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Post by residentx on Nov 4, 2012 18:42:08 GMT -5
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Post by Darth Stateworker on Nov 4, 2012 22:03:03 GMT -5
Thanks for the heads-up ResX. You're right - I would have missed it since I've been offline most of the weekend.
Perhaps Jimmy will include it as part of the AM Roundup tomorrow.
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Post by residentx on Nov 5, 2012 8:41:44 GMT -5
Thanks for the heads-up ResX. You're right - I would have missed it since I've been offline most of the weekend. Perhaps Jimmy will include it as part of the AM Roundup tomorrow. its very hard to find and only a day or two old. Not in AM Roundup and not readily available in the business section where it was posted for some reason |
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Post by Darth Stateworker on Nov 5, 2012 9:19:27 GMT -5
I dunno - perhaps Jimmy missed it since it wasn't around all that long and he's been busy with Sandy and elections coverage.
I did just mention it in a reply to the AM Roundup.
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Post by residentx on Nov 11, 2012 3:43:09 GMT -5
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Post by Darth Stateworker on Nov 11, 2012 10:14:08 GMT -5
Is he really implying that we only spend $140 million a year on consultants? He's clueless on that one methinks.
I suspect shortly the TU will stop pressing over this. It seems obvious they have little real interest in going very far with this because the CapCon guys refused to even mention it, even though it goes right in line with other articles they (the CapCon guys) have written.
This story will simply fade away, just like most other stories where they're actually on to something significant.
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Post by NYS Techie on Nov 12, 2012 22:34:37 GMT -5
Yes, but if HBITS has more detailed reporting requirements, then we're only one FOIL request away from posting all the information on all those contractors, seethruny style.
Ahhh, wouldn't that be tasty? I wonder what the public would say THEN?
And if it wasn't corporate media putting the info out there, it wouldn't be able to be shut down. You could direct the Huffington Post to it, for example. And keep bringing it up right up until 2016...
If Cuomo really does want to be president, he has to support American jobs. If he realizes that all his foreign outsourcing is going to be embarrassingly displayed for all to see, he might shut a lot of it down. Having it hidden is what makes it politically viable.
Just some thoughts...
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Post by Darth Stateworker on Nov 13, 2012 0:51:32 GMT -5
HBITS will be avoided for anything that the higher ups want to keep "off record." You know how it works - they always find ways around the rules to keep the money flowing to the chosen few in a way that the public cannot easily decipher and see what's really going on.
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Post by NYS Techie on Nov 13, 2012 17:10:02 GMT -5
I know... But the thing about Government is, everything gets written down somewhere. All you have to do is FOIL the right department, and presto! The only reason I haven't gone bananas with FOIL requests is, the older I get the less I care. It's sad, isn't it? I just can't get worked up over it anymore. I think it's like living next to an airport; for a few months, the planes taking off keep you awake, and then one night you don't even notice them. From then on, you can't even hear the things. Whether that's due to hearing loss is a whole 'nother question.  |
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Post by Darth Stateworker on Nov 13, 2012 20:45:45 GMT -5
Agreed. I've gotten to the point where I realize that because I'm a nobody in political terms, no matter how many times I point something out, the people who actually CAN make it a real, legitimate issue - like the press - really don't give a flying fuck.
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Post by NYS Techie on Nov 13, 2012 22:19:26 GMT -5
This is MY problem: nobody cares. We certainly don't have a real press in this part of the state, and the New York Times is much more interested in world news than anything going on around here. Stuff like the ridiculous amount of contracting out that goes on flies so far under their radar they don't even notice it.
And the thing is, the systems that are contracted out are really badly done compared to the ones built by state workers. Take any system in the state government that fails badly. I guarantee you'll find out it was built by contractors. You never hear about in-house systems failing, because state workers make sure that never happens. I have a philosophy about that, and I'll give it to you:
A state worker takes his time and builds the system correctly the FIRST time. He makes sure it's got all the failure scenarios he can think of covered. Why? Because state workers want more than anything else to have a nice, quiet life in which people generally leave them alone. You can't have that if your software breaks down, because that causes things like meetings and overtime and annoying conversations with managers.
So state workers have a built-in incentive to get things right, and not fuck them up. But what about contractors?
If a contractor screws things up, he makes MORE MONEY. Why? Because he has to do additional work to fix whatever he broke, and this means his billable hours go up. His boss LOVES it when he screws up, because every time he does, that little "cha-CHING" sound goes off in the boss' head, and the boss just LOVES that sound. So not only is it potentially lucrative for a contractor to screw up, he knows his boss won't punish him for it (if anything, he might get a raise). Why NOT screw up here and there? It's practically good business practice to do so!
Bah, the public will never catch on. It's not worth getting worked up over.
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Post by Darth Stateworker on Nov 13, 2012 22:46:05 GMT -5
Oh I understand that concept quite well. During my stint where I did write code, I built a custom app for the division I worked in. I did the entire job from start to finish - all the BA work, all of the coding, and all of the testing, except for a little UAT at the end which I farmed out to a couple of hand picked end users.
I got questioned more than once about my choice of end users by the manager, because most of them were not the brightest bulbs on the christmas tree. My response - I chose the people MOST LIKELY to break the app as end users, because if they broke it, I knew I had more work to do. I didn't want those with prior experience doing UAT doing the testing on it, because they might miss real world scenarios that would arise from end user stupidity, and I already did a full-on run of my own UAT on it.
My understanding is that to this day, the system still works flawlessly. Not one line of code has had to be changed since I completed the project. Granted, it was a small web app used by about 20 - 30 users with maybe 20 or so inquiry only pages, and 10 - 15 add/update pages, but I still consider that a feat, because in my career, I've seen the same consultant designed and maintained app have the same handful of pages crap out repeatedly.
You're absolutely right that for them, buggy software = future money and job security. For us, it just equates to a maintenance headache when we've already moved on to another project.
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