Every now and then I think hmm, perhaps I'd better go online and see how much I owe for my worker's comp and disability insurance premiums because well, if your coverage ever lapses they fine you eleventy schmillion dollars. So I head to the New York State Insurance Fund website and am immediately trapped in a circular rut of confusing pages, botched logins and horrible 1990's design (think: horizontally stretched photos) which just compounds the overall funkiness of the experience.
 
Somewhere on that site is an account page where I can see if I have any outstanding amounts owed, but I have to stagger around randomly until I just happen upon it. I tried bookmarking it one time but for some reason that wouldn't work due to the poorly designed log-in process. And they make you have two different accounts, one for worker's comp and another for disability. You have to have a different user name for each! Tonight I did the usual random staggering until at last I had to give up in defeat. Nowhere could I find the place where it tells you how much you owe. I did find a page where you can pay the amount, but that's a separate page which doesn't tell you how much (you have to enter the amount yourself in a box). I frequently clicked on what I thought was the right link but it took me to a blank page which said "web portal." 
 
So I know that tomorrow I'm going to have to call the idiots and ask them how to get there. And I just know I'm going to get some horribly sassy woman with an attitude who is going to INFURIATE me from start to finish - strong chance of an outburst on my part I'm afraid. 
 
So what is it about these government websites? Is it just that there is NO motivation whatsoever to do a good job? 
 
 

Duh. 

$Bazillion contracts are awarded to a provider that doesn't do anything other than sub work out.  They contract to a sub for $Million.  The new sub re-subs for $Thousands to a firm that pays $Squat to a small group that doesn't give a damn.  It's this last group that implements the system in their last two days working for the sub-sub.  Any knowledge about system particulars leaves with these people so that any fixes/changes/improvements will require another $Bazillion contract.
 
As far as gubment employees go ... that's a subject that prolly shouldn't be discussed in any of the Cake forums.
 
 

20 years ago, my last stint as a coder-for-hire was for government, and it was an eye-opener. My partner and I were billing between $20k and $30k a month, because that's what they were accustomed to paying. (This was 20 years ago, when coders in the private sector made between $40K and $80K a year.)
 
I felt like a thief. Oh, I cashed the checks, but I was always a little uncomfortable with it.
 
We worked on that project for three years. By the time we ultimately turned the software over to them and their in-house programmer, we'd charged them about $1.5 million. 99% of that was take-home profit for just two guys. (If only I'd been buying musical instruments with that money...but I didn't. I bought a boat, new cars, a new house, property overseas, furniture and jewelry. And paid a bundle to Uncle Sam in taxes.)
 
Then my conscience was allayed when we found out that another consultancy had written a nearly-identical application for another government agency. They'd taken 5 years, billed $5 million, and the program still didn't work. I started looking around and found many similar examples. This was around the time that the new Denver airport was unable to open because of software issues with the baggage-handling system. Millions paid out, nothing usable in return. Boondoggles like that were rampant. At least, I told myself, our software worked.
 
But I completely understood why those expensive, failed projects were the norm. They were managed by elected officials and lifetime bureaucrats unqualified to be project managers. There was no motivation to be frugal (forget what you read in the papers, government is not broke and never will be). Requirements changed daily. Sometimes major portions of the program had to be rewritten due to new legislation. More often, department heads just changed their minds about how it should work. Imagine building a house while a committee of untrained architects changed the specs every morning, where they might decide it needed to face east, not south, after the foundation was poured.
 
The most important part of the process was meetings. Lots of meetings, and make sure everybody's there, whether they need to be or not. We're billing $90 an hour to attend a meeting, but they don't care. Every crazy idea they throw out adds another month of development time, but they don't want to hear that. I try to explain why a bad idea is a bad idea, but get blank stares back. I try to explain why the program calculates dollar amounts in millicents, and get lectured by an accountant that there's no such thing as a millicent. Feel their ire when I explain why you can't just type in anything you want into any field of a data-entry form. Why they have to tell me in advance what they want on a report, before I design it for them. Ultimately giving in to their demands and letting them completely circumvent data integrity and security measures, and then spending another month cleaning up their dirty data.
 
Government is by nature inefficient. No government entity has ever managed a project to completion without going over-budget and taking longer than promised. Nobody is ever held accountable. Companies that contract with government, no matter how diligent, end up working the same way. You start thinking of your invoices as a stupidity-tax. Most significant, you stop worrying about software quality and craftsmanship, maintainability and long-term stability. In the end you get kludged-up, fragile spaghetti code that'll continue working for a year if you're lucky.
 
Now, not all government-sponsored software is bad. There are mission-critical applications that absolutely cannot fail, like missile-guidance systems. Many of those projects are spectacularly well-designed and meticulously constructed. But we're talking the big-leagues here, the $100 million and up category. You want it to work, you can have that but you'll pay seriously big bucks for it. But those do not comprise the majority of government projects. Most of them are in the penny-ante range, such as the famous $50 million Obamacare website. They should have let NASA design it - it would have been $500 million but it would have worked flawlessly.
 
Whew. I really didn't wake up this morning thinking "I need a good rant to start my day". But it pisses me off. 

"Astoundingly awful government websites"
 
Is that from the Department of Redundancy Department?

bitflipper
20 years ago, my last stint as a coder-for-hire was for government, and it was an eye-opener. My partner and I were billing between $20k and $30k a month, because that's what they were accustomed to paying. (This was 20 years ago, when coders in the private sector made between $40K and $80K a year.)
 
I felt like a thief. Oh, I cashed the checks, but I was always a little uncomfortable with it.
 
We worked on that project for three years. By the time we ultimately turned the software over to them and their in-house programmer, we'd charged them about $1.5 million. 99% of that was take-home profit for just two guys. (If only I'd been buying musical instruments with that money...but I didn't. I bought a boat, new cars, a new house, property overseas, furniture and jewelry. And paid a bundle to Uncle Sam in taxes.)
 
Then my conscience was allayed when we found out that another consultancy had written a nearly-identical application for another government agency. They'd taken 5 years, billed $5 million, and the program still didn't work. I started looking around and found many similar examples. This was around the time that the new Denver airport was unable to open because of software issues with the baggage-handling system. Millions paid out, nothing usable in return. Boondoggles like that were rampant. At least, I told myself, our software worked.
 
But I completely understood why those expensive, failed projects were the norm. They were managed by elected officials and lifetime bureaucrats unqualified to be project managers. There was no motivation to be frugal (forget what you read in the papers, government is not broke and never will be). Requirements changed daily. Sometimes major portions of the program had to be rewritten due to new legislation. More often, department heads just changed their minds about how it should work. Imagine building a house while a committee of untrained architects changed the specs every morning, where they might decide it needed to face east, not south, after the foundation was poured.
 
The most important part of the process was meetings. Lots of meetings, and make sure everybody's there, whether they need to be or not. We're billing $90 an hour to attend a meeting, but they don't care. Every crazy idea they throw out adds another month of development time, but they don't want to hear that. I try to explain why a bad idea is a bad idea, but get blank stares back. I try to explain why the program calculates dollar amounts in millicents, and get lectured by an accountant that there's no such thing as a millicent. Feel their ire when I explain why you can't just type in anything you want into any field of a data-entry form. Why they have to tell me in advance what they want on a report, before I design it for them. Ultimately giving in to their demands and letting them completely circumvent data integrity and security measures, and then spending another month cleaning up their dirty data.
 
Government is by nature inefficient. No government entity has ever managed a project to completion without going over-budget and taking longer than promised. Nobody is ever held accountable. Companies that contract with government, no matter how diligent, end up working the same way. You start thinking of your invoices as a stupidity-tax. Most significant, you stop worrying about software quality and craftsmanship, maintainability and long-term stability. In the end you get kludged-up, fragile spaghetti code that'll continue working for a year if you're lucky.
 
Now, not all government-sponsored software is bad. There are mission-critical applications that absolutely cannot fail, like missile-guidance systems. Many of those projects are spectacularly well-designed and meticulously constructed. But we're talking the big-leagues here, the $100 million and up category. You want it to work, you can have that but you'll pay seriously big bucks for it. But those do not comprise the majority of government projects. Most of them are in the penny-ante range, such as the famous $50 million Obamacare website. They should have let NASA design it - it would have been $500 million but it would have worked flawlessly.
 
Whew. I really didn't wake up this morning thinking "I need a good rant to start my day". But it pisses me off. 

Wow that is over-the-top nuts. I really don't think I could have gone through that and kept my s*** together, although the money would have definitely helped 
 
I get mad every time I call a government agency. There is something about having a cushy job that it's hard to get fired from that turns a person into the most surly, sassy, unhelpful and lazy SOB imaginable. I always start off super polite but by the end of the ordeal I'm on the brink of saying things I shouldn't and in a couple of occasions I have, big time. The problem even extends to 911 operators here in New York. Can you imagine getting a sassy, hostile attitude when you call emergency services? Well, it happens a lot. 
 
Some years ago I was on the West Side Highway in Manhattan and a set of traffic lights had failed. Cars were whizzing down the highway at high speed, while Chambers St traffic did the same thing at right angles. It was horrible to watch the near misses and was obvious a serious accident was imminent. So I called 911. First of all she said "Sir this is not an emergency. You need to call the DOT." As she was saying this, you could hear the screech of brakes and skidding tires in the background. After I convinced her that it really was a situation that the police needed to handle as soon as possible, she clicked her tongue and said "A'ight. Sigh. Where is your location?" I told her the two streets. She said "That is not good enough. You're gonna have to give me a third street." When I tried to argue the fact that there was no third street, she said "I don't have to deal with this sh**" and hung up. A 911 operator, hanging up on someone in an emergency. I made an official complaint but of course heard nothing back. She was the classic example of someone who knows it's going to take a LOT to get fired. 
 
What really gets my goat is when kid's lives are involved. It's quite common after a child gets murdered by abusive parents here in York to find out later that Child Protection (the ACS) has failed on multiple occasions to spot signs of abuse, or that they have spotted them but failed to report them. I remember a similar case in the UK years ago in which a kid died of neglect surrounded by her own waste. It turned out that a government social worker had visited the house in the weeks up to the kid's death but declined to enter the property because of the putrid smell. She didn't take it any further. Poor kid. 

Government does nothing well.
They have spent over 2 billion dollars on the 0bamacare website... last I heard it didn't work well and was not secure. I bet all government websites are totally non secured, your personal info is likely wide open. 
I bet there are a lot of people here could build a website that actually works very well for under 20k. What the heck? Why, how could a website possibly cost even a million dollars?? Even 100k??
We are idiots to put up with this sort of incompetence. ..and this isn't political because it is completely nonpartisan, they are all doing it.  
I'm equal opportunity today. I'm mad at everyone... well, not you but the general incompetence of big business and government. MS set the tone for my day.... I'm going out now to try and reset. Good luck to you. I hope you don't actually need anything from the government. They seem good at sending a check now and then and maybe giving away phones.... OH and they said there is no cost of living raise this year for SSI because the cost of living hasn't gone up... HAHAAAAHAAAAA. They don't got to the grocery store do they? Ah.. but
http://freebeacon.com/politics/congress-provides-1-6b-to-resettle-illegal-immigrants-arriving-at-border-through-2018/
Nothing for citizens who worked and need more help though.
 
I hope you get what you need Sharke.
 
 

I'm in the wrong business.

I know nothing about writing software code, but I do know how to write up an invoice for a few million....
 
And I can do change orders with the best of them.  I'll hire some folks overseas to do the coding for a few dollars and call it a day as I relax on my private island.

Oh I have an equal opportunities hatred for all political parties too. Some things the government will never do well. The very fact that you don't have a choice in dealing with them means they work to a totally different set of motivations than a private business.

Case in point. I did actually get fined $2000 last year for letting my worker's comp coverage lapse for a very short while (The Hartford neglected to remind me that it was due, but that's another story...) I was able to negotiate a $500 reduction with the worker's comp compliance board, for which I received official notification. I paid the $1500, keenly aware of how many plugins that would have bought me >:(

Some time later I received a letter from them demanding the remaining $500. Typical incompetence. So I called them up and explained, citing the notification I received. After 45 minutes of being p****d around on the phone they eventually conceded it was their mistake and promised to adjust my account accordingly. No apology whatsoever, naturally. A couple of months later I got another demand. I called them up, all to aware that it would be another frustrating 45 minutes out of my work day to deal with their incompetence again. This time they were even more clueless and passed me around from pillar to post until at last someone with a modicum of common sense was able to admit that I didn't owe the money and that they should have adjusted the amount. Again, no apology, just the customary surliness and sassiness and general unpleasantness. To add insult to injury, he told me that to rectify THEIR mistake I would have to write a PHYSICAL letter to such and such an address who would then review the matter. It was at that point I lost it and went into an unstoppable rant about the incompetence and inefficiency and general chutzpah of government agencies like theirs. And after previously telling me that writing a letter was the only possible solution, he then backed down and said he would see to it himself. THANK YOU.

Never ever accept any BS from the government.

sharke
Oh I have an equal opportunities hatred for all political parties too. Some things the government will never do well. The very fact that you don't have a choice in dealing with them means they work to a totally different set of motivations than a private business.
.
.
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You mean like 'govern'?