From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Government Won't Renew Contract of Health-Site Company
Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2014 22:29:24 -0500 (EST)
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

mark <whitroth at 5-cent.us> wrote:
> The U.S. government will part ways next month with contractor
> CGI Federal over the troubled Obamacare enrollment website,
> HealthCare.gov, ...

In that other local SF club, which is smaller than WSFA (or at least
smaller than WSFA was when I left it nearly a decade ago), one of the
members is a CGI Federal employee.  Another works for the NSA.

> "Blindsided"?  Are they *that* stupid, or in that tight a bubble?

In the government contracting world, it's expected that failure will
be rewarded and success punished, so I'm not surprised that they
were surprised.

When I interviewed at NDC nearly a quarter century ago, I was told
that it would be a temporary job, as their software, which was run at
every US military hospital worldwide, was going to be phased out in
two years to be replaced with a competitor's product.  I was ready to
turn down the job offer until I was told that competitor was SAIC.  I
had recently resigned from SAIC, as I didn't like the way all their
recent projects had been late, over budget, and full of errors.

For instance I was nearly fired from SAIC, and did get no salary
increase one year, for privately and politely pointing out to a
physicist who had had me translate his old computer program into
something newer that there was a serious problem, as he had the
dimensionality of the Stefan-Boltzmann constant wrong, so it could
never have given the right answer except by chance.

Sure enough it was nearly seven years before NDC's product was
replaced by SAIC's, whose delays, bugs, and cost overruns made it the
costliest software fiasco in history at the time.  Doctors threatened
to resign if they were forced to use it.

I stayed until the bitter end.  For a few months I was single-handedly
supporting NDC's product worldwide, while the government was spending
over a billion on SAIC's and getting worse results.  (Yes, I was on
call 24x7, which was not nearly as fun as it sounds.)

So what finally happened?  SAIC is thriving.  NDC is out of business.
And I haven't been able to find a job in IT for more than a decade.

(I'm keeping my skills sharp.  I recently figured out how to add
more terms to an OEIS series, using a clever new algorithm.  Until
yesterday it said, "a(8) (if it exists) is greater than 2^75."
I pushed it to 2^104, which is nearly a billion times larger.)

Disclaimer:  I have no idea what SAIC is like today.  I'm speaking
of events that happened more than 20 years ago.