Friday, September 11, 2009

Sidetracked

Had a busy day and I got distracted by the Fed visit to City Hall...but I have some good perspective regarding MAS which I hope to get to tomorrow so hang tight.

In the interim...I had the great pleasure of sitting in with NolaTrey and the Commish tonight on Radio Chaos. The podcast is available here.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm think I'm addicted to this blog.

Anonymous said...

I think MSF got Boyd to let him write the RFP for the new contract, that way, he could write the best response, and put in the lowest bid. MSF, or whoever wrote the RFP, was so GIS focused that they forgot to put web into the RFP. That's how neither MAS nor VisionIT are in breach of contract for holding cityofno.com hostage.

Anonymous said...

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2009/09/greg_meffert_asks_judge_to_mov.html

Guess the rumors about the third lawsuit are coming true. Looks like Camsoft Data Systems actually intervened in the lawsuit today which should really shake things up for everyone.

Anonymous said...

reading da RFP one thing is certain: the braniac's in the Mayor's Office didnt write it, i gar-un-tee. they couldnt even spell geospacial!

on da other- if MAS owned their web tool when fired then it aint a hostage situation (just yet). just takin their ball and goin home.

Jason Brad Berry said...

Anon 3, I saw the request to move. I actually think they have a point. Its a small town fo' true.

Camsoft runs into the courtroom and plants a flag....I don't quite get the timing...it seems to me they could be helping the defense.

But believe me...if the plaintiff's win I suspect the judgement is gonna be stellar considering a 900 lb. gorilla like Dell is involved. So who can blame them.

But answer this for me...what happens if an indictment comes down in the course of the civil suit? How will that affect the civil suit? If the jurors are exposed to the news of the indictment could Smith say the news has tainted the jurors? Forgive my lack of understanding of the law but I am just trying to see all the angles.

Jason Brad Berry said...

Anon 4,

I think MAS specifically stated in their contract that they were licensing the CMS and the city doesn't own it. So MAS is certainly within their right to take their shovel and pail if they're getting kicked out of the sandbox.

This is exactly why I'm concerned about the current MSF contract which I think is rather ambiguous. I just don't want to get in the same damn position again. Its been stated that there are numerous, cheap, off the shelf solutions to handle the job so I don't understand why it wouldn't be in the city's best interest to require the contractor to use one of those solution which would be easily passed on to a new contractor after this current contract is up in August of next year.

Anonymous said...

camsoft hurts everyone except the City. If camsoft was truely the genius behind the network, then it makes perfect sense that the whole thing would go to crap after Southern and Active kicked them out. The inability for Southern and Active to perform on the contract (because they no longer have any clue what to do, Brian has a BA in Drama for fuck's sake) proves that the City needed another solution. If Southern and Active relied on camsoft then they had a duty to notify the City of the change in structure, and the jeopardy they were placing the City in. This is good news for taxpayers.

Anonymous said...

The change of venue could work in Muppet's favor if granted. Outside Orleans Parish, the rest of this state bleeds republican. Good ol' conservatives like Greg combined with a Dell incentive might get a favorable nod.

Anonymous said...

I spoke to two attorneys involved in the case and they said Camsoft's move was brilliant. Camsoft either works a deal out with the Plaintiffs or jeopardizes the entire Plaintiffs case if they call Camsoft to the stand or even despose Camsoft during the trial. Is it true that no one from Camsoft was deposed in this case??? I'm scratching my head on that one if true.

Anonymous said...

I am still trying to figure how Active and Southern were over paid 250k in advance and still could not pay all of their subs. Also, if camsoft had the solution and then southern/active took it, How can Southern/Active say dell stole their solution

Anonymous said...

Dambala that's an interesting idea. Rather than each vendor coming in with his favorite CMS implementation, why doesn't the city say, "Hey we want you to use Product X." So they can rest comfortable with it's underlying database (different for every product), and have any new vendor learn to code it's frontend.

Good idea. Only problem: the city would need to have smart leadership in place to make that determination.

My guess is the city also has so much custom stuff that they can't or don't want to start over. This probably happened since before Domke's dynamic site the city had a static HTML site, so there was no compatibility concern.

Anonymous said...

I'm confused again now that more people are involved and there are requests to move the venue. I still don't understand how Tropos fits in and while I have a better sense of who Camsoft Data is, I need another one of those special Zombie tutorials, the ones where you explain things as if to a four year old.

I'm like to know what is going on, but more than that, I would like to know if the weasels who need to get in big trouble are heading for some, or (as weasels are wont to do) weaseling out of it.