Cover Oregon shows need for Big Gov

[Camarohusky]

I'm going to stick my neck out here and make a very bold claim. The dramatic failure of Cover Oregon demosntrates why the United States needs a bigger government.

Oregon contracted with Oracle to make the statewide exchange website called Cover Oregon. As of its closing a few days ago it had signed up a whopping NO people. (Mind you, several hundred thousand did get enrolled, but had to go the paper route.)

I will open up by saying that the government people involved fucked up. Massively. They let the project run on and on and failed to really give any guidance or check in on it. They let it rack up a $240 million price tag and seemed to not care that it would never be ready.

While the government failed massively, this wasn't just the government's problem. This was also the result of extremely bad practices by Oracle. Oracle was contracted to build a website to sign people up for insurance. Now, I do understand how these things usually work, with tons of parameters and so on, but Come on. The is ORACLE. Not some local start up. Oracle is one of the biggest if not the biggest software company in the world. When someone asks them to do something they should be able to do it to a level with NO GUIDANCE. Sure, the cost would overrun and the details may be off, but it should function. Instead Oracle did a terrible job and kept on asking for money. It'd be like asking a landscaper to change an empty plot of land into a garden, and then having them just make a dirst pile and then blame you for not guiding them.

So, why does this mean bigger government is necessary? Didn't I just show how government fucked up? Yes, I did. However, let's look at the oaftermaths of both bad parties here:

The officials in Oregon are up for election and you bet that many of them will be gone. They will have to answer to the people for their fuckups.

The officials at Oracle will likely not only NOT be fired, but will probably be promoted for earning a fuck ton of money without costing much. Oracle will likely be sued, but because it will most likely settle, those at fault will be indemnified and will not face any consequences.

So, ask yourself, which would you rather have, a bad actor who has to answer to you or one who does not answer to you and will likely get rewarded for his/her bad act? THIS is why bigger government is necessary.

[Feoric]

"Big government" vs "small government" is a shitty rhetorical trap to begin with. When someone says "big government" the connotation is that of a 1984-esque government-micromanaged North Korean lifestyle. When you're asked whether you're in favor of 'big' or 'small' government there's only one real answer.

As for the Oracle debacle, I know a lot of people who work in IT and I've heard countless horror stories about them doing contract work. It's not necessarily that they're a bad company, but they work with infamously terrible server systems. For example, a lot of pharmaceutical companies/hospitals etc run their entire medical records platform on AIX, so it makes a lot of sense to have Oracle set up your backend DB on that sort of platform. I have absolutely no idea what sort of infrastructure Oregon was using to set up their healthcare exchange, but if they were contracting Oracle then that tells me either a) they were using AIX for a brand new project in the year 2014, which is dumb, or b) they had Oracle set up a DB on a brand new platform in the year 2014, which is dumb, etc. To be fair, though, setting up this sort of infrastructure within such a short amount of time is unprecedented. I'm frankly surprised any of the exchanges work at all.

[Camarohusky]

At 4/30/14 04:49 PM, Feoric wrote: To be fair, though, setting up this sort of infrastructure within such a short amount of time is unprecedented. I'm frankly surprised any of the exchanges work at all.

This sounds odd to me. Think about all of what the exchange website really are. They're merely a method of transferring sign up data. They don't allocate the insurance. They don't provide th insurance. They don't do any of that. They are merely a website replacement for filling out a paper form.

I find it extremely hard to believe that it should take more than just a little while for an IT company to make a glorified excel document work.

[Feoric]

At 4/30/14 06:18 PM, Camarohusky wrote: I find it extremely hard to believe that it should take more than just a little while for an IT company to make a glorified excel document work.

You would think that, right? It doesn't quite work that way, though, because you're creating a system that is processing and storing millions of accounts. When you go about making a system like this, the first step is to set up a DB and data processor on the backend. Before your website can fully utilize the backend system it should be working for customer service staff at a bare minimum. From stories I've heard about the federal exchange and some state exchanges, it sounded like people who couldn't create an account couldn't even get help at the time, which implied that they didn't even have a working account creation or enrollment process even on the backend, which meant that it was half-completed -- if that -- when the sites went live. It's very possible -- if not commonplace -- to have a project rollout on the sort of timeline these contractors were working with; however, it's near impossible to have a perfectly integrated database accessible from the web within that short of time. This could have easilly been done if they had just gathered an elite data team to develop procedures to process ACA applications using the existing databases with no database integration (if you'll notice the state exchanges that worked were using infrastructure already in place from insurance companies), which was oddly a number 1 priority. There was no reason to do that.

This whole failure was inevitable, because these vendors and contractors had a ton of pressure from people in high places. This was, after all, a project intimately tied to one of the most profound pieces of American legislation. I'm also assuming that if you didn't reach the deadline you were going to face some pretty serious penalties, so when Company X realized they weren't going to have a finished stable product by the deadline (which was derived using an entirely political timeline with no thought to the actual technical requirements, might I add), upper management decided to override the managers and team members calling to push back the deadline farther ahead, instead choosing to rush the product out before November 1 at all costs. And, if that's really the case, which I think it is, then it entails that a 'small' government would be much more preferable than a 'big' one.

[Camarohusky]

At 5/1/14 01:19 PM, Korriken wrote: Given that the government decided to give absolutely no oversight and didn't make sure Oracle was actually making progress, the answer it to make the government even bigger. Explain your logic.

It's all about accountability. If you think private companies don't have shit like this, you're out of the loop. Private companies fuck up all the time, they are just able to hide it because there is little to no oversight and accountability.

Given how incredibly stupid voters can be, don't count on it.

Now, that's a problem with the electorate. If the electorate wants to be screwed, that's their choice. The choice is huge.

Given the government would sue to recover the money spent, I don't see how they would make any money in the end.

I chose not to go into detail here because it gets complex, but I guess i have to now.

I used a key word "settle". When it comes to big suits against corporations that settle, the outgoing rate of payment is often lower than 10%. This factors in variations in possible damages that could be awarded by a jury and the probablity of the case succeeding. Mind you, these numbers are calculated in a manner as to be extremely friendly toward the defendant. So, chances are Oracle will end up paying $25 million AT MOST, resulting in a net gain of about $225 million for providing absolutely nothing.

On top of that, you've got the indemnification clause. Here, all directors and officers involved are 100% indemnified unless it is proved in court that they did wrong. Well, as it will likely be sttled, this determination will not be made and the officials who took part, allowed, ratified, or encouraged the bad performance will not be on the hook for a single penny. Now, will they get fired? Porbably not. Why? Because their bad actions resulted in a $225 million net gain for Oracle. Chances are (and Ellision's own shadiness backs this up) that they may even be directly rewarded for their highly profitable mal-actions.

In the end, the Oracle shareholders lose a few pennies on the stock from the suit, to be replaced by a dime on the net gain, and no one at Oracle is worse off for their bad action.

You failed completely to explain how expanding the government would solve this problem.

Thinking about it, perhaps I took a bad tack on it. This is meant to state that a bigger government is better than a privated government.

Government is nothing if not a bloated and inefficient system full of amateurs in the department they work. ... The solution? Get his nerd friends, who also have no experience in mechanical work to come help him.

If you're advocating for a technocracy, I'm with you. Though, my experience with the manipulation of laws, I would say that lawyers, being experts in the field of making, conforming, and distorting laws, have a strong place.

I'm merely pointing out that when it comes to making decisions for the people, I would rather have a redundant mildly corrupt entity that at least is beholden to the people in some manner than a more efficient mildly corrupt entity that is entierly free from the people.

[MOSFET]

At 5/1/14 01:57 PM, Camarohusky wrote:

I'm merely pointing out that when it comes to making decisions for the people, I would rather have a redundant mildly corrupt entity that at least is beholden to the people in some manner than a more efficient mildly corrupt entity that is entierly free from the people.

That's the problem with big contracts. A similar situation (a construction job) happened in Detroit over a prison project when AECOM went $204 mil over budget. http://detroit.curbed.com/places/fail-jail Now everything has been knocked over $404 mil down the drain.

Big IT government projects often fail because the under bidding on contracts is being done recklessly, and people in government are bad at determining project costs. Novice developers are over optimistic when coming up with project timelines and costs, why would government be any better. Since it's a big project, Government is more willing to go over budget if the project is moving toward completion. Good public officials will expect the final cost of a large project to double, unfortunately private contractors know this as well and are willing to milk the system.http://blog.fmsinc.com/too-big-to-fire-healthcare-gov-government-contractors/

[Camarohusky]

At 5/6/14 07:21 PM, MOSFET wrote: Big IT government projects often fail because the under bidding on contracts is being done recklessly, and people in government are bad at determining project costs.

True, but you cannot deny that if a private company made the same request with the same lack of oversight, the companies who failed to produce would do a much better job. The idea among private companies is that the government is the goose that laid the golden egg. The government will pay out an indefinite amount of money and isn't that great about keeping costs down. So comapnies like Oracle knowing, willfully, and intentionally milk this, wasting millions of tax payer dollars, because they can. Better project management on the government's end can prevent this, but as we all know, project manageent isn't the government's specialty.

It takes two to fuck up a tango this badly: The gov't to blindly believe the contractor, and a contractor who chooses to openly, overtly, and wantonly steal taxpayer money through negligence.

[WallofYawn]

Problem isn't the gov. or how big or small it is. Problem is they aren't doing shit right, they are being lazy, and they are corrupt as all hell. Before we make the gov. bigger, we need to actually figure out what the real and preferable function of our government should be.

Some people think gov. shouldn't interfere with business at all. Those people are what we call Rednecks, which is slang for Libertarian(true conservative) or Republican.(quasi-conservative) Yes, I'm being facetious. ;)

In my opinion, the government's role is to protect us from fascists and communists, to punish and put limitations on big businesses who don't tow the line or follow the guidelines to a T. To establish a military to protect us from them and other countries, and to defend our freedom from themselves and other countries. That is the sole purpose of our government, that's what they should do. If they don't do that, we don't need nor should we accept them.

Higher taxation on the most wealthiest, higher and more strict regulation of big businesses, make lobbying illegal and punishable by life imprisonment, and promoting and fasciliatating smaller businesses. Lessaiz-faire for the poor, working class, small businesses, but limitations and regulations on Corporations and Big Business. Smaller taxes on the poor, more taxes on the rich. And I'm sorry, but higher wages = less need for welfare, so yea, this is a good thing.

Unfortunately, this won't happen anytime soon, and because of it, our country is probably doomed. We're going to end up as a third world country. "When the government becomes owned by lending institutions, and corporations, Democracy will be defeated." - Thomas Jefferson.