"...software is now and will be soooo deep in all organisations (they effectively become programmable corporations) that we need software "rock stars" at the hi

"...software is now and will be soooo deep in all organisations (they effectively become programmable corporations) that we need software "rock stars" at the highest levels of government making the highest levels of architectural decisions" This is the key issue. Having spent years working on 'IT in government', at both the cabinet policy advisory level and at the IT coalface level, I've formed the view that when it comes to IT policy, 99% of the policy outcome is determined by implementation detail. I think this makes government IT policy quite unique, and it's something policy people (like myself) can't wrap their heads around. Perfect example: the Australian 'Standard Business Reporting' programme (http://www.sbr.gov.au/ http://www.sbr.gov.au/). It's hard to fault the policy position: open up APIs for reporting to government. But they fucked up the technical implementation so badly that they are now 5 years in, $1bn in the hole, and have around 1% voluntary take-up. The relevant senior decision makers were completely IT illiterate and went with the "can't go wrong with IBM" route. Consequently, any developer that values their sanity won't come near it with a 10 foot barge pole.