DrDonkeyLove wrote:Hmmmmmmccrow wrote:This is a big factor in so much that the government does. I would love to know more about how they decided to award these contracts. It smells like the "pork first trickle up" method of project management.Batboy2/75 wrote:Apple and Google would have been smart enough to say no thanks.
That is, it doesn't make much sense when you look at it as a software development project, but it makes total sense when you see it as a means of transferring money from taxpayers, to political supporters / cronies, and ultimately back to politicians.
I would assume that unless the people awarded could be seen as sole sources - the only organization in the world fit to deliver - this all went out to bid. Which is a sham. Naive people think that if there is a bidding process, there can be no shenanigans. You have to be a grown up and accept the fact that the vast majority of politicians trade in influence. This is why people spend millions to get a job that pays what $175,000 a year. Awarding work to low bid doesn't get you any kickbacks, hard or soft. So just accept that circumventing the bid process in a million creative ways is business as usual.
One of the ways of getting rid of your cronies' pesky competition - the people that may underbid them - is making shitty bid specifications, RFPS, etc. It is very easy to make an RFP that no sane contractor would bid on. If the specs are written so that the contractors either take a huge amount of risk or bid an enormous price, nobody's going to bid.
That's why the smart may stay away. Most have been around the block enough to see the hand writing on the wall, smell a rat, and move along. The insider bids because he knows he has an ace in the hole that limits his risk - he knows that his connection will see to it that he isn't held accountable to that spec. He'll get paid what he bids, and he'll get paid more for changes and fixes - even if they were part of his contract! And he'll pass some back to the connection, through kickbacks, contributions, and political support. Everybody gets rich, except of course the poor fuckers that are footing the bill for this party - the taxpayers.
From what I gather this project wasn't awarded to one contractor, it was piecemealed, and the work was divided in a sloppy and haphazard manner. This doesn't make ANY sense from a software development project perspective - it's an absolute disaster - but it makes PERFECT sense from a "divvy up the obamacare pork" perspective.First Lady Michelle Obama’s Princeton classmate is a top executive at the company that earned the contract to build the failed Obamacare website.
Toni Townes-Whitley, Princeton class of ’85, is senior vice president at CGI Federal, which earned the no-bid contract to build the $678 million Obamacare enrollment website at Healthcare.gov. CGI Federal is the U.S. arm of a Canadian company.
Townes-Whitley and her Princeton classmate Michelle Obama are both members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni.
Yeah, the contract wasn't even put up for bidding, they just gave it to those buffoons. And what's more, that company has NEVER successfully delivered a final product on ANY of their projects...
That's just ludicrous...