I still cannot bend my head around the idea that a State of the most powerful country on earth should somehow be allowed to reclaim what is to all intents and purposes their mismanagement.
I am sure Oracle (like every large consultant / supplier) over sold their capabilities and stuffed the project with over paid under experienced staff and fed back sweet smelling bullshit to the upper levels. But FFS if the administrators of a whole fucking State do not know this by now, they are the ones to go.
Yes, USGDS is calling the right moves, yes open sourcing reference systems would be a good idea for federal projects but in the end, if you cannot run a software project today, you are going to fuck up everything by 2025. Hospitals, buildings, water pumps, really everything.
Learning these lessons now is a good idea. Thinking "I can still hire Oracle and if they are bad we can take them to court in five years" is not the right lesson to learn.
The above is a UK case where a supplier provided defective software, then was sued and claimed defence behind limitation clauses - it went to the high court which said yeah, you were both big boys, they aren't liable.
The principle I think extends here.
Also - that PDF is incredible - things like "they lied about how flexible and suitable it was for us". Aaaaargh! Can you really sue for "we did not do our homework?!"
> Also - that PDF is incredible - things like "they lied about how flexible and suitable it was for us". Aaaaargh! Can you really sue for "we did not do our homework?!"
So what you seem to be saying, in essence, is that the minimum requirement for government (or perhaps customers in general) is to be perfect, but the acceptable practise for vendors is to be psycopathically dishonest?
Isn't that what caveat emptor means? No it's not to be perfect, it's to basically be part of the great hollowing out - either you buy commodities priced and regulated by the market or you buy to support your core competancies - that's is unless you are great at it, it should be a commodity not a complex contract.
Oregon clearly are not great at software. So they should either become great at it or buy commodity (ie OSS).
The fact there is no OSS solution for them is a problem but Oregon, Wisconsin and so on could club together to dove the problem or let USGDS do it.
For starters, Oregon has less than half the population of Silicon Valley - there just isn't enough talent to draw from to get the in-house expertise the state needs.
On top of that, nobody wants to go work for the Government, and there is a dearth of talent at the state level when it comes to building huge software projects. Perhaps offering high salaries is a start, but the pace of the projects relative to other companies will always be a detractor. Combine that with the scrutiny of the public and constant need to practically over-document things, and you've got a culture that isn't attractive to talented software developers or analysts.
It isn't just that. Private companies pay a lot of bribes, I mean lobbying dollars, to keep the corporate welfare rolling in, and there are many, many citizen groups who gnash their teeth anytime the government "wastes" money by not paying private companies to do its work. There is a lot of motivation to keep shoveling good money after bad toward private companies, and little to change it.
I am sure Oracle (like every large consultant / supplier) over sold their capabilities and stuffed the project with over paid under experienced staff and fed back sweet smelling bullshit to the upper levels. But FFS if the administrators of a whole fucking State do not know this by now, they are the ones to go.
Yes, USGDS is calling the right moves, yes open sourcing reference systems would be a good idea for federal projects but in the end, if you cannot run a software project today, you are going to fuck up everything by 2025. Hospitals, buildings, water pumps, really everything.
Learning these lessons now is a good idea. Thinking "I can still hire Oracle and if they are bad we can take them to court in five years" is not the right lesson to learn.
Edit: http://www.lawteacher.net/contract-law/essays/the-case-of-wa...
The above is a UK case where a supplier provided defective software, then was sued and claimed defence behind limitation clauses - it went to the high court which said yeah, you were both big boys, they aren't liable.
The principle I think extends here.
Also - that PDF is incredible - things like "they lied about how flexible and suitable it was for us". Aaaaargh! Can you really sue for "we did not do our homework?!"