4 ms·

Meh. I'm sure google spent millions on their logo change, and it was just a font tweak. Hackernews was gushing. God knows what they spend per week on google doo

Meh. I'm sure google spent millions on their logo change, and it was just a font tweak. Hackernews was gushing. God knows what they spend per week on google doodles. There's no winning here for 18f. Either their sites are archaic disasters and they are criticized for not being up to par with the top tier consumer sites. Or they spend some money to bring them up to par and its "OMG! An $800 toilet seat!"

debaserab2 10y ago
The difference being, of course, that Google is a massively profitable company that can afford that kind of expense.
- metaphor 10y ago
  And how long did that take?[1] [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/guess-how-long-overnight-success-really-takes-2011-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/guess-how-long-overnight-succ...
  - debaserab2 10y ago
    Google wasn't going through giant rebranding exercising before they were massively profitable.
cloakandswagger 10y ago
I want government sites and buildings to look like archaic disasters, because it at least implies that my tax dollars aren't being pissed away on frivolous opulence. Google can spend ten billion dollars changing their logo because they're profitable and they answer to their board & shareholders. I don't remember anyone asking me if I wanted to contribute money to a government tech startup.
- setpatchaddress 10y ago
  Do tell. What do you think about paying the salary of FBI agents who interfere in presidential elections?
  - dsfyu404ed 10y ago
    It depends, will they use private email servers?
    - newjersey 10y ago
      I don't have any credibility or knowledge to talk about the exact current issue at hand but don't we at hn pine over the beautiful past where email was distributed instead of going between Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and Google? A private email server isn't bad by definition, is it? Perhaps we should try to help the "ordinary" person keep their servers secure?
      - jessaustin 10y ago
        It's bad when its purpose is the evasion of lawful public oversight, e.g. by FOIA requests.
      - notdonspaulding 10y ago
        > "Perhaps we should try to help the "ordinary" person keep their servers secure?" Security wasn't the goal, evasion of oversight was. Even if it was granted that security was the goal, you would expect the private server to be at least as secure as the @state.gov mail servers, otherwise you're wasting your time. Furthermore, James Comey's statement in July made clear that the private server wasn't as secure as GMail, the kind of email server an "ordinary person" might use. GMail may be centralized, but it's supported SSL from its public release in 2004. The server Hillary Clinton used didn't support SSL until the spring of 2009, months into her tenure as Secretary of State.[0] The truth is we actually know very little about the operational security of the server because all but one of the IT folks in charge of running it plead the 5th before congress and only spoke privately with the FBI under conditions of immunity. Justin Cooper was the only one to actually testify regarding the specifics of the server, but his role was more administrative than technical.[1] There's no credible defense for the SoS running a private server to provide email accounts which are less secure than the standard accounts used by the rest of the State Department. The diplomatic role of the SoS inherently requires a high level of OPSEC to carry out its most basic function of communicating with international leaders. Hillary Clinton avoided using the security available to her in order to thwart federal regulations regarding the preservation of public records. That action is no example that any member of the public should be holding in high regard as something worthy of emulation. [0]: http://www.thompsontimeline.com/191/2009/03/29/for-the-first-two-months-clinton-uses-her-private-server-for-all-her-emails-it-operates-without-the-standard-encryption-generally-used-to-protect-internet-communication/ http://www.thompsontimeline.com/191/2009/03/29/for-the-first... [1]: http://www.thompsontimeline.com/tag/justin-cooper/ http://www.thompsontimeline.com/tag/justin-cooper/
- forgottenpass 10y ago
  "I want government sites and buildings to look like archaic disasters" And what do you propose doing about people who use arguments of the form: "Can you believe this government $thing? It looks like an archaic disaster. Government can't do anything right. Therefore..."
  - CaptSpify 10y ago
    We'll have those people either way. Just ignore them
- 6DM 10y ago
  Government sites that look like archaic disasters are like that because the money was pissed away by people who have no desire to learn and want job security. I watched it happen a lot. Tech leads, with tech lead salaries who don't even know simple things like dependency injection and MVC design patterns. Yeah, that's where your tax dollars are going. I'm hoping that I can start my own business and get into this space. There's a lot of money sloshing around, at least I can bring real value and deliver working products while I'm collecting some of it.
chrissnell 10y ago
What business does a government agency have spending nearly 800 hours (plus inevitable expenses on stationery, biz cards, signage, etc) on a logo? How does this benefit the taxpayer? Why do they need this logo? This logo changes nothing for anybody except the people who worked on it. This is not good stewardship of our tax dollars and you can bet your lunch that this won't be the only FW&A problem found at 18F.
- kbenson 10y ago
  > What business does a government agency have spending nearly 800 hours (plus inevitable expenses on stationery, biz cards, signage, etc) on a logo? Presumably because they are trying to be a "startup", they are copying the business style of startups. It's easy to look back afterwards and say "that was a complete waste", but it's possible that at the time it was seen as justified. It's easy to say we'll just take the good aspects of startups and the good aspects of government agencies and reject the bad", but it's not always apparent what is the good and bad in each, as they are both fundamentally systems whose ultimate behavior is emergent from all their aspects. It's very easy to accidentally break something useful by tweaking or removing something that appears completely unrelated in systems like that. That said, I think the more interesting question is should we be trying to emulate a startup in government, given that the vast majority of startups fail? In that light, it should be absolutely no surprise that 18F is failing. It was the likely outcome.
- thwarted 10y ago
  What business does a government agency have spending nearly 800 hours (plus inevitable expenses on stationery, biz cards, signage, etc) on a logo? How does this benefit the taxpayer? Why do they need this logo? One thing that bothers me about government websites is the boosterism of whoever is in office. Secretary of State websites are particularly bad in this regard. Usually you go to the SoS website to do something related to licensing, like the DMV. Both Illinois and California have had headshots of the Secretary of State displayed prominently in the header. It is labeled/named something long winded like "Secretary of State Joe Blow's Department of Motor Vehicles Website". Is it on a .com or a .gov or a .(state).us domain for any given state? The generic "(welcome and platform) message from the Secretary of State" is often front and center. Really, who the Secretary of State is is so secondary to the actual services being provided, all this does is serve to tell everyone who is responsible for this crap website. If there was consistent branding, and that branding was strong and recognizable, citizens would be better served. You wanna toot your horn, put some metrics up like the last 6 months of turn-around time on license approval, website and phone service response time, help topics researched, costs to provide the services, etc, and show me how access to state services are improving over time, which is the SoS's actual job. Government agencies usually have weak branding because it gets upset based on term lengths (except for services like the IRS, which has pretty consistent branding and methodologies).
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

debaserab2 10y ago

The difference being, of course, that Google is a massively profitable company that can afford that kind of expense.

metaphor 10y ago
And how long did that take?[1] [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/guess-how-long-overnight-success-really-takes-2011-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/guess-how-long-overnight-succ...
- debaserab2 10y ago
  Google wasn't going through giant rebranding exercising before they were massively profitable.

cloakandswagger 10y ago

I want government sites and buildings to look like archaic disasters, because it at least implies that my tax dollars aren't being pissed away on frivolous opulence. Google can spend ten billion dollars changing their logo because they're profitable and they answer to their board & shareholders. I don't remember anyone asking me if I wanted to contribute money to a government tech startup.

setpatchaddress 10y ago
Do tell. What do you think about paying the salary of FBI agents who interfere in presidential elections?
- dsfyu404ed 10y ago
  It depends, will they use private email servers?
  - newjersey 10y ago
    I don't have any credibility or knowledge to talk about the exact current issue at hand but don't we at hn pine over the beautiful past where email was distributed instead of going between Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and Google? A private email server isn't bad by definition, is it? Perhaps we should try to help the "ordinary" person keep their servers secure?
    - jessaustin 10y ago
      It's bad when its purpose is the evasion of lawful public oversight, e.g. by FOIA requests.
    - notdonspaulding 10y ago
      > "Perhaps we should try to help the "ordinary" person keep their servers secure?" Security wasn't the goal, evasion of oversight was. Even if it was granted that security was the goal, you would expect the private server to be at least as secure as the @state.gov mail servers, otherwise you're wasting your time. Furthermore, James Comey's statement in July made clear that the private server wasn't as secure as GMail, the kind of email server an "ordinary person" might use. GMail may be centralized, but it's supported SSL from its public release in 2004. The server Hillary Clinton used didn't support SSL until the spring of 2009, months into her tenure as Secretary of State.[0] The truth is we actually know very little about the operational security of the server because all but one of the IT folks in charge of running it plead the 5th before congress and only spoke privately with the FBI under conditions of immunity. Justin Cooper was the only one to actually testify regarding the specifics of the server, but his role was more administrative than technical.[1] There's no credible defense for the SoS running a private server to provide email accounts which are less secure than the standard accounts used by the rest of the State Department. The diplomatic role of the SoS inherently requires a high level of OPSEC to carry out its most basic function of communicating with international leaders. Hillary Clinton avoided using the security available to her in order to thwart federal regulations regarding the preservation of public records. That action is no example that any member of the public should be holding in high regard as something worthy of emulation. [0]: http://www.thompsontimeline.com/191/2009/03/29/for-the-first-two-months-clinton-uses-her-private-server-for-all-her-emails-it-operates-without-the-standard-encryption-generally-used-to-protect-internet-communication/ http://www.thompsontimeline.com/191/2009/03/29/for-the-first... [1]: http://www.thompsontimeline.com/tag/justin-cooper/ http://www.thompsontimeline.com/tag/justin-cooper/
forgottenpass 10y ago
"I want government sites and buildings to look like archaic disasters" And what do you propose doing about people who use arguments of the form: "Can you believe this government $thing? It looks like an archaic disaster. Government can't do anything right. Therefore..."
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  We'll have those people either way. Just ignore them
6DM 10y ago
Government sites that look like archaic disasters are like that because the money was pissed away by people who have no desire to learn and want job security. I watched it happen a lot. Tech leads, with tech lead salaries who don't even know simple things like dependency injection and MVC design patterns. Yeah, that's where your tax dollars are going. I'm hoping that I can start my own business and get into this space. There's a lot of money sloshing around, at least I can bring real value and deliver working products while I'm collecting some of it.

chrissnell 10y ago

What business does a government agency have spending nearly 800 hours (plus inevitable expenses on stationery, biz cards, signage, etc) on a logo? How does this benefit the taxpayer? Why do they need this logo? This logo changes nothing for anybody except the people who worked on it. This is not good stewardship of our tax dollars and you can bet your lunch that this won't be the only FW&A problem found at 18F.

kbenson 10y ago
> What business does a government agency have spending nearly 800 hours (plus inevitable expenses on stationery, biz cards, signage, etc) on a logo? Presumably because they are trying to be a "startup", they are copying the business style of startups. It's easy to look back afterwards and say "that was a complete waste", but it's possible that at the time it was seen as justified. It's easy to say we'll just take the good aspects of startups and the good aspects of government agencies and reject the bad", but it's not always apparent what is the good and bad in each, as they are both fundamentally systems whose ultimate behavior is emergent from all their aspects. It's very easy to accidentally break something useful by tweaking or removing something that appears completely unrelated in systems like that. That said, I think the more interesting question is should we be trying to emulate a startup in government, given that the vast majority of startups fail? In that light, it should be absolutely no surprise that 18F is failing. It was the likely outcome.
thwarted 10y ago
What business does a government agency have spending nearly 800 hours (plus inevitable expenses on stationery, biz cards, signage, etc) on a logo? How does this benefit the taxpayer? Why do they need this logo? One thing that bothers me about government websites is the boosterism of whoever is in office. Secretary of State websites are particularly bad in this regard. Usually you go to the SoS website to do something related to licensing, like the DMV. Both Illinois and California have had headshots of the Secretary of State displayed prominently in the header. It is labeled/named something long winded like "Secretary of State Joe Blow's Department of Motor Vehicles Website". Is it on a .com or a .gov or a .(state).us domain for any given state? The generic "(welcome and platform) message from the Secretary of State" is often front and center. Really, who the Secretary of State is is so secondary to the actual services being provided, all this does is serve to tell everyone who is responsible for this crap website. If there was consistent branding, and that branding was strong and recognizable, citizens would be better served. You wanna toot your horn, put some metrics up like the last 6 months of turn-around time on license approval, website and phone service response time, help topics researched, costs to provide the services, etc, and show me how access to state services are improving over time, which is the SoS's actual job. Government agencies usually have weak branding because it gets upset based on term lengths (except for services like the IRS, which has pretty consistent branding and methodologies).

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]