COVID-19 vs. our Networks

Keith Medcalf kmedcalf at dessus.com
Wed Mar 18 09:43:37 UTC 2020


On Tuesday, 17 March, 2020 15:48, Rich Kulawiec <rsk at gsp.org> wrote:

>On Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 11:35:59AM -0700, Owen DeLong wrote:

>> Anything in the healthcare vertical that is outside of the medical
>> providers control/ownership is a result of the medical provider
>> buying into that model on some level. STOP DOING THAT.  (How am I
>> suddenly reminded of the old adage ???Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I
>> do this!??????)

>> I understand how the allure of lower costs and the frustration of
>> ???every vendor does this, we can???t find one who doesn???t??? 
>> plays out. 
>>> However, the only way ???every vendor does it??? will continue 
>> is if every vendor continues to be able to make sales without 
>> changing.

>Fought this battle, lost this battle.

>Why?

>Because the people with the authority to make purchasing decisions are
>not the people who will be on the phone to some vendor's tech support
at
>3 AM on a Sunday morning, frantically pleading with them to fix a
problem
>because they really need that piece of equipment to work right now.

So you failed because you did not require the person making the decision
to take responsibility for their decision.  That is, your organization
has a severely flawed process wherein the "R" for making the decision is
not the same person as has the "R" for the repercussions.

>Decisions are no longer based on the greater good or on anticipating
>worst case scenarios or on maximizing preparedness or anything that 
>we might hope they're based on.  They're based, coldly and
calculatingly, 
>on money.

No, they are based on whatever the specification for making decisions
happens to be.  If you have chosen that basis to be "cheapest bidder",
then that is what you can expect to receive.

>If you want this to change -- and I sure would like it to change --
>then money needs to be entirely removed from that calculation.  That is
>a problem whose solution lies outside the scope of NANOG.

No.  One simply has to assign a "cost" to "suitability for use".  For
example, if you put out an RFQ for a CT Machine and someone bids a bag
of peanuts for $1.50, that is probably the lowest bid, and that is what
you will get if you choose based entirely on the lowest bid.  However,
if you also require that the purchased machine also actually be capable
of performing Computed Tomography then clearly that $1.50 bid will be
rejected.

You simply have to define what you want to achieve, then do it.

-- 
The fact that there's a Highway to Hell but only a Stairway to Heaven
says a lot about anticipated traffic volume. 






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