Re:CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abando...
by narrator on Sunday January 31, 2021 @05:18AM
(#25977697)
>you get the worst of both worlds. Inefficiency and rigidity of the government, combined with opacity and greed of the private companies.
This is what is being referred to when a politician used the words "public/private partnership.'
Re:CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abando...
by smsm42 on Monday February 01, 2021 @12:50AM
(#25985950)
By itself, there's nothing wrong with government buying services from private companies - in fact, it's inevitable, unless the whole economy is controlled by the government, certain services will have to be bought on private markets. It is when the unique power position of the government is leveraged to give certain companies unearned advantage, and the government acts not as mere consumer among others, even if with deep pockets and special needs, but seeks to promote some companies at the cost of suppressing others, is where the trouble lies.
Re:CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abando...
by imtringued on Sunday January 31, 2021 @06:38AM
(#25978075)
Isn't the problem that the compensation structure is wrong?
By paying lump sums you are basically encouraging your contractor to screw you over. You should compensate them based on metrics that align with your goals. For example, pay $1 (random number) for each vaccinated citizen.
Re:CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abando...
by smsm42 on Sunday January 31, 2021 @09:15PM
(#25984853)
If the governmental body is not interested in ensuring efficiency, than no matter what structure is chosen it will be abused - by inflating counts, or costs, or some other way, because people who have incentive to get money and no counter-incentive to follow the rules will cheat. Not all of them - but enough of them to cause serious damage. Look what happened in California recently - about 27% (!!!) of unemployment benefits is now thought to be fraudulent. This is what happens when people are incentivized to cheat and people who oversee the public coffers aren't incentivized to guard them. You'd expect that there would be some consequences for CDC leadership for their numerous failures - but that's not happening.
Re:CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abando...
by atlgator on Sunday January 31, 2021 @10:09AM
(#25979355)
There are systems like that within the government, but in those scenarios the Contractor owns the system and deploys it as a service. While it can be cost effective in the early years, it does entrench the Contractor and make it difficult for the Government to switch because they own nothing.
When people say privatizing things could be a solution, they don't usually mean "take tax money and award it through a no-bid contract to a private company for laughable reasons which could be either stupid or corrupt, your choice". At least if those aren't the people who are getting no-bid contracts, those people mean exactly that.
> Making the CDC look bad appears to have been part of that program last year
You sound like somebody outside CDC on purpose went and made CDC look bad. As far as I can see here, CDC did it to itself - and it's way not the only messup they had recently, they also totally bungled covid tests rollout. There seems to be serious trouble there, and if they think they will be excused because of the pandemic - they unfortunately may be right, but this only means the rot will continue.