The idea that these people took millions of dollars to perform useless tests and then did not perform them has me seeing read. I worked at a military-industrial complex contractor peripherally involved with one of these systems, and if my friends and colleagues had been involved with this sort of shenanigans, I'd still want them first fired, then thrown in jail. That's fucking obscene.

read s/b red -- I'm so pissed off that I can't type, as opposed to other times when I'm so mellow that I can't type.

The job I just left involved a lot of government contracts. There was an overall attitude among management that anything "special" (translation: anything) required for the execution of those contracts - standards of access to sensitive materials, client-org-mandated prohibitions about what sorts of portable data storage would be allowed in specific "secure" areas, the handling of printed materials about certain networks or access to those networks, etc. - was burdensome and that they/we should do everything possible to cut corners in those processes because otherwise we would be bogged down under rules no one had time to follow. This attitude was infectious and, after having handled private-sector clients in one entirely reasonable way and then having to apply a whole bunch of new standards to one public-sector client, plenty of engineers were willing to cheat on the processes as well.

I'm not agreeing with that sentiment, mind you, and did not agree with it at the time. I say this simply to say that I utterly believe the accusation quoted in the post because that is what happens when government tasks are farmed out to private industry, which is all about cutting all available corners. Management will feel that there's too much paperwork involved and start subtly giving the signals that no one's mid-year assessment is going to hinge on the color of ink used on Form 297-B-X(1), so fuck it. That spreads like wildfire and very quickly comes to encompass the work itself and not just the documentation surrounding it.

Shorter me: Fuck yes, paper ballots.

And yet, Manlypants, when I was in the belly of the beast at least we delivered the deliverable. It may not have worked as well as intended and the client may have screwed up in what was asked for, but we did the work they paid us for. Seriously, if one of the reasons that our voting system is in such terrible shape is that the consultants hired to certify the newfangled systems couldn't be arsed to do the work, I want Elliott Spitzer to throw someone into a bear pit.

We also, more or less, delivered the deliverable. I'm not trying to defend Ciber or say, "Well, that's just what happens, ho-hum." I am saying it was a bad idea to farm out such an important job to an organization whose purpose, as so recently reviewed here, is to turn a profit on the least effort and expense possible, not to do the best job they can do. I also think Ciber should be roasted alive as an organization for fucking around. Trust me, I have no sympathy for them.

Our client got what they asked for, mostly, but we knew that if they ever closely inspected the processes we used to achieve that then we would lose the contract so fast our heads would spin. I realize it's a big leap from "I'm not going to worry about this document in order to make Tangible Thing X happen," to "Um, yeah, those machines are working just fine," but I think they can probably be correlated.

I agree that there are lots of problems with farming out these kinds of jobs to contractors. And yet at the same time I think the problem in this case (and many others, to boot) is not so much a result of the job's having been contracted out, but poor oversight of those contracts, poorly written contracts, and criminal behavior. I'm really quite willing to believe that government employees are just as willing to cut corners and engage in this kind of criminal (non)activity. Compare, for example, the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

It seems like the privatization aspect creates a whole new motivation for cutting corners - profit. As a government employee, I wouldn't directly profit from cutting corners, and my management, while they have to meet a budget, are under less pressure to squeeze every drop of blood out of the stone. Laziness and incompetence still exist, of course, but they aren't encouraged by the structure of the system.

Here is some interesting experience getting to the bottom of electronic voting issues in Cook County in Chicago, using some advanced data forensics.
http://diamondinfoanalytics.com/blog1/2007/01/16/analytics-as-the-instrument-for-election-process-forensics/