back to article Oregon hit with federal subpoena over failed healthcare website launch

The state of Oregon is facing a subpoena and grand jury probe from the US government over a failed IT project which cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. A Federal Court has issued a subpoena asking the state's Cover Oregon agency to hand over documents, records and correspondence related to the agency's disastrous …

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  1. NoneSuch Silver badge
    Joke

    "Feds want to know where $250m budget went following botched Oracle project"

    I wonder if the invoice with a line item for "Carbon fiber racing sailboat hull" could be a factor?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      And possibly this song...

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv2UUcXCo9g

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      $250 Million for a state of 4 million people. That's $62.5 Million per person.

      Another state run by Democrats is accused of mismanaging money.

  2. MIc

    seems a little hypocritical...

    Perhaps the should ha e displayed the same level of zeal in figuring out why the federal website cost 3 times as much

    1. kain preacher

      Re: seems a little hypocritical...

      So you think the cost of covering 34 states( which what the feds do) should cost the same as one state. It works out to 22 million per state

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
        Paris Hilton

        Re: seems a little hypocritical...

        Does it even work yet?

        The primary requirement for any project is to ascertain that there should be some kind of goal (different from being wank material for progressives over how good they are being to everybody and being a figleaf for Big Insurance to rake it in).

        I think that first line in the analysis sheet is still open.

        At least the servers have been bought, a website has been set up and bills for all this have been issued.

        1. Don Jefe

          Re: seems a little hypocritical...

          Making sure everybody's buddies got a piece of the action seems to have been everyone's goal and that goal seems to largely have been met. So yay!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: seems a little hypocritical...

      Perhaps the should ha e displayed the same level of zeal in figuring out why the federal website cost 3 times as much

      Maybe because the $678 Million Federal website was awarded in a no-bid contract to a Canadian company that is managed by a Princeton schoolmate of Michelle Obama?

      DOH!

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oracle,..... spending your money lavishly for no reason.

    PLEASE tell me why Oracle or someone else could not have been paid to produce ONE Healthcare Database program for 20-30 million users and then reproduce it in each State at the behest of the US Government? The specific healthcare incident codes are "slightly" different from state to state but you could have made a front end to make codes just translate to the ones that particular state used. Some codes will be the same from state to state too. Why should any State bear the unreasonable burden imposed by the current administration?

    1. cyberelf
      Facepalm

      Re: Oracle,..... spending your money lavishly for no reason.

      "PLEASE tell me why Oracle or someone else could not have been paid to produce ONE Healthcare Database program"

      Because then they could only invoice the US Government for the one contract, instead of a wopping fifty two.

      1. Tom 13

        Re: instead of a wopping fifty two.

        I thought it was 57.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Oracle,..... spending your money lavishly for no reason.

      You assume

      1) that there is even vestigial competence in the politically appointed IT leaders

      2) that lobbyists don't work their butts off to prevent a cheap solution like one application for all the users, and that politicians didn't exert undue influence on the decisions

      3) That firms do not pad their work like crazy

      4) that procurement systems designed in World War 1 can actually buy a reasonable high tech solution

      5) That everything was honest and above board

      6) that states can or will work with each other on anything...heck, their house members and senators hardly have civil words for each other, and are very conscious of their turf!

    3. Don Jefe

      Re: Oracle,..... spending your money lavishly for no reason.

      That was the plan, but individual States lobbied for the right to produce their own system and integrate it with the ACA system. Hilariously, most of the ACA website failures were related to failures at the State level to integrate their shitty work with the not quite as shitty work of the Federal system.

      But it's OK. Patting backs and padding wallets has been the goal of this whole clusterfuck for a long time. All the fighting in the run up to open enrollment was about whose wallets got padded, not the actual idea of the ACA, just who got the financial handouts.

      Having lived through three massive Oracle deployments that were total disasters I still can't point fingers at Oracle on this. They're challenging to work with on a good day where everybody knows what's going on. Nobody in this situation knew what was going on.

      Anybody who has ever worked a job where the client had no idea of what they wanted knows the technology is irrelevant until the reqs & specs are sorted. Without those you could just huck balls of shit with notes inside at each and get the same results as the most expensive computer system in the world if the system doesn't know what it's supposed to do.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Oracle,..... spending your money lavishly for no reason.

        I'm going to guess that Darlayne Hooley was on the clueless Client Committee.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Oracle,..... spending your money lavishly for no reason.

      Because that would be communism (according to the pundits on Fox news).

      Everything in the US needs to reproduced uniquely and differently at the state level because history. So no national drivers license, vehicle licensing standards, etc.

      It's why some people were so against national (ish) health care (ish) - because of the states rights thing. Some were against it because they are evil bastards and they and all their friends have decent health insurance.

  4. Shadow Systems

    "Politicians Waste $240M in TaxPayer Cash. Government wants to know..."

    "...why they got caught?"

    *Sigh*

    I don't even live there and it depresses the hell out of me. My own State is ethicly, morally, and financially bankrupt to the tune of $380B, and yet it's *Oregon* whom gets trounced for wasting a "mere" quarter of a billion? Chin up Oregon, at least you're not California.

    (Lord knows I wish I weren't here.)

    Can we just pry Southern California off at the San Andreas Fault, shove it into the ocean, and let the sharks eat Los Angeles? Please? Would anyone *really* miss Hollywood & it's ilk?

    *Hangs head in disgust*

    1. DAN*tastik

      Re: "Politicians Waste $240M in TaxPayer Cash. Government wants to know..."

      I thought you were being a bit harsh. That's until you mentioned Hollywood...

      1. Fatman

        Re: I thought you were being a bit harsh. That's until you mentioned Hollywood...

        It would please me no end if the slimy members of the MAFIAA got devoured by some real sharks.

        I can picture the head of the RIAA getting attacked by a great white!!!

    2. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: "Politicians Waste $240M in TaxPayer Cash. Government wants to know..."

      Hang lived in LA once, I could not agree more. That city has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Mushroom

      Re: "Politicians Waste $240M in TaxPayer Cash. Government wants to know..."

      Get me the raw materials and, yes, I could do that. Provided that we add San Francisco to the package deal. Umm... oh and the People's Republic of Santa Monica. The hardest part is placing the physics packages properly. Actual doing the boring could probably be waved off as test wells for fracking.

  5. roger stillick
    Happy

    Welcome to American Politics

    We are currently in the throes of our Spring Primary Today... the not in power party is demanding a federal investigation... the in power party is laughing over the fact that manual sign ups met the quota for new insurance policies...everywhere...RS.

  6. Mark 85

    Oracle taking a hit????

    From the newspapers here in Oregon, it was more like Oracle is a scapegoat for mismanagement by the State. There were internal politics, changing specs, and indecisiveness from the beginning by those running the show. All were political appointees with minimal background in running such an operation. It will be amusing, but expensive, to see how this sorts out and where the blame game ends up. I'm betting it won't be with the state political types.

    My sources are local and statewide newspapers. Too many sources to cite. I live in Oregon and have been watching this unfold from Day 1. A true flustercluck...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Oracle taking a hit????

      It's pretty much always the same with gouv contracts. I had the "pleasure" of working on some for the province of Quebec.

      At one point, one of the developers who'd been asked 6 or 7 times to change how one piece of the code worked due to the politicians always moving the specs around depending on who had "won" the previous day's arguments ended up with 4 functions that did the 4 different ways he'd been told to do it and he'd just change the function call when the winner had changed.

      400 lines of code to "re-write". you charge 4 hours and take 30 seconds to change it.

      Sad, but that's just one example of way way way too many I have seen.

      And then you end up faced with the "but he as one and I want one too" types. Lots of those in gov and they are expensive to please and they have the connections to get what they want. I've seen half the budget of some projects go to those people ...

    2. Roo
      Boffin

      Re: Oracle taking a hit????

      "From the newspapers here in Oregon, it was more like Oracle is a scapegoat for mismanagement by the State. There were internal politics, changing specs, and indecisiveness from the beginning by those running the show."

      Sure, Oregon bears the ultimate responsibility because the state chose where to spend the money...

      However any developer who has spent >= 6 months working on a big project will know that customers often don't know what they want, change their minds and/or make very bad decisions... So given that constant, as a developer there are two main approaches you can take:

      1) Work with the customer to get a better idea of what's needed and *then* deliver something that will work. If you really can't deliver something that will work tell the customer as early as possible and if necessary walk away.

      2) Say nothing, take the cash and deliver something that you know is not going to work.

      If you are inept, crooked or stupid you would probably go for option #2. If you know your stuff and want to make a profit - and want to stay in business you take option #1. Why does a firm with practically infinite resources available to it choose option #2 - not just once but repeatedly ?

      1. Tom 13

        Re: If you are inept, crooked or stupid

        You forgot the last option, which applies to Oracle:

        Have more cash reserves than the government and will be able to charge back the lawyers fees after you win the case.

    3. Tom 13

      Re: Oracle taking a hit????

      You know about the 7 green lines right?

      If not, search Google. It should be the first item listed. From Youtube of course.

  7. ecofeco Silver badge

    Oracle?

    Well there ya go. There's your answer right there.

    This is just another example of how outsourcing government functions to private business really does not work.

    Does anyone know if Oregon is at least suing Oracle?

    1. Petrea Mitchell
      FAIL

      Re: Oracle?

      "Does anyone know if Oregon is at least suing Oracle?"

      Nothing's been filed yet, but various officials have been dropping hints that it will.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How many cooks?

    Let's assume $150K per fully-loaded man year - that means that this employed 1600 coders for the year it took to fail.

    That's a lot of people to develop a relatively simple database. Full ERP packages usually need no more than 150 man years, including testing, as an example, and they are a heck of a lot more complicated than an Obamacare page set.

    I hope the audit report goes public....We can all get a laugh, and maybe give the FBI some input on overspends!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: How many cooks?

      Having worked for Oracle consulting in the past - you are substantially off in that number. Even the most basic resource at OCS bills at $225 an hour - most senior-ish people are billed well north of $300 / hr. Let's take $275/hr as a blended rate - which gives us an annual cost of $550k per resource plus 15-20% travel overhead. Maybe $600k per person per year.

      Which makes the team more like 400 or so - which is not unreasonable considering I've been at meetings where OCS flew in 12 people from all over the US for an hour's sit-down.

  9. Michael Hoffmann Silver badge
    FAIL

    Amateurs!

    Should learn from Queensland Health about how to *really* blow billions. Guess IBM does Fail&Corruption better than Oracle.

  10. Scroticus Canis
    Holmes

    Hey it's Oregon! The money went up in smoke - a la Cheech & Chong

    Federal Prosecutor - "Why didn't the development meet it's implementation date"?

    Contracted Project Manager - "I got stoned and I missed it". Starts gently humming a Dr Hook tune...

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