NYC Drops $722M On CityTime Attendance System 306
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by
Soulskill
from the your-tax-dollars-at-work dept.
from the your-tax-dollars-at-work dept.
theodp writes "New York City is reportedly paying 230 consultants an average annual salary of $400K for a computer project that is seven years behind schedule and vastly over budget. The payments continue despite Mayor Bloomberg's admission that the computerized timekeeping and payroll system — dubbed CityTime — is 'a disaster.' Eleven CityTime consultants rake in more than $600K annually, with three of them making as much as $676,000. The 40 highest-paid people on the project bill taxpayers at least $500K a year. Some of the consultants have been working at these rates for as long as a decade."
Re:Cool.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Lack of Competition... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Government Project Cost Overruns? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Government Project Cost Overruns? (Score:3, Informative)
You do know what party controls New York, right?
Well, Michael Bloomberg is still mayor, so I think it depends on the day of the week.
Re:Stupid way to contract: by the hour (Score:3, Informative)
That or give them a guaranteed end date with penalties for going over. Either one works great.
The biggest thing though, is knowing what you want/need ahead of time. More than likely the reason the project is still going on today is not because the contractors have been milking it (even though I'm sure they have been).
This project has scope creep written all over it, and the best written contracts with the most honest and efficient company in the world will not be able to finish a project where the scope is perpetually changing. It is impossible by definition.
It sounds like they contracted out all the project management, which means they probably did not empower those PM's with the ability to cancel all or part of the project. They then likely allowed multiple departments to make "suggestions" which the PMs were forced to accommodate. The cycle is vicious, and it takes a strong, honest, and empowered project manager to prevent it.
When the NYC government requests a change, and the consultant says "We can do that, but it will cost another $100 million", and the government signs the contract adjustment, you cannot blame the consultant. Period.
To put it another way, there is no way the government can pay out $700 million on a contract without the government approving the cost.
The natural outcome of the 'outsourcing' business (Score:5, Informative)
1. Client calls for tenders on a vaguely-defined project.
2. Outsourcing companies put in bids that are _very_ keenly priced. It's not unusual for the initial big to be a break-even, or even a loss-maker for the outsourcing company.
3. Client chooses lowest bidder - even if other bidders are clearly better-qualified to do the job.
4. Contract is signed, including a clause where any variance to the original spec is to be billed at $X per hour (typically several times the rate for the original work).
5. Every frakking thing in the contract is then gone over with a fine tooth comb, and if any part of the necessary work wasn't explicitly specified, it becomes a variance. Meetings are called with the client to discusss these variances. At every meeting there will be 2 or 3 client representatives, and 6 or 8 contractor representatives, these meetings are billed to the client at $X per person per hour. The longer it takes to agree on the revised specs, the more the contractor makes.
6. Actual work then commences. Inevitably, more ambiguities or outright bugs in the original spec are discovered. This leads to more very profitable (for the contractor) meetings.
7. When the project is half way finished, there's a change in management at the client, and the new manager feels the urge to "make his mark" by having an organizational re-structure. Everyone gets new job titles, new business cards, new reporting lines. This requires changes to the software, which requires more meetings....
The above describes an outsourcing project I worked on where the client was a large private business, where the client is government, you have a whole 'nother layer of bureaucracy adding far more opportunity for highly profitable (for the contractor) meetings.