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The private sector usually manages to keep it's systems updated. This here seems like the typical incentive and accountability problems of government bureaucrac

by VMG 10y ago

The private sector usually manages to keep it's systems updated. This here seems like the typical incentive and accountability problems of government bureaucracy.

devonkim 10y ago
There are similar analogs in private sector such as the massive prevalence of COBOL and IBM mainframes in even technology-heavy sectors like finance. Factors affecting public sector that private industry typically doesn't face typically, though, is that most federal contracts basically mean that the entire supply chain must be "Made in America." When the federal government buys something, they want to have as much of it made by US citizens on US land and with US investors unless there's no viable alternative that meets criteria (there's hardly any fabrication facilities in the US, for example). Outsourcing labor and not owning as much of your supply chain is profitable. The federal government operates somewhat similar to the Carnegie model of vertical integration in the classic sense. Obviously, this does not hold very well in today's business environment except for a select few companies (Apple being the notable one) because cost models are so different. There are accountability, alignment, and bureaucracy problems across the Fortune 100 aplenty even excluding the parts that sell to the federal government. It's tough to scale organizations as behemoth as large as the Fortune 10, I don't see how the federal government's millions of workers and perhaps even more millions of contractors are any easier.
nickpsecurity 10y ago
You mean the private sector that spends billions annually maintaining and updating old mainframe, COBOL, minicomputer, DOS, OS/2, Windows NT, and proprietary UNIX systems and apps? They're more similar than different on legacy system end.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
fencepost 10y ago
I'm not sure what private sector you're talking about, but the healthcare industry keeps systems updated only due to regulatory requirements, and even then there are a fair number of practices that stick with old systems and just have their upstream providers (e.g. billing services) massage the data on the way to its destination.
- rumblefrog 10y ago
  Use floppy disk
- ptaipale 10y ago
  Take just a quick look at MUMPS. And they start new deployments, new projects even today. With my tax money, here in Europe.
danjayh 10y ago
Dead wrong. In sectors that are in a safety critical or mission critical environment, it's not at all unusual to see systems that are decades out of date. We just recently retired the last of our VAX machines, and we still run a large part of our infrastructure for software build on Windows XP machines (airgapped). Our software configuration for these machines is certified, extensively tested, and has heaps of documentation proving that it does exactly what we say it does. Unimaginably large heaps. Moving to new hardware/software is incredibly expensive in some environments (in this case, I'm referring to a build and test platform for DO178B Level A certified software).

by VMG 10y ago

The private sector usually manages to keep it's systems updated. This here seems like the typical incentive and accountability problems of government bureaucracy.

devonkim 10y ago

There are similar analogs in private sector such as the massive prevalence of COBOL and IBM mainframes in even technology-heavy sectors like finance. Factors affecting public sector that private industry typically doesn't face typically, though, is that most federal contracts basically mean that the entire supply chain must be "Made in America." When the federal government buys something, they want to have as much of it made by US citizens on US land and with US investors unless there's no viable alternative that meets criteria (there's hardly any fabrication facilities in the US, for example). Outsourcing labor and not owning as much of your supply chain is profitable. The federal government operates somewhat similar to the Carnegie model of vertical integration in the classic sense. Obviously, this does not hold very well in today's business environment except for a select few companies (Apple being the notable one) because cost models are so different. There are accountability, alignment, and bureaucracy problems across the Fortune 100 aplenty even excluding the parts that sell to the federal government. It's tough to scale organizations as behemoth as large as the Fortune 10, I don't see how the federal government's millions of workers and perhaps even more millions of contractors are any easier.

nickpsecurity 10y ago

You mean the private sector that spends billions annually maintaining and updating old mainframe, COBOL, minicomputer, DOS, OS/2, Windows NT, and proprietary UNIX systems and apps? They're more similar than different on legacy system end.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

fencepost 10y ago

I'm not sure what private sector you're talking about, but the healthcare industry keeps systems updated only due to regulatory requirements, and even then there are a fair number of practices that stick with old systems and just have their upstream providers (e.g. billing services) massage the data on the way to its destination.

rumblefrog 10y ago
Use floppy disk
ptaipale 10y ago
Take just a quick look at MUMPS. And they start new deployments, new projects even today. With my tax money, here in Europe.

danjayh 10y ago

Dead wrong. In sectors that are in a safety critical or mission critical environment, it's not at all unusual to see systems that are decades out of date. We just recently retired the last of our VAX machines, and we still run a large part of our infrastructure for software build on Windows XP machines (airgapped). Our software configuration for these machines is certified, extensively tested, and has heaps of documentation proving that it does exactly what we say it does. Unimaginably large heaps. Moving to new hardware/software is incredibly expensive in some environments (in this case, I'm referring to a build and test platform for DO178B Level A certified software).