet!"
The problem is they are using Banyan Vines servers for the backend.
I doubt it because the user date resides on banyan vines servers and the Webservers talk to them via a ip to vines gateway with token ring on the back, and Ethernet on the front. Which would be difficult for the script kiddies used to pure ip modern servers running a bog standard tcp/ip stack. Just trying to do the canonical to non-canonical conversions will stump them.
Exactly. It's not a matter of how much was spent, but how it was spent. Has the government EVER gotten a decent bang for their buck? No. Yet, here we want to put 16%, or is it 18% now, of the economy in their hands. Un-fucking-believable that people still buy into this bullshit idea that government does things better.
We really needed to give the funds to 150 different companies instead of just one? That doesn't make sense to me...but then again I'm just a working guy. What do I know.
And ACORN does not exist. But it did how many name changes into how many different companies?
Is there one right leaning group that got money? (I don't know, I'm asking)
This is an issue with LOT of companies/industries. Heck, we're using lot of systems at work that rely on specific versions of IE and Java. IE6, and some version of Java from that era. You upgrade one of those and it breaks everything.
LOL I see CGI was mentioned. Guess what, they're the ones who code our systems too. HAHAHAHAHA. They overcharge for everything too, a simple change in a program is 10's of thousands of dollars. I don't understand why companies outsource programming, it would be much better to make it an IT function, or for a bigger company have a few dedicated programmers.
I don't know why anyone would complain since we got exactly what we asked for.
Though, tbh, most of the organizations serve low to moderate income people, and there are not a lot of "right wing" organizations that do so.
why did the US Government use a Canadian consulting firm to build this piece of crap?
Here's a pdf with all the companies that got navigator money:
http://www.cms.gov/CCIIO/Programs-a...places/Downloads/navigator-list-8-15-2013.pdf
Clearly not all "left wingers" unless you consider the Catholic church, the United Way, University of Georgia, Visiting Nurse Service, etc left wingers.
Though, tbh, most of the organizations serve low to moderate income people, and there are not a lot of "right wing" organizations that do so.
why did the US Government use a Canadian consulting firm to build this piece of crap?
I'd love to use the program 90% of the rest of the state departments use, but even suggesting going that route to anyone currently in charge is about akin to writing my letter of resignation.
Honestly, in your place, I'd write the letter to your superior CC'ed to your CEO, CFO, state representative and anyone else you could possibly write and take that resignation. Doing nothing out of fear for your job isn't exactly helping anyone other than yourself.
So do you guys actually want to know why this happened? Lets put the partisan BS aside. It is EASY to explain and easy to understand.
In the 40s through the late 70s, the government hired the best scientists and engineers they could get. They relied on those people to get stuff done. The gov't wanted the talent inhouse and developing hardware and software. We call it GOTS (government off the shelf) And guess what? Shit got done for cheaper and better than what private industry could do.
Starting in the late 70s and 80s, there was a huge push to move to COTS (commercial off the shelf). The government thought that if it was private industry's problem to create, maintain, and support products it would be cheaper. That began the outsourcing of jobs to contractors. The gov't no longer paid well and could not hire good talent. And good talent would jump quickly because all they were doing was managing contracts for work that was contracted out.
So what happens? The gov't gives huge contracts to companies and puts a few gov't folks as oversight. The contractor has every incentive to milk money from the gov't as much as possible.
For example, back in the day, the VA and DOD had a common baseline for their healthcare systems. It is called VISTA not to be confused with the MS OS. The VA did something off in that they kept talent in house to maintain and continue development. The DoD forked the baseline and handed it to SAIC. It was renamed CHCS. Now the DoD had to pay millions and millions of dollars to SAIC every year. Oh, you want a new feature, that will be 5 million dollars. The VA on the other hand rolls out features all the time. Very little cost.
Now we have a bunch of gov't folks that for the most part do not have the skills to manage the development of these systems especially with the complexities of all the contracting.
So if people want the gov't to stop having these HUGE wasteful IT projects, they need to start paying better AND hiring better people. Then they need to stop outsourcing everything.
There is no issue with outsourcing to contractors for specific skills, but handing entire programs to contractors is just asinine.
But until the gov't realizes that private industry does not have the taxpayers best interests in mind, we will continue seeing these types of things.
I am one of the very few gov't engineers that has refused to function in the oversight role. I led a multi-million dollar software development effort that delivered capability to production within 4 months. Within 2 years, we had automated more than 50% of the manual processing people had been hired to do. We were successful because we had talented gov't engineers leading all aspects of the software development lifecycle, and we used contractors for specific skillsets within the program. It wasn't the gov't throwing the program over the fence to a contractor to do all the work.
I don't think I'm alone, but let me rephrase what I have said.
I don't think its a bad idea to outsource this type of project to the private sector. Matter of fact, I think its a great idea. What I do have a problem with is the money going to foreign companies. I have a problem with distributing the money to 150 of the biggest donors they could, even if those companies had no experience in supporting this type of project.
If we had hired one company to do everything, it would have cut down on the costs dramatically. But the government loves to spend and to send those dollars to its friends. This whole thing has been a money laundering scheme form the beginning and that is what I have the problem with.
People like you who do a good job should be rewarded with more and bigger contracts. The 150 companies involved in this should all be fired. Hell...Amazon probably would have done it 10 times cheaper and 100 times more reliable.
I don't think I'm alone, but let me rephrase what I have said.
I don't think its a bad idea to outsource this type of project to the private sector. Matter of fact, I think its a great idea. What I do have a problem with is the money going to foreign companies. I have a problem with distributing the money to 150 of the biggest donors they could, even if those companies had no experience in supporting this type of project.
If we had hired one company to do everything, it would have cut down on the costs dramatically. But the government loves to spend and to send those dollars to its friends. This whole thing has been a money laundering scheme form the beginning and that is what I have the problem with.
People like you who do a good job should be rewarded with more and bigger contracts. The 150 companies involved in this should all be fired. Hell...Amazon probably would have done it 10 times cheaper and 100 times more reliable.
Ask the FBI about their virtual case file and how good it was to give all the money to SAIC.
The gov't felt that if they gave pieces to multiple companies and forced them to work together on delivery, it would eliminate some of the decisions to screw the gov't when it came to building future work into the development.
Once again, there is absolutely nothing wrong with using contractors. But there is something wrong with throwing programs over the fence to contractors. That is what the gov't does. And they don't have much choice because the gov't doesn't pay for shit and can't hire talent.
So you get a bunch of gov't folks that are oversight that have never delivered a piece of software to production in any capacity. I can't tell you how many computer scientists I have seen put as the "project manager" coming straight out of college. How the fuck is a graduate with very little real work experience going to execute a software development effort?
My agency has tried to reverse this tend but we don't have the right people for the jobs. We don't as an agency have the experience. And we don't have the salary levels to hire outside talent. Not to mention the hiring freeze we are under.
So things just stay more of the same. I carve out my little world, picking and choose the projects I am willing to work on and generally being a pain in the ass to management. All because I am one of the few that gets shit done and I am successful. It is nice for me personally but it is depressing seeing projects around me completely fail due to lack of quality gov't people and the mentality of throwing everything over the fence so the gov't people can be babysitters.
Without going into all the details it is working for me. Not the website the whole ACA.
I had a very low lifetime benefits health plan which was all I could afford as small business owner. Due to my recent health problems I was approaching that limit.
I got a letter from my state and the insurance company informing me of this. I was offered the opportunity to roll over to a program where the state would subsidize me if I met income standards which I did because I missed a lot of work.
So, I paid an additional 11 dollars a month which tripled my lifetime max. I still paid the health insurance company and they paid the state and it was easy for me.
I very recently got a letter from the state saying that under the ACA, and my states plans, informing me of all the options under the ACA and it gave me the rates based on income. If I chose a plan they would accept what I put in the letter as my income and they would get my proof by allowing them to look at my tax returns.
They also told me based on my recent history of a severe medical condition I would not be cut off without both a letter of notification and a personal contact telephone call.
It looks like I will end up paying about the same for about the same coverage I had with the private plan without the lifetime max.
The benefit is that with my recent tumor treatment I now don't have to consider shutting down my business and going on Medicaid.
So, for me personally it has been easy peasy. The again I live in a state that very strongly supports universal health care and has gone further then the ACA to provide it to everyone.