New welfare system not computing, Help is slowing to a crawl...

[Rose Siding]

Officials in Sacramento and Placer counties expected some problems when they agreed to be the first of an 18-county consortium to launch a $744 million computer system for their welfare departments.
But they didn't expect this:

* People in Sacramento County are waiting longer for their benefit checks - weeks instead of days in some cases - as employees get up to speed.
* Sacramento County officials are teaching their employees to circumvent the new computer system's rules in order to speed benefits to clients.....

.....
"I can say at this point that the system just does not work," said Starr, who is also a caseworker. "It's got more bugs than Joe's apartment."

Sacramento County workers anticipate even more problems Friday, the first day CalWIN issues benefits for its 136,000 cases.

"On April 1 we are going to have so many overpayments," Hernandez predicted.

Placer and Sacramento county officials say they hope to avoid a repeat of the problems Colorado has faced with its new $200 million welfare computer system - also built by CalWIN's vendor, Texas-based EDS - which caused benefit overpayments resulting in a lawsuit and state intervention after it was launched last year.

http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/12649577p-13502922c.html

[notadmblnd]

1. EDS has been going downhill since the late 90's

when thier former CEO the big Dick Brown began offshoring jobs. He's gone now but his legacy lives on. You would think at some point people would realize that letting go of all the computer experts in this country for cheap labor overseas has something to do with results they are currenty providing for their clients.

[cap]

4. eds was always the cheap shit government contractor

staffed by Republicans with a healthy dose of Mormons and Conservative Catholics.

Oh well, this is what you get for the lost cost government bidder.

They are supposed to know what they are doing with medicare/medicaid having set up systems in many cities and states but they keep laying off people who know what they are doing and keeping people who kiss butt.

[Boomer]

2. And the rationale for this "improvement" is what?

Just wondering what kind of upgrade they thought was worth $744 million in the first place. Sounds like that money would have been better spent on the benefits themselves.

[Xithras]

5. Replacing old COBOL systems

The state of California has been replacing all of its computer systems slowly over the past six or seven years. The old COBOL based systems were written in the 70's, and it's getting hard to find harware capable of running it and programmers capable of fixing it. Gray Davis started a big technology push in the middle of the dotcom boom that basically started replacing all of these COBOL systems with Java systems.

FWIW, I used to work in Sacramento and helped write some of the software used at the DMV and EDD, and I've been hearing "things" from friends about EDS for a while now. The big problem is that they've offshored so much of their programming that the local programmers are pulling their hair out trying to make the poorly documented, crappy code work. Even worse, the software isn't user friendly at all, and is full of redundant, confusing, and pointless screens.

It's not just Welfare that's having these problems, ALL of the state agencies that are working with EDS are suffering through them.

[Boomer]

6. COBOL? Oh my gawd.

Okay, upgrades certainly do make sense under the circumstances.

But I do wonder how much money these offshored projects actually save when the result is an unsuable system.

I'm grateful that my own company has not given in to that false tempation. We do use the occasional non-US programmer on a freelance basis when our staff can't accommodate a sudden production spike, but they are almost always brought on the premises. And our experiences with even that concession have been very mixed. At least half the time the code is substandard. It takes time to train a new employee in the best practices developed by our senior programmers, and a two-week assignment just doesn't cut it.

[Sentath]

7. JAVA!?!

Not to start a holy war here, but ... really ... Java?

I suppose if used 'properly' it could do the job and be very flexible, but OO langs and Java in particular lead to programing that ignores hardware capacities...

Sure,sure it'll run anywhere, for certain values of 'run'

[Xithras]

8. Yep, Java

The theory is that the platform independence should give it a longer life. If the current Sun HW ever goes away, it can be easily moved to any new HW platform that has a JRE. In theory anyway.

The reality is that the new Java systems are invariably slow and bloated, even when crafted by skilled American programmers. The crap coming out of India is just abominable.

I actually worked for an EDS subcontractor before the Indian code started rolling in, and most of us were predicting this sort of thing six years ago. Some prophecy is easy, others (like how long the state will struggle along before admitting that it's wasted several billion taxpayer dollars on this junk software) are a little harder to predict.

[kineneb]

9. COBOL to Java??

Heck, why didn't they just go to a Linux-based system and use open-source software as a base? They would have saved lots of my money and have something that would actually work!

And off-shored programers? While the folks here are unemployed? Deep Irony time: unemployed programmers/IT people watching while state worker trys to process their claims using software written by the people who took their jobs!

NorCal Penguin fan, Hubby is ex-WorldCom employee

[Xithras]

11. The original deal was Compaq/Sun/Oracle

The original deal that was signed off on (which some people might remember...it was a bit controversial because of the cost) was that Sun would provide the server hardware, Compaq the desktops, and Oracle the database. When that platform was chosen, just about all of the vendors bid Java systems. There were some loud arguments for a Peoplesoft system, but fears of vendor lock-in kept that option from being chosen.

Six years ago NOBODY, not even the zealots, considered Linux to be ready for a deployment of this scale, and open source databases capable of handling these kinds of queries simply didn't exist. FYI, the DMV database alone averaged two million queries per minute after we brought the system up. Imagine every query at every computer at every DMV office in the entire state, AND every query by every user on the web interfaces, all going against a single DB system. Open source wasn't an option (even today, Oracle is the only RDBMS that can really handle that kind of traffic without locking you into a specific kind of hardware).

As for the outsourcing...well, that's why I don't work in Sacramento anymore. EDS was concerned about profit margins and shareholder value, not quality software. Once the contracts were signed, the politico's stopped caring and took the opinion that the geeks could sort out the problems. Unfortunatly for them, all of the skilled geeks left about the same time I did.

[kineneb]

14. Ah, yes, I remember the flap about the cost

So we are stuck with lousy software and the programmers are low bid in Banglore. What fun...and who fixes things when they break?

Hubby agrees about the use of Oracle, apparently WorldCom was using it too. He says sounds like a job for a Beowulf cluster (which can be almost any hardware). These days Oracle plays well with Linux as well.

Happy Penguin

[intheflow]

3. We've had the same problem here in Colorado.

BS instituted by wealthy lawmakers. You don't see them pushing for automation that delays their paychecks, do you?

:grr:

[politicat]

10. The Colorado Software is the SAME software. EDS pulled a bait & switch.

They offered one set of software, then decided to "customize" the "wonderful" software that California was using. So we have the same problems, but with even less documentation.

FWIW, I have no problems at all with a Java based system. They run very well if the architect is not in love with his/her schema. If the programmers - and EDS does not employ programmers, it employs middle management who failed to achieve at other companies who know how to put bids out to contracting companies - can modify the design of the system to make the software work, Java is very functional for these types of applications.

However, I think the big issue is letting EDS touch anything with a microchip in it. They did some work for the Navy back in the early 90s, when my dad was in; I learned some very colorful words, and the basic concept of "if they show you pretty pictures but don't let you take it for a test drive, don't buy it." Mr. Pcat's opinion is similar, he says "they can't program their way out of a paperbag" is giving them too much credit.

I've been writing my state reps to encourage them to get the AG to sue EDS for breach of contract. They didn't sell us what they said it was, therefore, we want a refund.

[I_Make_Mistakes]

12. Actually, EDS was a great company

EDS, was started by H. Ross Perot in the 70's. Their employment requirements were very stringent, minimum GPA 3.2 (major was irrelevant), extensive leadership role requirements (In college, I was on the Executive committee for a sorority, played college basketball ball first year, cheerleader other years, member of various student groups. In high school member and leadership positions in six major clubs, varsity hockey, track, basketball, cheer leading, YMCA, leadership position, worked approx. 15-20 hrs./wk, volunteered at Special Olympics, and took all AP classes except English (yeah, it shows). I had to go back to 7th grade Junior Achievement to get enough leadership points. And then, of course a full FBI background check.

They had a reputation of being tougher than IBM for pre-management hiring. I worked at a high quality jewelry shop while in college. The owners where an IBM Systems Engineer and an IBM golden circle (top 2%) sales rep. They were very impressed with my employment at EDS.

Then H.R., sold EDS to GM in the mid-80's. That was the beginning of the end. It took less than 1 yr. from the official GM takeover, for a major fallout to happen. When I resigned, my top mgr., had stated that he was good at filling separation papers, he had done over 70 in a week period.

My point is that EDS was a great company, and I think GM lived along time on the ghosts of the past.

For the younger people, a good book on Perot is, "On the Wings of Eagles", by Ken Folliet.

[politicat]

13. I guess... though Ole H. Ross isn't exactly good press for it, either....

My experiences with them have been uniformly poor, and the local programmers' community won't touch them with . And while they might have BEEN good at one time, resting on one's laurels of a time long gone is a good way to screw the taxpayers, rip off the client and leave those who depend on one's product in a dangerous state of disarray. Which is what happened.

I'm sorry they slid so far, but I'm even sorrier that we're stuck with their crap.

[I_Make_Mistakes]

15. I guess you missed my point

When the company changed hands, in the mid to late 80's, nobody caught on. It is a shame that the tax payers were duped, but by whom? Remember, GM bought the company.

There is a network in this country of CEO's who are bringing in consultants (it started in computers but now extends to all corporate positions) and literally picks the corp. structure to the bones, makes a great bonus, through employee salary savings, and walks away from an incapacitated corporation. It has been going on since the late 80's early 90's.

When I look at my resume, most the companies no longer exist. These were big companies in the US during the 80's and 90's. Anyone remember the big 10 Accounting firms?