Oregon vs. Oracle: the Battle of Blame Heats Up 83
Rambo Tribble (1273454) writes "The ongoing efforts to assign responsibility for the disastrous attempts to create the Cover Oregon health exchange, the primary contractor for which was Oracle Corporation, have entered a new round, with Governor John Kitzhaber calling on State Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum to initiate legal action against the firm. Kitzhaber has also sought the help of Washington D.C. in sanctioning Oracle, though Oregon's own management of the project and the terms of their contract with Oracle muddy the waters, considerably. Although the AG's office hasn't committed to filing suit, yet, AG Rosenblum has said, 'I share your determination to recover every dollar to which Oregon is entitled.' Although the outcome of this is uncertain, it is likely heads, both corporate and political, will roll."
Re:Another Goverment Run (Score:5, Insightful)
Or:
Another contract which was contracted out to a large corporate entity has not delivered, way over budget, and fully into the blame part of the project.
Re:Another Goverment Run (Score:4, Informative)
Or...
Once again Oracle proves that it is incapable of delivering functional products on time and within budget. Why PHBs still get wood for them is a wonder.
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The sales people are experts at wining and dining and ego stroking. Merit has nothing to do with it.
Re:Another Goverment Run (Score:5, Informative)
Oregon is just an example of poor management, from picking the products to use before having requirements, using the wrong type of contract, and then not doing proper check and those checks that were done were ignored by the government management.
private market (Score:1)
Or:
Another contract which was contracted out to a large corporate entity has not delivered, way over budget, and fully into the blame part of the project.
But, but, it's the private sector. The market always makes sure private companies do things better than the public/government can.
Re: private market (Score:4, Insightful)
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The free market isn't always the answer (and I'm somewhat of a libertarian). All the big iron and big database companies have a history of making big promises, then delivering something that isn't capable of doing what the sales people claimed. They're also experts and hiding bullshit in the contracts so they have their asses covered. But if they were given another few million dollars they can fix things. Pinky swear.
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Yep, the people of that state ARE the losers, which is why the government they elected is seeking to redress the wrongs done to them by the corporate parasites who exist simply to siphon as much from actual productive entities as they can.
How many more bailouts will they have before we finally turn on them?
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That's why our motto is "Thanks for visiting, please don't stay."
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orly? Portland ahead of curve, big open source hub (Score:4, Interesting)
When Oregon’s new Chief Information Officer, Alex Pettit,was on our show recently, we asked him what stood out from his move from Oklahoma to the northwest. He said there were some expected cultural differences, but that in terms of IT he was caught by surprise:
I was surprised that things like open source wasn’t as bigin government as it is in the East Coast, or in Oklahoma, where I was. I was surprised that transparency wasn’t a bigger issue. It’s certainly a big issue in Oklahoma, and it’s less so here.
This was striking because Oregon is known for its open source community — at Oregon State’s Open Source Lab, at the annual OSCON Conference, and among many programmers. And his comments came right before an Oregonian op-ed argued that open source software could have prevented the Cover Oregon fiasco.
http://www.opb.org/radio/progr... [opb.org]
The only mistake that may have been made by Oregon State gov. tech people was letting Federal officials talk into going outside Oregon for the website project.
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I used to work at the State of Oregon Datacenter. Open source is highly avoided. When I was there a few years ago, there were only about 150-200 Linux machines (virtual and physical), if memory serves. There were thousands of Windows servers, many of which could have just as easily been Linux. The entire atmosphere is that of, "avoid Linux, avoid open source." It's as if management is intent on spending lots of money. Even though I still live in Oregon, I've been laughing every time something new comes out
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"The only mistake that may have been made by Oregon State gov. tech people was letting Federal officials talk into going outside Oregon for the website project."
should read
"The only mistake that may have been made by Oregon State gov. PROJECT MANAGERS was letting Federal officials talk into going outside Oregon for the website project."
Like the other response, I also worked at the state data center, and even had input into the design (much of which was never followed, shocker). The tech side of the SDC had
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You know whats funny about this - the internet which you used to post this was a government run project that was delivered on time and under budget (source: I heard that on one of Cringely's interviews with one of the principle architects on PBS)
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One major difference between this and what Oregon didn't do was the for that contract they had well designed requirements(according to the people doing the work) the company that was awarded the contract was expected to deliver a working product(something not in the Oregon contract) and there was contract management.
Re: Another Goverment Run (Score:1)
How suprising, a big corporate entity failed to follow through.
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The only loser here are the poor people living in that state.
No, if they get our money back then the loser will be the company that did the substandard work; Oracle.
I like the non-commital announcement (Score:3)
She did not commit to filing suit, but said, "I share your determination to recover every dollar to which Oregon is entitled."
You can say a lot of words without promising anything. I particularly like "recover every dollar to which Oregon is entitled". It could be $0 or $1 or $100M, because she didn't mention how much that is in her opinion.
Both are to blame (Score:5, Insightful)
Anytime a large project goes down in flames like this, both the 'company' and the contractor are at fault.
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No, its not useless but it is pointing out the obvious to many who dont realize it.. Often times in these situations each side does blame the other 100%, when the reality is both sides need to 'man up' and accept some responsibility.
If this would happen, it would save a lot of time, and money by avoiding long drawn out and expensive litigation. ( which in the end its really our money, the consumer and citizen )
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Even in the case of scope creep, or poor project goals the vendor still is partly at fault for not driving the project.
SAP (Score:1)
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Should have went with Metal Toad.
The real problem (Score:5, Funny)
I live in Washington state, and I think we're to blame - at least in part. All those Oregon programmers kept coming north to smoke weed here. I was a bit surprised Oregon didn't have plenty of its own already, given its reputation; but no, you'd see those guys all over the place asking "where can I find the good stuff, man. The GOOD stuff! I need a hookup, man!"
Our own health insurance exchange did well after the first week - that's when we fired all the stoners and hired every Mormon coder we could find.
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Apparently, you are incapable of understanding "humor". Ever see "Up In Smoke"?
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Maybe he couldn't read clearly because of all the smoke between his eyes and the computer screen.
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John Stewart, Improvement Smoker
"Ever develop a an exchange... ever develop a an exchange on WEED?"
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Sprout a sense of humour.
I use medical cannabis for my migraines.
That doesn't make me humourless about weed jokes.
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Don't blame weed for this or any failure.
What about your defensiveness bordering on paranoia? Can we blame it for that?
Re:The real problem... isn't the weed (Score:2)
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...that's when we fired all the stoners and hired every Mormon coder we could find.
I knew porn was conducive to programming!
Stupid govt (Score:1)
stop giving contracts to grifters, also quaintly known as the private sector.
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The majority of Republican-run states refused to set up their own marketplace, they refused to expand Medicaid, and so your statement could be literally true, but also fallacious.
Perhaps you could list those states which had competently run exchanges and effective expansions of Medicaid?
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Right, it couldn't possibly be that the entire idea is stupid to begin with.
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A bad idea originating from the Heritage Foundation? Naaaah. Never happens.
Part of the mistake is not having a decent paper-based fall-back plan, although that's no guarantee against general systematic glitches. I would note that Bush's Medicare Part D also got off to a rocky start.
Vapor roles (Score:4, Insightful)
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>Three programmers, picked at random, who live in Oregon, and who have friends that need insurance, would have finished this job with FOSS, not proprietary software, in half the time a fraudulent Oracle and a corrupt State's office took to generate a broken system.
Bullshit. Without specs, it would have ended up exactly the same. Therein lies the issue. Everyone thinks you wave a magic "consultant wand" (or H1b, or outsourcing) and everything just *poof* appears.
If you don't understand what needs to be do
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Why does Oracle want to dirty its reputation? (Score:2)
Oracle is less likely to get future government contracts in other states or levels if they have the reputation for being a drama queen and "difficult", regardless of fault. They may be better off quietly negotiating a compromise and eating some of the costs in the short term. Is the loud approach part of their Ellison bravado culture?
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Except that Oracle's serial incompetence is hardly new or hardly news. At least to us superior folk here on Slashdot. We've been whining about those idiots long before it became fashionable.
Still, Larry manages to buy and island and run around on his mega yacht.
What the hell are we missing here?
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I only hate iPhone for their lack of Swype and prior to a few updates ago having to scroll to the top of the messages to call the texter.
Re:Why does Oracle want to dirty its reputation? (Score:4, Interesting)
Oracle is less likely to get future government contracts in other states or levels if they have the reputation for being a drama queen and "difficult", regardless of fault. They may be better off quietly negotiating a compromise and eating some of the costs in the short term. Is the loud approach part of their Ellison bravado culture?
You've obviously never done business with Oracle. Oracle has the same attitude about their customers as Microsoft did in the 90s. The just don't fucking care. You HAVE to have them. Everything corporate IT is in some way related to Oracle and Cisco. If you want to use anything else, you need smarter (higher paid) people, software that's not as common, and it's harder to find people that know juniper for example. Oracle knows this, but they overplay their hand. I don't know many people that like Oracle anymore. I know at least 3 companies I've worked with that have sued, and won cases against them. Nearly every contract I've been involved with them in has ended in legal negotiations of some sort. We avoid them like the plague now, but for some things we have no other choice.
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This.
Even in the 90's it was so bad that a friend of mine in Florida used to set up a new corporation for each contract so that if/when he was sued, they could only seize the assets of the corporation the contract was with. And those corporations never owned a damned thing, because they leased their hardware from another one of his corporations that owned all the servers, software, and to which all the profits of the individual contracts were funnelled.
And it's a damned good thing he did, because in t
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It's all a liability shell game.
So now that they've lost money with Oracle, (Score:2)
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They are literally dumping the money because the contract was not based on delivering a 'completed project.' What ever state attorney who did that needs his balls kicked. The governor's assertion that a reasonable person would assume that any project would be completed shows his lack of legal expertise, their are no false advertising claims because a "reasonable person" would have to believe those claims but according to the case law "no reasonable person would believe ANY advertising" therefore, "get fucke
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Although I'm sure Oracle was Incompetent (Score:1)
better idea (Score:1)
stop outsourcing and stop hiring h1b (Score:2)
stop outsourcing and stop hiring h1b's.
With outsourcing you get a lot of contractors and subcontractor that at times can be locked into one part of a big project and it times all the layers of PHB's and other stuff may it take time for issues to work there way from one team to an other team.
Oracle sucks (Score:2)
I don't see anyone else commenting on Oracle... they're fucking awful. I've been through EXACTLY what the state of Oregon has with Oracle. The exact same thing happened to me.
Good luck Oregon. I think dudes sailboat is worth more than your state.
What a Forehead-Smacker (Score:1)
As an Oregonian and engineer, I was so surprised when they went the Oracle route. For a situation like this, you've basically started out guaranteeing the result they've seen. Oregon state politics is interesting enough as it is without getting contractual corruption and national party machinery in the mix. I also happen work in the defense industry, where contracts and results like this are practically de rigueur, and it really makes me wonder how blind/naive/ignorant you have to be to expect anything othe
Go Oregon! (Score:1)
This is Kitzhaber trying to cover his ass (Score:2)
There were no deliverables in the terms Oracle was hired under.
The entire open bidding process was subverted and Oracle was handed an open ended time and materials deal.
Now that the feds are looking into going after the responsible parties Kitzhaber is back pedaling.
I was also told the states attorney will not be taking action, a private attorney will be runnng point on this action.
Not that I am any fan or Oracle's I think they may be in the clear on this one.
Kitzhaber should fall on his sword.