I worked with a small team (4 people) to rewrite the systems for determining GDP and other economic info for the US. We built an elegant system heavily utilizi

I worked with a small team (4 people) to rewrite the systems for determining GDP and other economic info for the US. We built an elegant system heavily utilizing dynamic SQL to keep the complexity in metadata and simplify the ridiculous amount of different ways information was collected and stored. In the end it went from taking days running ~20 COBOL programs in serial to around 20 minutes running one SQL script to get the results. I understand this may not be typical of government contracting, but it is not fair to say that you can't make quality systems for government customers.