There is so much truth to government being left in the dust technologically. When I was in the NSA, I built a bunch of programs that saved a dramatic amount of

There is so much truth to government being left in the dust technologically. When I was in the NSA, I built a bunch of programs that saved a dramatic amount of time by automating a lot of message passing, formatting, etc. When I made my first application, I didn't even know what a database was, so I built it using a bunch of interconnected perl applications using the Tie::File library on flatfiles and operating on them as arrays. With such little knowledge about creating applications, I was still able to have a major impact on people's workflows, showing how even the barest use of technology was extremely impactful. A big part of why certain organizations fail on the technology side comes from how they perceive the use of systems on their network. For instance, in the NSA example, I asked if I could make programs to make things easier (having never made an application in my life) and the grizzled old veteran analyst handed me the Perl Cookbook and said "Go to town.". Compare that with my CIA contracting job where I was explicitly told not to program, programmed anyway, and proved that we could effectively make programs in-house instead of waiting for months on a separate contract to fulfill our needs. That programs savings to taxpayers dollars, by the way? About $10 million. We do take for granted that we can do something like type `npm install` and programs magically get pulled from disparate parts of the internet and work. On government networks, you have to work with code that's been vetted over a 3-6 month process, leaving you with the baseline items (the node binary, for instance) but requiring you to rebuild the modules you need. I'm of course referencing networks that are completely air-gapped from the internet, that is.