School's network deficient [NC Statewide Computer System A $150M Failure]

The News-Observer ^ | January 12, 2004 | TODD SILBERMAN

[TaxRelief]

Sorry about the added comments, but that man gets my goat! ;)

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[TaxRelief]

Your dollars [not] hard at work.

NC Ping*

Let me or MYkdsmom or Constitution Day know if you want on or off the NCPing list or if you think you've been accidentally dropped or ....

[The PeteMan]

Typical of our piss poor (DEMOCRATIC RUN)Government here in NC.

Good old boy networks will some day all crumble...just as happened with the corrupt State Fair contracts...Problem is Ralphie Campbell is a Dem,,,The Attorney General is a Dem The Governor is a Dem...get the picture...

[John Jorsett]

Amateurs. California has spent billions on failed computer projects. We're currently getting fined tens of millions of dollars each year by the feds because we can't keep sufficient records on food stamp recipients to keep the fraud rate down. North Carolina has some catching up to do if they hope to rival the Golden State's record of inefficiency, incompetence, cronyism, and corruption in computer technology.

[upchuck]

As someone who has some experience with projects this size... I don't know where to begin.

IMHO, their first mistake was in hiring Pricewaterhouse "Cost Overrun" Coopers. And their appears to be a severe lack of planning and an even greater lack of design.

Granted, it's super easy to sit on the outside and take potshots and we obviously don't know all the ins and outs from reading this article. But this particular example:

The local school districts also face start-up costs connected with the program. One serious problem encountered by the six districts taking part in the trial (Wake County and Chapel Hill-Carrboro are two of the six) has been a lack of wiring capacity to handle all the traffic.

shows just a small sample of the poor planning.

Yer tax dollars at work!

[upchuck]

And their there appears to be a severe

Ouch!! That hurts!

[Wisconsin]

It is interesting how the big "hire a name contractor" projects seem to so often fail while the little "do it yourself for a song" projects so often seem to succeed beyond expectations.

[cynicom]

Network is a failure???? I can show you a school down the street that graduates people every year that cannot read or write. Now that is a failure.

[Tax-chick]

What he said! There is, if you'll pardon my self-interested perspective, an unbelievable level of incompetence among both the purchasers and the providers of computer networking technology. The people with money to spend will believe anything they're told by the "consultants" or vendors (especially when they're offered a few "gifts", y'all know what I mean ...).

And the people out there supposedly designing systems can maybe program a router, on a good day, but literally don't have the comprehension to evaluate whether the client needs updated wiring or other infrastructure to support whatever overpriced system they get sold by the widget salesman ... such a nice guy, took us out to lunch, football tickets ...

And then the USERS ... well, don't get me started!

Honestly, for a private company, it would probably be more cost effective to hire clerks to do manual spreadsheets. The government, of course, is not going to get the job done effectively whether they use computers or trained monkeys, and both would cost exactly as much as they can get the taxpayers to cough up ...

[Gerasimov]

of course, my children's non-government gradeschool just managed to start a program in 2002 whereby all seventh and eight grade students are issued laptops and are connected to the schools wireless networks. Teachers accept most homework submitted electronically over the network and two or three of their texts are even in HTML format, loaded onto their computers. Parents can log onto the school's website and check on what homework students in first through eighth grade are assigned, and check on current grades and exam scores. If she forgets an assignment at school or needs something off the network, I can even pull into the lot after the school is locked and my daughter can access the network via the wireless connection.

And the best part? It costs less for me to send my children there than it costs for the local (Dayton, Ohio) school system to provide a substandard education to one of their pupils. Gotta love government schools.

[TaxRelief]

There is a profession in industry called "Sourcing". These are people who save companies millions of dollars, develop iron-clad contracts that allow for changes and contingencies, work with departments to identify all aspects of a need (no hidden surprises).... How hard would it be to make a good contract and to bid the jobs fairly?

http://www.sourcinginterests.org/

[The Working Man]

"Ward blamed PricewaterhouseCoopers for some of the added costs and delays. But Bellamy acknowledged that the DPI has expanded the scope of the project, largely in response to requests from school districts, and asked for additional applications as work has progressed."

This part just jumped out at me. As a professional in the computer industry I can state that there is no more expensive a phrase than, "While we're at it......"

Companies just love this one. And we say "Sure, no problem. But it will cost you a bit more to accomplish that also."

Proper planning before hand and a firm "NO" to additions will always get you a working system that can be tweaked later on for more reasonable costs.

[TommyDale]

I actually discovered some evidence that a local District Attorney's office was "fixing" cases for personal friends.
I couldn't get the Attorney General interested for some reason. Now that former Attorney General is Governor. Ask me what I think about North Carolina politics.

[Hat-Trick]

Dear North Carolina Taxpayer:

When IBM comes to the "rescue" with a busload of IBM Global Services Consultants at $300 per hour until sometime in the year 2009, be sure they come with plenty of this:

Regards,

Hat-Trick

[TaxRelief]

ROFLOL, then crying!

[savedbygrace]

And many of the teachers using it don't like it. They say it is difficult to even gain access to the network, much less complete basic tasks such as entering daily attendance information.

I have no idea how this system is configured, but we can take these comments with a grain of salt. After all, this is coming from a group of people who graduated from the Education Department at a university. Many of these folks are arguably dumber than rocks.

One serious problem encountered by the six districts taking part in the trial (Wake County and Chapel Hill-Carrboro are two of the six) has been a lack of wiring capacity to handle all the traffic.

I suspect this is a lack of port capacity, caused by inadequate spec'ing in the original bid. Contractors needed to low bid in order to win the contract, and they would have taken the RFQ at face value, rather than insuring that their bids took additional future needs into account. Re-spec'ing after the fact would definitely add tons of money to the cost. I also suspect they aren't giving the contractors accurate information of their needs even now. CYA in full parade dress.

[Starboard]

"This project has turned out to be harder, more complex and more expensive than anyone thought,"

MOST system development/networking projects are harder, more complex and more expensive than anyone thought. However, when the dust settles, tens of millions more are spent, and the system is eventually declared a success, there will be lots of promotions for those who mismanaged the project.

[Tax-chick]

How hard would it be to make a good contract and to bid the jobs fairly?

I often wonder about that myself ... how hard would it be to write a contract, and then insist that all parties do what they've contracted to do?

When Der Prinz comes home with stories to explain why we can't make any plans away from the office ... "Well, the contractor was supposed to ... but their guy didn't show up ... and the one on the phone didn't know anything ... and nobody in my department could ... and blah blah blah Not My Fault, Victim of Circumstances Beyond My Control ..." I always ask, "So, why are you going to pay these people? Doesn't their contract include penalties for the delay in the work, for the additional cost of your employees' time, and for my aggravation?" No, of course not. They're just going to put up with it, and it won't affect whether they contract with the same people again ... it wouldn't be Nerdly to hold them responsible for whether they did the job!

And this is in a for-profit company - you'd think they'd be motivated to get what they pay for.

Since they'd be out of business if they operated like this all the time, I conclude that executives who are competent and cost-conscious in their real line of business are so intimidated by the whole mythos of "Information Technology" that they surrender their judgment to the self-proclaimed experts. They don't really have the capacity to evaluate the qualifications of their own IT employees ... and many of those people have worked or will work in future for the vendors or contractors ... and he (the customer's employee) has no motivation to think of value, because his resume will look better if it says "implemented $200M upgrade" than if it says "$100M upgrade." And a potential future employer is not likely to ask the current one how satisfied they were with the project, either!

So there's an effective conspiracy throughout the industry to inflate costs, confuse benefits, and avoid accountability.

[Tax-chick]

an effective conspiracy throughout the industry to inflate costs, confuse benefits, and avoid accountability ... AND ANNOY ME!