U.S. Mint Ecommerce Outage Continues
Wednesday January 23, 2008
Update: As of 11:02 pm ET this evening (Wed., Jan. 23) the U.S. Mint Web site's Ecommerce function has been restored.
The U.S. Mint Web site's order-taking (Ecommerce) section has been off-line since last Tuesday morning, January 15, making this the eighth consecutive day that Mint customers were unable to place orders via the Web. In the fast-paced world of Ecommerce, this is an eternity, and many people are frankly stunned that in today's day and age a major Web Ecommerce site could be out of commission for such a long time. It took some digging (and a bit of cajoling) but I finally got to the bottom of this extraordinary situation. U.S. Mint official Greg Hernandez was able to confirm by press time much of what I had dredged up from the secretive world of U.S. Government contractors.
According to Hernandez, on January 14, 2008, the Mint's contract with global consulting giant Accenture LLP expired. Accenture had an $87 million, 5-year contract to provide services to the U.S. Mint that included helping the Mint "operate and improve the business systems and processes that support its retail sales and marketing activities" (as stated in an Accenture press release.) According to Hernandez, the Mint was unable to come to terms with Accenture to renew or extend the contract. The mint made the difficult decision to suspend its Ecommerce services at this time in the interest of ensuring the integrity of the Mint's online ordering process, especially the security of customer data and information. Hernandez stressed that the primary driving force in the Mint's decision was to ensure the security and reliability of their Ecommerce services. Although the Mint could perhaps have left the systems up, it could no longer ensure with absolute confidence that customers would enjoy the quality of service they had come to expect from the Mint, once Accenture was out of the loop. Thus, the decision to direct the ordering flow to the Mint's telemarketing arm by closing down the Ecommerce portion of the Web site.
As is standard in such arrangements as Accenture had with the Mint, a number of subcontractors were utilized that specialize in various areas such as Internet transaction security and order fulfillment back-end services. One of these subcontractors is PFSWeb Inc., of Plano, Texas. Although I wasn't able to confirm this entire chain of companies as of press time, the origin of this flow begins with a company called Soza, of Fairfax, Virginia effective January 15, 2003. Soza won a $29.5 million, 5-year contract to provide a cornucopia of Information Technology (IT) related services to the U.S. Mint, primarily relating to application development and deployment. However, this company was sold a couple of weeks later to Perot systems of Plano, Texas, who took over the contract.
As the U.S. Mint discovered, the Web-based Ecommerce business is a minefield of security and computer performance challenges, and coupled with the Mint's offline direct-mail and telephone sales businesses, order-tracking, stock management, and fulfillment increasingly became a challenge to coordinate. Enter Accenture, one of the global leaders in "management, consulting, technology, and outsourcing services" (according to their press releases.) After the normal government competitive bidding process, Accenture won the contract to tie everything together for the Mint. In the meantime, Perot Systems and PFSWeb coordinated in some fashion to provide the order-taking software and materials and resource tracking functions as part of PFSWeb's subcontract under Accenture. (Other Accenture subcontractors who worked on the U.S. Mint contract include Qwest Communications International Inc., CommercialWare Inc., Evantes Inc., Sapient Corp., Acxiom Corp., Akamai Technologies Inc., and Optimal Solutions Inc.)
So, those are the facts. Now the questions:
According to Washington Technology magazine, the Mint's 5-year contract with Accenture was announced on January 18, 2005. Hernandez told me that the Accenture contract expired on January 14, 2008. This certainly isn't 5 years. However, the 5-year contract with Soza/Perot Systems did expire on January 14, 2008 assuming things ran to completion of the term. Did Accenture perhaps buy out Perot's share of the contract, and it is this which expired? Then what happened to the other 2 years of Accenture's 5-year contract (and the pro-rated $34.8 million it represents?)
I will continue to push for answers to these enigmas, but in the meantime, Hernandez assures me that the Mint Ecommerce function will be restored soon, although he couldn't give a date. It could be as early as tomorrow and it might be a week or more, but whenever it is restored, it won't be until everything is in place with the new managing vendor (PFSWeb.) I asked Hernandez if the contract PFSWeb was awarded went out to competitive bidding, and he said that due to the extraordinary situation that arose when negotiations to renew with Accenture broke down, PFSWeb has a temporary 6-month contract, during which time the proper bidding process will take place. Hopefully we won't be seeing a repeat of this outage in 6 months!
And those hoping to buy the Bald Eagle Commemorative 3-Coin sets? They're not sold out yet, but due to the disruption in normal Mint functions, they couldn't give me a sales figure. For what it's worth, the Bald Eagle 3-Coin Set isn't on my "recommended buy" list. Find out why in my article about which Mint sets are likely to be the best buys, and why.
The U.S. Mint Web site's order-taking (Ecommerce) section has been off-line since last Tuesday morning, January 15, making this the eighth consecutive day that Mint customers were unable to place orders via the Web. In the fast-paced world of Ecommerce, this is an eternity, and many people are frankly stunned that in today's day and age a major Web Ecommerce site could be out of commission for such a long time. It took some digging (and a bit of cajoling) but I finally got to the bottom of this extraordinary situation. U.S. Mint official Greg Hernandez was able to confirm by press time much of what I had dredged up from the secretive world of U.S. Government contractors.
According to Hernandez, on January 14, 2008, the Mint's contract with global consulting giant Accenture LLP expired. Accenture had an $87 million, 5-year contract to provide services to the U.S. Mint that included helping the Mint "operate and improve the business systems and processes that support its retail sales and marketing activities" (as stated in an Accenture press release.) According to Hernandez, the Mint was unable to come to terms with Accenture to renew or extend the contract. The mint made the difficult decision to suspend its Ecommerce services at this time in the interest of ensuring the integrity of the Mint's online ordering process, especially the security of customer data and information. Hernandez stressed that the primary driving force in the Mint's decision was to ensure the security and reliability of their Ecommerce services. Although the Mint could perhaps have left the systems up, it could no longer ensure with absolute confidence that customers would enjoy the quality of service they had come to expect from the Mint, once Accenture was out of the loop. Thus, the decision to direct the ordering flow to the Mint's telemarketing arm by closing down the Ecommerce portion of the Web site.
As is standard in such arrangements as Accenture had with the Mint, a number of subcontractors were utilized that specialize in various areas such as Internet transaction security and order fulfillment back-end services. One of these subcontractors is PFSWeb Inc., of Plano, Texas. Although I wasn't able to confirm this entire chain of companies as of press time, the origin of this flow begins with a company called Soza, of Fairfax, Virginia effective January 15, 2003. Soza won a $29.5 million, 5-year contract to provide a cornucopia of Information Technology (IT) related services to the U.S. Mint, primarily relating to application development and deployment. However, this company was sold a couple of weeks later to Perot systems of Plano, Texas, who took over the contract.
As the U.S. Mint discovered, the Web-based Ecommerce business is a minefield of security and computer performance challenges, and coupled with the Mint's offline direct-mail and telephone sales businesses, order-tracking, stock management, and fulfillment increasingly became a challenge to coordinate. Enter Accenture, one of the global leaders in "management, consulting, technology, and outsourcing services" (according to their press releases.) After the normal government competitive bidding process, Accenture won the contract to tie everything together for the Mint. In the meantime, Perot Systems and PFSWeb coordinated in some fashion to provide the order-taking software and materials and resource tracking functions as part of PFSWeb's subcontract under Accenture. (Other Accenture subcontractors who worked on the U.S. Mint contract include Qwest Communications International Inc., CommercialWare Inc., Evantes Inc., Sapient Corp., Acxiom Corp., Akamai Technologies Inc., and Optimal Solutions Inc.)
So, those are the facts. Now the questions:
According to Washington Technology magazine, the Mint's 5-year contract with Accenture was announced on January 18, 2005. Hernandez told me that the Accenture contract expired on January 14, 2008. This certainly isn't 5 years. However, the 5-year contract with Soza/Perot Systems did expire on January 14, 2008 assuming things ran to completion of the term. Did Accenture perhaps buy out Perot's share of the contract, and it is this which expired? Then what happened to the other 2 years of Accenture's 5-year contract (and the pro-rated $34.8 million it represents?)
I will continue to push for answers to these enigmas, but in the meantime, Hernandez assures me that the Mint Ecommerce function will be restored soon, although he couldn't give a date. It could be as early as tomorrow and it might be a week or more, but whenever it is restored, it won't be until everything is in place with the new managing vendor (PFSWeb.) I asked Hernandez if the contract PFSWeb was awarded went out to competitive bidding, and he said that due to the extraordinary situation that arose when negotiations to renew with Accenture broke down, PFSWeb has a temporary 6-month contract, during which time the proper bidding process will take place. Hopefully we won't be seeing a repeat of this outage in 6 months!
And those hoping to buy the Bald Eagle Commemorative 3-Coin sets? They're not sold out yet, but due to the disruption in normal Mint functions, they couldn't give me a sales figure. For what it's worth, the Bald Eagle 3-Coin Set isn't on my "recommended buy" list. Find out why in my article about which Mint sets are likely to be the best buys, and why.
Comments
I take it that the Mint called Accenture’s bet. And for those that don’t know, Accenture used to be Anderson Consulting – part of Aurthur Anderson – Enron’s accounting firm that went under as part of that mess. Accenture was spun off into its own entity just 6 months before Enron.
Accenture also gets a lot of flack for being a largely US based company that is incorporated in the Cayman’s to avoid US taxes. So can’t say I’m too upset to see the next 90mm contract going to a company that actually pays US taxes.
I can’t believe how screwed up the Mint’s ordering system has become. On January 13th I ordered three silver eagles from the U.S. Mint’s web site. Later that day I received an e-mail confirming the order correctly.
Four days later I received another e-mail confirming an order for four bald eagle coins that I did not order.
Everyone should call the Mint and check their order to make sure it is correct. You may be receiving coins that you did not order. I did notice that the Mint did calculate the new higher price properly. I wonder what is actually going to appear on my credit card bill.
You’ve got many of your facts wrong about Perot.
BTW, IBM was responsible for the Mint’s online catalog prior to Accenture. The Mint’s deputy CIO, Jay Mahanand, is responsible for replacing them. The Mint has been trying for at least 4 years to get rid of the multitude of IT vendors in exchange for ONE vendor, but has been unable to put out a SOW that vendors could actually understand. The IT situation at the Mint is in shambles.
Much of the Mint’s operations have been outsourced to a quasi government agency in West Virginia.
The newest Mint director has been slowly cleaning house. Taxpayers hope he gets to the Mint IT dept. soon.
Here’s more about the companies involved in the Mint’s catalog.
http://www.usmint.gov/downloads/foia/rssPIA.doc
The site is back up!
The way I see it every one has become just a little bit spoiled since the advent of the web. Websites have problems, purchasing online is a luxury that most are now seeing as necessity. There’s still the phone or even snail mail that will get the job done (as it has for many, many years). I don’t think this was a planned outage or any kind of “master plan” by the mint to secure prices or drive up demand or anything like that. I see it as a managerial problem that can & has been overcome.
I ordered my coins for the Bald Eagles over the phone. It took about 15 minutes to do so. No biggie.
Thanks for listening, or should I say reading.