[martincolorado]

This right here “configuration of the VAMS application is occurring using Deloitte’s propriety GovConnect platform.”

Because it is so difficult to launch a project and provision the requisite infrastructure in the federal government due to various IT regs and laws and subsequently obtain an Authorization To Operate (ATO) in a timely fashion an existing platform is routinely sole sourced especially when speed is necessary.

Why? This is both legit and utter bs. Legit: the fed gov actually attempts to protect a persons’ private data. BS: after the drain of the acquisition process (led by non-technical folks), ATO, slide decks to more non-technical management (Deloitte and their peers crush this), the competent folks find other jobs either in or outside gov that free their creativity.

Positive: groups like USDS are reducing the drain, but once an exec gets burned they go back to checkbox management and shun the learning organization culture that has made tech the anti-thesis of this type of acquisition in other sectors.

*edited misspelling to show gov tries to protect not product privacy data

[silexia]

Government will always be very inefficient. Government certainly has some strong benefits, but you should avoid using government wherever it is not absolutely necessary. Private industry would have done a far better job of handling the vaccine roll out.

[acdha]

This is propaganda and you should be more critical of the people peddling it. For example, ask yourself whether Deloitte is part of the federal government or perhaps the solution to this problem isn’t simple enough to fit on a bumper sticker. The same private sector which includes Amazon and Apple also includes Comcast, not to mention Enron.

The deeper lesson is to look at incentives: where things go well, the structure encourages the outcome society wants. When they’re misaligned, you get global climate change or the American healthcare system underperforming our peers at whole number cost and stress multiples.

[mbrodersen]

Private companies go bankrupt all the time. Large public companies (like telcos) are slow, inefficient, monopolistic etc. Large defence contractors in the US are responsible for bribing officials and corrupting the US democracy. My point is that large organisations fail all the time. It doesn’t matter if it is public or private.

[kcartlidge]

> Private industry would have done a far better job of handling the vaccine roll out.

The British vaccine is being rolled out by public bodies and is working pretty good indeed (half a million doses a day).

Meanwhile our track and trace system, misnamed "NHS Track and Trace", is, despite the name, almost completely outsourced to private industry (and barely even speaks to the NHS). It's universally acknowleged to be an absolute mess.