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Governments didn't make this device. They hired a contractor and/or purchased from a vendor (which likely specifically set up its business to profit from govern
by jsprogrammer 11y ago
Governments didn't make this device. They hired a contractor and/or purchased from a vendor (which likely specifically set up its business to profit from government contracts for voting machines). The vendor is almost exclusively interested in getting paid money from the contract, not with actually delivering a highly secure device that a democracy can depend on.
Commercial viability of a solution is a non-issue. A device is either highly secure or it isn't.
- nmrm2 11y agoAbsolutely this. Federal and State governments should stop using contractors all together for software projects. Instead, hire a very large shared bank of highly-qualified engineers and pay competitive salaries. Even if those engineers sit around doing nothing most of the time (unlikely), they would still be extraordinarily cost-effective compared to pissing away hundreds of millions on projects that should only cost a few million. IMO it's impossible to take deficit hawks seriously if they don't back a blanket policy of starving out leeching contractors.
- digikata 11y agoThere is a strong current of blind faith right now that private services/products are automatically the most efficient choice. Really there's a lot of market conditions that need to be in place before that's likely for a specific product or service, but careful consideration gets overrun in the bigger meme of gov't bad/companies good.