"Glitch" Leaves Many Without Food Stamps

[intheflow]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&e=13&u=/ap/welfare_benefits

DENVER - Thousands of low-income Coloradans are waiting for food stamps, Medicaid and other benefits as officials fall behind in processing claims with the state's new $200 million welfare computer system.

Gov. Bill Owens ordered the system operational Sept. 1 despite pleas from county officials and an independent consultant who insisted it was not ready.

(snip)

The computer system's servers have suffered glitches and thousands of records did not transfer properly from the old computer system, requiring workers to sometimes spend hours entering information for a new case.

Kahn said 20,000 Coloradans who applied for food stamps, Medicaid or a work program did not get their applications processed before government deadlines because of the slow system.



This takes the "reliability" of computerized govenment to new heights. :eyes:

[DS1]

1. Culling the weak

:eyes:

[MI Cherie]

2. Diebold strikes again

I presume?

[HeeBGBz]

3. Well we wouldn't want the poor to have Christmas

It might spoil them.

[susu369]

6. The Glitch That Stole Christmas

I'm being silly when in reality it is not funny for those poor folks relying on help.

[gorbal]

4. This is horrible!!!!

This is the worst time for this to happen! It is near Christmass and the food banks are having a real time this year. Perhaps people should make a special point to give to foodbanks this year.

[intheflow]

9. Been going on since September.

Four months of families not being able to eat. Compasionate conservatism at its finest.

[MatrixEscape]

5. $200 million welfare computer system!

Get it? LOL! That's a riot.

People complain about some food or assitance, (grrr, grumble, my tax dollars!) but that's a pretty hefty price fo the system itself.

How many people can you feed, cloth, and house, for that much money? How long?

[HeeBGBz]

10. What an oxymoron!

And it doesn't even work.

I think I've slipped into some parallel universe. This world is a stranger to me.

[MatrixEscape]

12. I think I know exactly how you feel. Ditto! n/t

[TahitiNut]

15. Yup. And it gets reported as "welfare spending" ...

... so people think it actually helped someone. This is the perpetual 'cost accounting' LIE of fascist bureaucrats. They take budgeted monies and line the pockets of the corporations, other bureaucrats, and the wealthy ... and call it 'aid'.

They should report a summary of the payees of all government disbursements, whether individual or business, whether domestic or foreign. Such a report would be a real eye-opener for John Q. Public ... who'd then have a chance to understand that various "individual assistance" programs were actually lining the pockets of the wealthy and profiteers. It's a fucking money laundry.

[TahitiNut]

7. " Gov. Bill Owens ordered the system operational ..."

Well, what more is needed? After all, if the Governor 'ordered' it, then there's nothing else needed, right? Just feed that order into a scanner and the computers will be all happy and compliant!

/sarcasm :eyes:

I've worked for this kind of 'management' ... people who're so thoroughly saturated with authoritarian delusions that they have not the foggiest concept of MBO (management by objectives) and TQM (total quality management). People like this are organizational disasters any time they're let loose.

[intheflow]

8. Yeah, Owens is doing his best to bankrupt Colorado.

More Republican leadership. So compassionate. :cry:

[atommom]

18. Show those computers who's boss, Gov!

Seriously, though, it sounds like something Bush himself might have done. Don't bother to analyze the problem ... order that it solve itself ... and then point to all the money that was wasted as proof that we can't afford social programs. It would be funny if it weren't so tragic.

[Strawman]

23. Probably deliberate

Order a system to be put into place prematurely so you know it will be inoperable for a while and let the needy starve or scrape by for a month or so. It's a win-win for him. Stick it to the poor and blame the bureaucracy for the fuck up. He probably figures that a month of hunger would make people on assistance desperate enough to take any job or that it might "build character" or something. Plus, you know where people who are hungry will go when there's nowhere else to turn: to one of those Walmart sized "box church" campuses. Then Republicans can claim that we should be giving more tax money to the churches and faith-based programs because they are the ones helping people.

No executive branch official should get paid when something like that happens. Their checks should somehow be diverted directly to those needy families until the problem is resolved.

[TahitiNut]

27. Agreed. They 'feed' on the problems; they don't solve them.

"Managers" and "executives" like this create the very disasters they proclaim as the fault of the 'system' they direct. Perpetuation of the very conditions one regards as his 'golden goose' is noxiously common in both public and private bureaucracies. One of the more "tried and true" strategies is for an opponent of some program to cause its failure through malicious leverage. Corporate opponents of affirmative action, for example, can deliberately hire/promote a few with weak qualifications and then (by making it very visible compared to successful program management) 'blame' it on AA - even though there's not a damned thing that calls for such an move. It's like the proponents of "tort reform" creating false and misleading anecdotal examples and smearing all torts with a few deceitful characterizations.

It's malicious sabotage - pure and simple. At the highest levels.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

11. Being punished....

for that protest, one of the few that actually got a few lines in the papers

[intheflow]

17. What protest are you talking about?

The evoting protest a couple weeks back? If so, the two are not related. This computer problem has been going on since September, long before the election.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

21. Oh, come on, I was just being smarky.....

is a joke, buddy. bad, I admit, but just a little joke....

[intheflow]

24. The problem with online communication is

no one can see your smarky facial expressions. :P

[Viva_La_Revolution]

29. no smarky face....

:(

[Rose Siding]

13. HOURS to enter one new case?

wtf does that mean or is it just another lie?

[Bat Boy]

14. I question the word "glitch"....

Makes it sound like a cute little boo-boo.

This is a monstrous human fuck up.

[gottaB]

16. Good observation --n/t

[demnan]

19. Fire the programmers and cancel their contract

and go back to the old system until you can hire someone smart enough to get it right.

And I'm a programmer.

[Robert Oak]

20. system probably outsourced to India or Accenture (India) n/t

[Supersedeas]

22. Wonder what Corporate Fatcat received that 200 mill--money well invested

[soup]

25. Electronic Data Systems - Plano, Texas

Needy could wait months for welfare benefits

By Bill Scanlon, Rocky Mountain News
November 6, 2004

Some needy Colorado families will have to wait until May or June for the welfare benefits they should have received this fall, say county officials still wrestling with a new computer system for processing applications.
>snip<

Electronic Data Systems, which put together the new system, delivered 12 new powerful processors in late September, speeding up the process, if not lowering the error rate.
http://rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_3309398,00.html

---

Company Site:
http://www.eds.com/

---

Electronic Data Systems (EDS) is a global information technology services company that was established in 1962 by Ross Perot and is headquartered in Plano, Texas. General Motors acquired the company in 1984. EDS became an independent company again in 1996. In 2000 it employed 128,000 people located in 58 countries, and reported revenues of US$19.2 billion. 22% of that revenue came from contracts with the United States government, a slightly smaller amount from contracts with General Motors (their largest single client), and 42% from outside the United States.

EDS has been granted several United States military contracts. In 2000, they closed a contract for the creation of a $9 billion intranet linking the Navy and the Marine Corps. This initiative is known as the Navy Marine Corps Intranet, or simply NMCI. EDS was granted additional contracts with the 21st century wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Data_Systems

[gorbal]

26. I bet

I bet their aren't any glitches that prevent COOPERATE welfare checks.

Glitch my patootie.

[Peter1x9]

28. EDS is listed as the top offshorer at techsunite.org

Top 10 list:
http://www.techsunite.org/offshore/

Details on EDS offshore/layoff events:
http://www.techsunite.org/offshore/offshoreevents.cfm?companyID=242