CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs

[techietraveller84]

Apparently tech and good intentions don't always mix well. Hope that other organizations developing vaccine data systems learn from this, and hope a big refund is in store.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/30/1017086/cdc-44-million-vaccine-data-vams-problems/

Quote

What went wrong with America’s $44 million vaccine data system?

The CDC ordered software that was meant to manage the vaccine rollout. Instead, it has been plagued by problems and abandoned by most states.

The first time Mary Ann Price logged into her employer’s system to schedule a vaccine, she found an appointment three days later at a nearby Walgreens pharmacy. She woke up the next day to an email saying it had been canceled.

 

So she logged in again and found an opening that afternoon at the local surgical hospital.

 

“When I showed up, they said they wouldn’t honor it—they were only doing their own staff,” Price says. But when she tried a third time to make an appointment, she was blocked from doing so: according to the system, she was already in the middle of getting a vaccine.

 

Her frustration is echoed by millions of Americans who have struggled to get vaccines through various chaotic systems. But unlike others in some states, she wasn’t encountering these problems with a third-party consumer service like Eventbrite, or even through an antiquated government system. She was on the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s brand-new, $44 million website called VAMS—the Vaccine Administration Management System, built by the consulting firm Deloitte.

 

[jackspade]

This is what happens when you give jobs straight to federal contractors like Deloitte. Instead of having a bid to quality on an open market, you always end up with cow dung.

Edited February 2, 2021 by jackspade

[Poet]

I could have done it for $4,400 using WordPress and Gravity Forms.

 

[impulse]

12 minutes ago, Poet said:

I could have done it for $4,400 using WordPress and Gravity Forms.

 

But then you wouldn't be able to afford massive political contributions and a pack of lobbyists.

 

[tgw]

On 2/1/2021 at 3:41 AM, techietraveller84 said:

Apparently tech and good intentions don't always mix well. Hope that other organizations developing vaccine data systems learn from this, and hope a big refund is in store.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/30/1017086/cdc-44-million-vaccine-data-vams-problems/

 

 

maybe next time give the job to system developers instead of beancounters...

[Damrongsak]

$44 million is chump change.  Some years back the Healthcare.gov health insurance site was a disaster when it rolled out circa 2013.

 

The Obama administration has spent roughly $840 million on HealthCare.gov, including more than $150 million just in cost overruns for the version that failed so badly when it launched last year.  The Government Accountability Office says cost overruns went hand-in-hand with the management failures that led to the disastrous launch of HealthCare.gov and the 36 state insurance exchanges it serves.