The Free Market at work

Health-care Web site?s lead contractor employs executives from troubled IT company

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Reply to
hamilton
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You should trawl fbo.gov and look at how government contracts are rewarded. There are the all the set asides (verterans, women, minority). Then there is the problem that the losers in the bidding war can sue the government, something that doesn't happen in the private sector. The loser FOIAs the government to get all the reward details.

I'm not making excuses for the ACA fiasco. But it isn't like someone can pick the best company for the job.

When Jim Webb was SecDef, he tried to streamline the DoD solicitation process, which is just riddled with arcane rules like the fed purchases.

The problem with set asides is the whole system is rigged. You have enough of each flavor on hand to stay eligible for the set aside. Now I wouldn't mind set asides based on the size of the company based on financials.

Reply to
miso

Government always seems to be f***ed up.

Locally here, APPLE is considering building a $1.5B facility in the East Valley that will employ a lot of people.

The cities and the county are offering tax breaks to get them to make up their mind in our neighborhood's favor... employment, spending, etc.

The Gilbert school district is balking :-(

Get out the tar and feathers and pick-em-up trucks >:-} ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

Apple, a company that hides money overseas asks for tax breaks in the US. It is a race to the bottom.

Twitter, a pretty worthless company in my opinion, got tax breaks to stay in San Francisco. Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Tumblr and the rest of this stupidity could go away tomorrow and the world would get along just fine.

I'm watching the S&P 500 go up like a rocket these days, probably due to a lack in faith in what we call loosely technology stocks. Social media is not technology. It is at best advertising, though most of these services at present have no advertising revenue.

Government isn't always f***ed up. I noticed when the Obama administration came on board, a lot of their web content was with open source software. Joomla, drupal, sometimes wordpress. Thing the government did in house were often done on the cheap and done well.

If you look at the latest forum password hacking, they are all traceable to vbulletin, a closed source company. Adobe et all picked vbulletin over phpbb because of security concerns. Well the private sector didn't help much in that respect.

When companies are proven to be corrupt, it is easy for the government to ban them. Even then, they just play corporate games and show up as another company with the same assholes in charge. I haven't seen any companies get banned for being totally inept. Now in the private sector, you would look at the cast of characters that have a shady past, and not deal with the company. Government can't work like that.

Reply to
miso
[...]

Like ... healthcare.gov. Yeah, right.

[...]
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Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Reply to
Joerg

Huh? They ARE the troubled company, just a new name. And if the government had to disqualify bids from companies with an atrocious past performance re cord, they wouldn't have anyone left to bid. That news article could have b een written about all the major government contractors. The Washington Post is being disingenuous.

Reply to
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred

troubled

You are very confused if you think that government A&E contracting is really "free-market". Be it Federal, State, or local it is mostly we like this provider's presentation the best.

?-)

Reply to
josephkk

Your post really shows you are clueless. The government uses CMS to present THEIR DATA. That task they do well, but they control the entire package. Like I said, it is THEIR DATA. It is two orders of magnitude more difficult to write a front end to a number of diversified databases. The only way the exchange could have been a simple task would have been for the government to set up a framework for the plethora of providers, i.e. tell them exactly how to run their IT. The bribery, er lobbying would never let that happen. For one thing, these companies tries to reveal as little required about their business practices. They wouldn't want the feds up their asses.

Reply to
miso

Yep. Dyncorps, CSC, SAIC...they all have scandals.

Reply to
miso

If you had good experience with car manufacturer X, would you go to manufacturer Y to save a few bucks? Nope, but you get the right to make that decision. But if it goes out to bid and you can be sued by the losers, you tend to go for the lowest bidder.

If you look at the FOIA reports on such contract awards, lots of names in the contracting department are redacted, presumably to keep the losers from harassing the deciders.

Reply to
miso

It seems you need to get around a bit more. In the world.

It is not.

So why does this work in Germany? Why did they not simply send a team over there, figure out how they did it (designed decades ago) and copy it? But no, Obama's people had to re-invent the wheel and royally screwed up. In consequence, predictably, they sit there with egg in the face.

What will be the excuse du jour next week?

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Reply to
Joerg

open

Resally now. First off most of those databases are bog standard RDBMS that speak SQL. A thin layer of middle ware will get enough of them "talking the same language" well enough.

The insurance companies and the federal government are already well up each others asses, this would only be a slightly longer stroke. Break up the monotony a bit.

?-)

Reply to
josephkk

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