> I am not a professionally trained programmer, and I will bet you
> that the people who created this software are. So much for professional
> training.
We have no idea who wrote the software, or even if the vendor knows.
Maybe it was outsourced to someplace really cheap, where the
programmers may or may not be professionally trained.
More importantly, even the best programmers (or people in any other
line of work) make errors, no matter how well-trained and/or
experienced they may be. We all hope that the bugs that make it past
testing are trivial, but we also all know that's not always the case.
The software was produced by Computer Sciences Corporation:
http://www.csc.com/public_sector/offerings/17014/36837-government_payers
It's a huge corporation that is supposed to be an industry "leader".
What you are saying is essentially what I'm saying: It doesn't matter what
your academic background is, you can still make a catastrophic error that
will cost your clients millions of dollars.
So what do we have to fall back on? Experience?
Well New York's experience with this company has been poor since the
software was created. This is far from the only problem the state has had
with this system; it's just the most egregious single error I've heard
about so far.
Yet, the state keeps renewing its contract with the company. Why? Perhaps
because the software is proprietary and if they drop the contract they lose
the software and the data that it maintains?
Software developers like this really have it good.
They can make crap, and when the crap hits the fan they can shrug and say
"crap happens", and then charge you for "updates" to repair their crap, at
the taxpayers' expense, and force you to sign disclaimers granting them
immunity from damages caused by their crap, and when you get tired of that
and try to flush their crap into the receptacle where it belongs they can
make your data go there with it.
Ken Dibble
www.stic-cil.org
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