Accenture Faces Mid-March Healthcare.gov Deadline Or 'Disaster' 215
PapayaSF writes "TheHill.com reports that Accenture has two months to fix HealthCare.gov by building a 'financial management platform that tracks eligibility and enrollment transactions, accounts for subsidy payments to insurance plans, "provides stable and predictable financial accounting and outlook for the entire program," and that integrates with existing CMS and IRS systems.' The procurement document, posted on a federal website, states that if this is not completed in time, there will be 'financial harm to the government' and 'the entire healthcare reform program is jeopardized.' Risk mitigation (which pays insurers who enroll a higher-than-expected number of sick patients) must be accurately forecast, or it might put 'the entire health insurance industry at risk.' Accenture will also have to fix the enrollment transmissions, which have been sending inaccurate and garbled data to insurance companies. Because the back-end cannot currently handle the federal subsidies, insurers will be paid estimated amounts as a stopgap measure. The document also said that officials realized in December that there was no time for a 'full and open competition process' before awarding Accenture the $91 million contract. What are their odds of success?"
Open source (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is government software like this thing not open source? What is the motivation for it being closed source?
Re:Open source (Score:5, Insightful)
Money.
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This is bound to be true, but not necessarily in the way people think.
Suppose you're the Department of Health and Human Services, and you've been tasked with developing and fielding Healthcare.gov. You turn to your crack team of in-house developers of massively scalable consumer-facing web data processing systems.... except you don't have one. You don't even have people experienced with *procuring* such a system. This is for your whole agency a once-in-a-lifetime event.
So, you turn to contractors. Howev
Re:Open source (Score:5, Insightful)
Two reasons:
1. People are (god help me, I feel a fedora sprouting from my head and hairs growing from my neck as I type this) sheep. Your average person would lose their goddamned shit if they didn't have someone telling them what to do and when to do it. This is the end result of an education system that teaches blind love of authority, followed by corporate structures that do the same with regard to their employees. Thinking is hard. Decisions are tough. Et cetera.
2. The only way to resolve the problem of the system is to vote in people who will change it. But if we vote for the wrong people, those other people might get elected! And they'll destroy us all! We'd better just vote for our team. Oh, yes.
For some, thinking is *impossible* (Score:5, Informative)
Two reasons:
1. People are (god help me, I feel a fedora sprouting from my head and hairs growing from my neck as I type this) sheep. Your average person would lose their goddamned shit if they didn't have someone telling them what to do and when to do it. This is the end result of an education system that teaches blind love of authority, followed by corporate structures that do the same with regard to their employees. Thinking is hard. Decisions are tough. Et cetera.
It's only partly because of education, but for the *most* part, it's the innate human instinct to "go with the flock", and yes, just like the sheep.
Idol worshiping is everywhere, from movie stars to athletes to religious figures to even people of the most untrustworthy occupation - politicians - flocks of sheep pay their homage to their idols.
Whatever their idol did, no matter how wrong it is, the sheep will find excuses to defend - even when it is utterly *un*defendable, they still try their best to defend.
Like the original contract for this website which went to a college buddy of the POTUS' wife, without open bidding.
If we are to criticize the award of that original contract to someone who has no clue in setting up a website, the sheep will be rubbed the wrong way and they will revolt. They will attack whoever dare to criticize their idols.
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Put "the entire health insurance industry at risk" (Score:3)
The article says this, like it's a bad thing.
Re:For some, thinking is *impossible* (Score:4, Informative)
Like the original contract for this website which went to a college buddy of the POTUS' wife, without open bidding.
The executive whose company won the no-bid contract is Toni-Townes Whitley and the only association she and Michelle Obama have had is that they were classmates at Princeton.
The right-wing media attempted to twist this fact of attending the same school at the same time as proof of cronyism. Fortunately for those of us who would be informed rather than manipulated, the biggest evidence of this failed smear campaign is the blasted Google landscape around the search terms "michelle obama yale classmate [google.com]".
The only people repeating this as proof of corruption are biased right-wing media organs and poorly informed /. readers.
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To be clear, when searching on the terms michelle obama princeton classmate [google.com] the results are a bit more reputable and include links to articles debunking the false association between Michelle Obama's and Toni-Townes Whitley's concurrent matriculation and political corruption.
Princeton is where both matriculated (Michelle Obama also attended Harvard law school). "Yale" as a search term surfaces disreputable links in this context. "Princeton" and "Harvard" as search terms return links to more reliable article
Who are Accenture? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Who are Accenture? (Score:5, Insightful)
Accenture worked on the Australian Taxation Offices "Change Program", which cost billions and was a debacle. From the moment that they got the contract it was all about trying to progressively descope so that they had to deliver less and less. They delivered a fraction of what they said they would and many years late.
But then they have a habit of employing smart young non-techies and then putting them in technical positions, and work practices that border on a cult.
Why anyone would throw money at these clowns is anyone's guess.
Re:Who are Accenture? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why anyone would throw money at these clowns is anyone's guess.
Because they are highly respected in management circles. You get the tech view on them and I have to agree that I would never, ever, ever hire them unless you put a gun to my head or something equivalent. But management thinks differently. From what I've grasped, they deliver excellent work, as far as management is concerned - that means regular status updates in easy-to-digest powerpoint slides, solid contract work, and instantly available expertise (if you tell them you need an expert on your big-ass storage system, tomorrow, they'll fly someone in and send you a bill).
All of these and many similar things are like miracles to a beleaguered manager who needs to save his neck from the management layer above him who's asking for his head in order to save their own.
Re:Who are Accenture? (Score:4, Insightful)
True, although the expert will often as not turn out not to be, and they will make decisions that will haunt you for years.
Not that the competition is any better.
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Management is a very different skillset to technical work, but I'm in the camp that says you can't manage something without enough of a clue about how it works to at least hire good specialists at the top of the tree.
A lot of the time, what we see in these kinds of situations is government people who are experts on general management and/or politics trying to hire commercial people who are experts on building technical tools, but actually hiring commercial people who are experts on sales tactics, contract l
Re:Who are Accenture? (Score:5, Interesting)
Good at management? Ok here is a story from Norway, I won't name names but I personally know the lead developers of the project. Accenture was hired by DNB to work on a pension system, worth "billions". The application was utter crap, atleast the lead developer said so. So one day DNB (which had employees in Accentures offices due to the project) came and had some change requests – Accenture's management estimated it would require 2000 man hours to complete the task (pulled a random number out of their frickin' management ass). At the same time DNB's person in Accenture's offices had contacted the lead developer and asked him about this change also. He fixed the issue even before Accenture's management had the opportunity to talk with him, 8 hours spent.
Accenture is nothing but a fuckin' scam, good at snake oil talk – officials working with this company is probably very very incompetent or even worse corrupt.
Re:Who are Accenture? (Score:5, Informative)
Unless they are replicating an existing system, I wouldn't use them.
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Yes, it's a random pick, basically. I've worked with Accenture guys as well as other large consulting companies. Some of them are brilliant, some of them are dumb - basically the same you get everywhere.
But that doesn't matter to management. What matters is that if they need someone who is a certified whatever, and they need him tomorrow, Accenture can provide.
Middle management is all about ass-saving and fighting off the other guys who want to be in your chair. It's not until upper management that competen
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My wife used to work for Accenture. .. without ever contributing any real work to a project.
The culture is typically bounding "consultants" which jump into a project, and then within 1 month jump to another project, in order to pump up their list of successful projects & plump up their personal resume
This project is doomed.
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But then they have a habit of employing smart young non-techies and then putting them in technical positions
They were one of the few companies that hired people with no experience and trained them on the job. Not sure what you talking about cult work practices. From what I saw people would eventually leave the company after a few years to get a better salary.
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Actually, it's their customers who train them on the job, while paying a kilodollar a day for the privilege.
Maybe the expectation of you doing an 80 hour week (they'll bill the customer for every minute) while paying you a flat salary. Or the up-or-out mentality, where it's all about becoming a partner - at which you get a cut from all the little peopl
Re:Who are Accenture? (Score:5, Interesting)
Andersen Consulting split off from Arthur Andersen a few years before the Enron scandal.
Re:Who are Accenture? (Score:5, Informative)
Nice paranoid conspiracy theory. The same Wikipedia article to which you link contains the facts: Accenture is not Arthur Anderson; it's the renamed Anderson Consulting, which split off from AA in 1989, 12 years before the Enron scandal. AC had nothing to do with the Enron contract; that was all AA. The renaming of AC to Accenture was due not to a PR decision by AC, but to a 2000 court order in AA's favor, awarding AA all rights to the "Andersen" name. AA subsequently renamed themselves "Andersen." all this took place the year before the scandal came out.
The Enron scandal took down AA; their involvement as the actual shredders destroyed their reputation. Accenture, having nothing to do with it, was largely unaffected and unharmed.
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Are you insane? What free software contributor would want to wade through 10,000+ pages of Obamacare? Somebody actually printed it out, and you need a forklift to move it around. And that's just Obamacare, there are mountains of other gov't health/tax/payroll regulations to go through before you write a single line of code.
Open source is only possible for software that developers want to make, where the developers determine the features. Nobody in the universe is masochistic enough to sit through meetings d
Re:Open source (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you dense? Do you think Open Source means that people work for free? Accenture (or some other contractor) would implement it, get payed by the Government and put it on Github for example. Anyone could identify problems and point them out. The requirement of open source and an open process would be a requirement from the Government.
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..its entirely possible for the government to put a simple line into the RFQ...
*implementation must be open source and the contractor hands over all ownership and copyright of the product
now, without that line.. they have them by the balls, basically. and the headline is incorrect.. it's not disaster for accenture at all, it's a disaster for the government only.
Re:Open source (Score:4, Interesting)
That's how it works here in Australia, anyway.
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Knowing the company behind this boondoggle I guess the reason the code is not open source is to protect the innocent developers who might otherwise happen to get a glance of said code to their eternal detriment and damnation. Snow crash for real...
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= NILL (Score:2)
How do you fix a Rube Goldberg foundation under a building? You demolish it and start over.
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You are now on an NSA watch list.
Two months? (Score:5, Insightful)
Two months is barely enough to understand the problem and to start reading top level documents. Not even looking at the code. Most of those tasks are system-level, and it will be essential to understand what data formats each of those entities wants - before some poor code monkey is given signed requirements to generate that data.
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Accenture isn't a technology consultancy they are a management/operational excellence company, they farm technology work out to Avanade. This has no chance of being a complete success, but Avanade is decent.
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Two months is not even enough to organize the people doing it. For a project this size, it is amazing if anything productive gets done after 6 months.
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they have had a couple years to work on this, why are they dragging their nuts
Because the first 18 months will have been spent picking out nice furniture for the new offices.
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0% (Score:2, Insightful)
No chance at success. Just like the rest of ObamaCare, a misconceived piece of legislation that managed to take a market plagued by serial distortions of preferential tax treatment for third-party insurance and actually make them worse by larding on an individual mandate and even larger subsidies to insurance companies.
And the worst is yet to come, when some 80 million additional employer-sponsored policies are cancelled [foxnews.com].
The failure of the website is just the cherry on top of incompetent conception, plannin
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Re:0% (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll take my chances with the government over any possibility of getting a fair deal from the likes of big-pharma, big-hospital, big-insurance. The logic of this choice becomes more clear the closer to retirement age we get, or the less healthy we get. A thirty year-old who contracts a leukemia that would have been fatal 30 years ago may likely be saved from the disease today, but their finances will likely never recover-- even if they're insured. By the time we're 75, we'll basically be signed over to the system, healthy or not. Would you rather petition the government or UnitedHealthcare? I'll take the former, though I respect those who choose the latter.
Re:0% (Score:5, Informative)
...And the worst is yet to come, when some 80 million additional employer-sponsored policies are cancelled [foxnews.com]
Is this a realistic prediction? I ask because your link is almost two months old, it's a Fox News story with the usual bias against the administration, and the underlying "facts" come from the American Enterprise Institute, of whom George W. Bush gushed, '"I admire AEI a lot--I'm sure you know that," Bush said. "After all, I have been consistently borrowing some of your best people."' And we know how that administration turned out.
I'm not looking for Rachel Maddow's take, but how about something within the last month, from a source that's not rabidly anti-Obama?
Thanks.
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They got the plan straight from the Mendacity King, Mitt Romney.
People love to bring this up, but protip:
There is a massive difference in legality*, complexity, necessity, and implementation in running a program in a state, vs. running it at the Federal level.
"Obamacare" is most certainly not "Romneycare".
(* The Federal government has absolutely no authority to be enacting health care nonsense. In effect, this legislation is illegal. In reality, the Constitution is long dead in all but in the form of something to trot out and thump one's chest about, so it's game on,
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If you require insurance companies to sell across state lines you can turn it into an interstate commerce issue.
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You can't REQUIRE them to do that. You can ALLOW them to do that.
Insurance companies are regulated at the State level....
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I don't give a shit about your originalist interpretations of the Constitution, I prefer arguments based on sound policy, not worthless appeals to long-dead authority who can't be consulted let alone debated with about how wrong they were.
What's the point of law, if it can be safely ignored whenever "sound policy" arguments are trotted out? A genuine "sound policy" argument would have strong respect for existing law, including the "long-dead" Constitution.
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Me, if I'd been in charge of business, I'd have gone straight to single-payer and put all of the disemployed Insurance paper-pushers into something more productive like counting grains of sand.
Yes, I agree. And smarter people than me agree. Insurance companies take 15 cents out of your health care premium dollar. A lot of that goes to paper-pushers. Your doctor takes another 15 cents to manage the insurance paperwork. In Canada, they don't have that 30 cents cost. That 30 cents could cover all our out-of-pocket costs.
Obama ran a $1 billion campaign. A lot of that came from the health care industry. That's the drug manufacturers, hospitals, doctors' associations.
Bill Moyers asked, did Obama get ou
Slim..... and None (Score:4, Insightful)
Especially for Accenture, a company with a fairly consistent record for failure in large IT projects, especially for government IT projects.
But at that, the chances of something that can be spun as "successful" are greater for Accenture than for Deloitte. Not by much.... but some.
Time for them to change their name again (Score:4, Interesting)
I know the name change had reasons other than getting away from the bad reputation of Andersons, but it did have that side effect. If they have a front page for a week fuckup it won't kill them but I bet they'll change their name.
Close to 100% (Score:5, Interesting)
It'll be "good enough". Accenture built the California site, which works fine, and the insurers really want it to work, so they'll accept less than perfect.
Of course, the summary is designed to make everyone say "THERE'S NO CHANCE!!" It's kind of insulting in its blatant demagogy, but I've come to expect that here.
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If they are planning on writing major pieces of the system, or even relatively minor pieces, then there really is no chance they will succeed. At two months, if they are planning to design, code, and test more than 20,000 lines, it's going to be very difficult.
Re:Close to 100% (Score:5, Interesting)
Two months isn't a real drop dead date. They'd certainly like it to be done by then, but it's not like everything gonna go down in flames if the insurers only get estimated payments, with adjustments coming in a couple quarters.
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someones sig says it best, troll != i disagree
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Disaster for who? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the headline writers are a bit confused on who exactly is facing the disaster here, and it's certainly not Accenture.
America Cannot Compete (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no longer any point to these discussions of American inability to accomplish anything useful.
1. Fifteen years ago, Americans cheered as their neighbors were fired en masse while their retirement accounts were savaged by the dot com crash and corporations helped themselves to armloads of taxpayer cash.
2. Eight years later, Americans cheered as their still unemployed neighbors were thrown from their homes by bald-faced institutional fraud while corporations helped themselves to armloads of taxpayer cash.
3. Now, Americans cheer as their government passes, then ratifies a plainly unconstitutional monstrosity which deprives millions of families of affordable health care while corporations help themselves to armloads of taxpayer cash.
Americans once valued education and competence. Americans followed people they respect. American leaders took care of the people they led.
But the word "American" no longer has any meaning to the people who live in this country. The average person is embarrassed to claim the name "American." Those who do are reviled, jeered and looked on with suspicion.
We have completely forsaken our integrity, our parents, our country and everything it ever stood for. Flying the flag over the narcissistic wreck this country has become is nothing short of blasphemous.
The men who died at Appomattox, and Normandy, and Lexington and the Somme died for nothing. We have abandoned our neighbors to the winds and freed our government to claim any power it wishes and to use it however destructively it wishes without even the slightest electoral consequence. America no longer has a soul.
And that is why all the king's horses and all the king's men can't build a web site.
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Lot's gets accomplished in the US.
It's the US government that can't accomplish anything but ever grander clusterfucks.
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Why is Obamacare unconstitutional?
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1. Under the tenth amendment, the Federal government has no constitutional authority to manage or otherwise regulate the health care market. The Supreme Court directly and unanimously rejected their Commerce Clause justification.
There is no such thing as an interstate health care market. In fact, practicing medicine across state lines is a felony in all 50 states, even if you have a medical license elsewhere.
2. The only way the Supreme Court could possibly ratify the Affordable Care Act was to declare it
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1. Under the tenth amendment, the Federal government has no constitutional authority to manage or otherwise regulate the health care market. The Supreme Court directly and unanimously rejected their Commerce Clause justification.
It wasn't unanimous. Some of the justices accepted the commerce clause justification [wikipedia.org].
Re:America Cannot Compete (Score:5, Insightful)
But... you sound like one of those "The government doesn't have authority to levy income tax" whackos.
If the supreme court ruled it was legal, there is zero chance the supreme court is going to come back and say it tried the case illegally. Even if you are correct- which you probably are not.
And if the supreme court said it's constitutional- then it's constitutional. Full Stop.
It may suck in other ways. It may be poorly implemented. It was definitely passed in a slackdash way.
But you are wasting your life energy and merely looking irrational continuing to pursue this particular line of argument.
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And if the supreme court said it's constitutional- then it's constitutional.
No, it merely means that they said it's constitutional and official processes mostly stop - unless Congress cares enough to start removing Supreme Court justices. At this point, it'll have to be at the ballot box. Frankly, I think the process will take a long time, if ever, because resistance is diffuse and uncoordinated, and a lot of people are ok with unconstitutional law as long as it favors themselves.
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...Americans cheered...
Didn't happen. Looks to me like your definition of "cheering" is so loose that even you can be considered to be "cheering" for these things.
The Right Stuff vs. Obamacare (Score:4, Insightful)
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1) Both World War II and the Apollo program had larger budgets and
2) the delivery deadline was not flexible and was not adjusted even when it was clear the project could not be delivered as expected. E.g. D-day airdrops over Normandy were delayed because of fog. Might have been more expensive (in soldiers and $$) if the airdrops were performed regardless of the weather because the political cost of delaying it was considered too high.
I guess it's Slashdot so there are a lot of poorly thought-out quips by
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but really, why is everyone taking this as proof of US Gov't ineptitude?
Because it is a demonstration of US government ineptitude.
Anyone with experience in large projects should know it's, at best, a 50-50 chance that any given project will succeed.
Why do you think such failure is not a sign of ineptitude just because it is common?
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Landing somebody on the moon is easier. Simple as that. There is a reason 50% of software projects still fail.
Re:The Right Stuff vs. Obamacare (Score:4, Insightful)
NASA engineers didn't have non-technical stakeholders telling them what features the rockets should have. And the NASA engineers were employees at the top of their field not a collection of consultants put together by an outside firm.
Have you ever seen the episode of the Simpsons where Homer designs a car? Imagine that, except with a committee of politicians. Reckon you could fly to the moon in something they had a hand in?
A little correction to the headline (Score:2)
s/Or/And/
Alas another lesson about paper power :-) (Score:3)
The government has a real chance of learning the lesson that pieces of paper containing the words 'A will do B or else C' for various combinations of A, B and C, are nowhere near as effective as an imaginary fairy with a wand when it comes to actually getting stuff done. If real fairies with real, working magic wands were an option, it would most likely work much better than the current approach, but alas all the fairies were driven out long ago by the forces of insistent scientists demanding that fairy magic has no place in a modern scientific world. 'Suit yourself,' said the Fairy Queen, 'we thought we were doing you a favour, seriously, it's better where we come from, magic works properly there, and we're only too happy to oblige!' So the Fairy Queen and all the magic fairies and their magic wands disappeared into the sunset, and the US government was left with only paper, letters and no magic spell power besides 'contractual terms' to allow the pieces of paper to have any useful effect.
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The government has a real chance of learning the lesson that pieces of paper containing the words 'A will do B or else C' for various combinations of A, B and C, are nowhere near as effective as an imaginary fairy with a wand when it comes to actually getting stuff done.
Yeah, the government might learn it, but then those people will leave office. The question is, will the American public learn it?
The numbers don't work (Score:2, Insightful)
So, it's a $91 million dollar contract on a two month timeline.
Let's say there is a profit margin in there, of 50%, so cost is 45.5 million
Let's say it's really important, and everybody works 60 days.
That is over 750,000 per day.
If we average $4,000 (total guess) per day per project team member, we have 190 people on the team.
Who the hell can organise 190 people on a two month project.
How has this been estimated?
Can anyone else make the numbers work??
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The numbers do not work. A project this size needs something like 6-12 months to become organized and start to be productive. And that is with all experienced and capable staff.
This will take at the very least 2 years. Even if given that time, the odds are strongly against success.
The odds are... (Score:2)
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Besides the jokes (Score:4, Interesting)
What are their odds of success? (Score:2)
It's very easy:
From Accenture's managerial point of view, it will be a huge success.
From the government's point of view, it will be a massive failure.
And the real losers are the american citizens.
lets remember they are humans too (Score:2)
Let the one who has never missed a deadline throw the first stone...
Large healthcare IT ventures are notoriously hard. Yes, screwups were made, but lets not stamp everyone that worked on this project into the ground. It's good to level criticism at those involved to show them we are not pleased at what was delivered, but they are humans, and despite what you believe there are plenty of hard working, smart people working at these boring and incredibly hard government projects.
good luck (Score:2)
It's very hard to automate a broken idea.
Basically zero.... (Score:2)
Even reasonable tests for bugs would take longer than they have, modeling, prediction, fixing architecture, design and implementation - no chance at all. I would estimate this will take at the very least 2 years and possibly as long as 5. Even if it takes 5 years, there is a real possibility it will have completely failed at the end.
I predict that Accenture will fail to deliver, but will make off with the money anyways, possibly after having gotten significantly more.
Accenture Expertise (Score:5, Insightful)
Good old Accenture. I remember having to work with those clowns on the London Stock Exchange website. Our small company had been running it since day 1 but due to a deal between Accenture, Microsoft and HP we were slowly being pushed out of our position. They decided to let the Accenture guys handle running the website which led to a few funny events, the best of which were:
1. Our team noticing the website had stopped serving pages for price information. We rang their team who were supposedly monitoring it 24/7 and told them. They asked what they should do...uh, so I said "Just IISReset the server, it should come back up". Their highly paid tech then asked me..."how do I IISReset it?"...oh god, no!
2. Accenture wanted to push a change out to part of the site. They let their best and brightest do the work. Instead of copying over the files he somehow managed to delete the 15 minute delayed price site. They then tried to blame that on us, but when I mentioned in the emergency meeting that we no longer logged on to perform maintenance and we could simple check the security log to see who did it they clammed up.
3. The same idiot who deleted prices went and deleted the entire website by mistake. We laughed, a lot.
What's that old line..."Accenture, taking the freshest recruits straight from college and putting them in charge of your billion dollar enterprises." :D
That's an easy question to answer! (Score:2)
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Revisit a year from now (Score:3)
* Accenture will realize the problem is much worse than they first realized, or that they chose to admit (by choice.)
* The first two months they will have actually done very little. Perhaps created a plethora of new documentation.
* Accenture will have extended the contract several more times, the new total amount will be near 250 million dollars.
* Additional exceptions to the law will help to extend the contract so that changes can be implemented, and deadlines will simply keep moving.
* The whole system will operate in pretty much the same way it does today.
Accenture will not be at fault, however. They were just trying to fix the problem. And there just was not enough time and money. Then begins another year. Start the whole process again...
Eventually,this will all go down as a miserable failure. But don't underestimate the amount of dollars that can be wasted along the way.
Then begins phase 2, under Hillary Clinton most likely. Give it another try, why not?
Accidenture (Score:2)
Don't Worry! It's Accenture! (Score:2)
I was going to bitch that this project (Score:2)
Two Months? (Score:2)
Accenture has two months to fix HealthCare.gov
Two months? For large, non-trivial projects, two months is nothing. A month will go by just trying to learn what the fuck is going on under the hood, and a few more weeks just to get everybody to get ready for the first milestone out of many that need completion.
If this shit can be fixed in two months, theneither the previous contractor was close to finishing (and thus it made no sense to add more uncertainty and risk by changing contractors), or this shit is/was trivial to begin with.
The other possibil
Deathmarch project (Score:2)
Yup. Two months is insane for such a project.
Smacks of decrees from non-technical executives who know nothing about the technology they are "leading".
Isn't this the reason the original project was such a mess? Bizarrebitrary deadlines imposed from the top with no recognition of engineering reality?
At least it will be a quick march to the death (only two months) not a protracted one.
Accenture? Plan on fail (Score:2)
It would only be worse if it was Infosys. Accenture people are merely incompetent, while Infosys people are both incompetent and lazy.
Patriot Alert (Score:3)
Re:The odds of success are zero (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. I see no mention anywhere of "penalties" or "personal liability".
I bet those people who are busy pocketing money wouldn't be so eager to sign government contracts if they put words like those in them.
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What I read is "Dead Accenture, if you don't like the healthcare reforms, all you have to do is fail this two-month project to kill it off. We won't hold it against you.".
Re: (Score:2)
Good catch! :)
Re:The odds of success are zero (Score:5, Interesting)
Note that a deadline is approaching in a year or so
Meet occasionally to marvel at how complex the change will be until 6 months before the deadline
Assign a team to do the work with 4 months to go
Have an "oh shit! ALL HANDS ON DECK!" come-to-Jesus meeting two months before the deadline where the CEO kicks some rhetorical ass
The team works like hell to implement what they can
Mid-level managers identify the *least* required functionality to avoid firing/contract penalties/lawsuit and/or prosecution
Deliver *something* that technically meets the requirements
Get an "attaboy" from the CEO on the heroic work done by everyone involved
I'm not even being sarcastic. This is how it works. ICD-10 ring any bells?
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There's trolling and there's chickenshit. This is both.
President Obama wakes up every morning knee deep in outrage astroturf manufactured on an industrial scale by one of the most powerful snowblowers that civilization has ever known. Your unpeeping post of insincere outrage is but the smallest intestinal worm inside this giant elephant.
Gridlock plays to conservative interests. Some of us are ca
Re: (Score:2)
GOP Quit? Are you kidding? I think they wrote the contract. Who else would use phrases such as 'the entire healthcare reform program is jeopardized.' and 'the entire health insurance industry at risk.' I wonder if somewhere in the document it states 'and people, young and old, will die' as that seems to be the refrain from anyone in the GOP when it comes to the ACA.
Completing the work is likely to be a tall order and I'm sure there will be more rough spots but I hardly think it means the end of the healt