6 ms·

This is largely the part of independent contractors and subcontractors. Contracts go to the companies good at winning contracts, not necessarily the best compan

This is largely the part of independent contractors and subcontractors. Contracts go to the companies good at winning contracts, not necessarily the best company to do the job. The contractor takes an obscene profit for providing no value and then subcontracts the project to various subcontractors who may or may not employ actually qualified and skilled engineers. The government employees managing the contract typically do not have the expertise to evaluate the project or write proper specs. The HealthCare.gov contract was a mess of incompatible buzzwords. The engineers have no vested interest in the project as they're only there to complete that contract and they're so many levels removed from the government agency that no one actually knows who they are so it won't reflect poorly on them when everything comes out poorly. Because their career doesn't really depend on the success of the project, as the government gets blamed for contractor failures while contractors get the credit for success, they don't really need to do more than meet the specs. A better way to do this would be to expand the number of engineers within the government through groups like 18F and USDS, and give preference to them over private industry. Private contractors rarely work, but even when they do it's only when you have expenses that the government doesn't need (such as contracting a machine shop or car manufacturer to build something with their preexisting infrastructure). In software though, your only expenses are really your engineers and the cloud (as no one needs to run their own data center). The only thing subcontractors can do that the government can't is pay their employees more than the GS scale. However because the contract is supposed to be cheaper than the government just hiring employees themselves (as industry has "profit motive") they're going to have to cheap out elsewhere, either by hiring fewer developers or neglecting parts of the development. All of this is solvable by Congress, simply boost pay flexibility, but there's no political motive to fix it as all of the contractors are political donors. As a result, government software sucks.

masklinn 9y ago
> This is largely the part of independent contractors and subcontractors. Contracts go to the companies good at winning contracts, not necessarily the best company to do the job. The contractor takes an obscene profit for providing no value and then subcontracts the project to various subcontractors who may or may not employ actually qualified and skilled engineers. Frankly, I don't think that's really the case / honest here. There's been a movement to create "readable URLs" over the last few years, how many people considered that this could leak information through referers? I really can't say I remember seeing any discussion of that issue.
- vidarh 9y ago
  Clearly not enough people considered that it'd leak information, but awareness of it was sufficient that most mail providers and large portals had redirect servers to "clean" URLs of meaningful referrers from their pages already by 2000 or before. So I agree it's probably an issue that people still don't understand this, but it's not a new issue, and there's really no excuse for not knowing this.
belorn 9y ago
> (as no one needs to run their own data center). That can be extraordinarily expensive once it leaks out that classified government data is in the hand of uncertified third-party cloud in some other nation, and you have to rush and pay twice or three times more in order for the contract to be changed and now have local certified supplier. This is what happened here in Sweden in equivalent departments for the DMV, which later implicated a further 40 different government department which used the same practice. When the cost go up by 200%-300%, suddenly the idea of running your own data center sounds much cheaper. It ended up being the highest single cost the departments had, excluding salaries and rent. you can get quite a nice data center for those billions. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Transport_Agency%27s_law-breaking_of_security_for_computer_system https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Transport_Agency%2...
- rrcaptain 9y ago
  The example you bring up in Sweden is exactly what I'm talking against. Stuff was outsourced to other companies for the lowest bidder, who were not held remotely as accountable as the government. >IBM took over the agency's IT operations, and "IBM used subcontractors abroad, making sensitive information and an entire database of Swedish drivers’ licences accessible by foreign technicians who did not have the usual security clearance". IBM used subcontractors, which is the profit maximizing stuff I'm talking about. When you pass stuff off to a for-profit corporation, they're going to do what they can to maximize profit, even if it screws the government over, because people will blame the government, not them. >When the cost go up by 200%-300%, suddenly the idea of running your own data center sounds much cheaper. It ended up being the highest single cost the departments had, excluding salaries and rent. you can get quite a nice data center for those billions. The costs never were lower though. They just looked lower on paper because the bill was less. But they weren't actually getting what they paid for. There are already cloud providers certified for government use (at least in the US). But you don't need to pay a company to pay some other company. Government employees can do that fine.
TheRealDunkirk 9y ago
> Contracts go to the companies good at winning contracts, not necessarily the best company to do the job. This is worth a deeper explanation. "Good at winning contracts" involves a lot of things that have nothing to do with the ability to do the job. From legislated preferences for "minority- and women-owned" businesses (which is usually a farce), to kickbacks to the bureaucrats who award the contracts, there are a LOT of reasons why government hiring "private" companies to do work goes wrong.
sambe 9y ago
What of the story that there was later a good team who turned it all around (https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/the-secret-startup-saved-healthcare-gov-the-worst-website-in-america/397784/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/the-s...). It just one article, but I had heard something about the team also working successfully on other government projects. Doesn't rule out mistakes/lack of incentives going forward, but I'm certainly left with a good impression of them.
minusSeven 9y ago
TL DR of what you wrote is basically Government doesn't know what it is doing and can't be bothered to change. If that is the case I doubt if there is anything you do can change that unless you held Government accountable for it.
- rrcaptain 9y ago
  For this purpose I'm separating goverment employees and legislators. While government employees may not know specifically about software, that makes them like most clients. You need PMs and engineers to figure out what to do as the project progresses. When there's a subcontractor involved though, there's an additional profit motive involved as well as requirements legislators set up to maximize the profit for the subcontractor. It also means requirements need to be written out in advance and in a way that may not be optimal. When you're working between employees of the same organization, that's a lot less of a problem, at least as long as legislators don't put plenty of hurdles up.
hiram112 9y ago
You're not wrong - there are a lot of crappy contractor teams out there working for the government... just like in the private sector. But I've never seen a gov. contractor purposefully add analytics code. It's far more likely that one of those free frameworks, ui-kits, or fonts, benevolently provided by one of the privacy-invading Silicon Valley behemoths, ended up in the code base. Anyway, there's a good reason that the government doesn't hire their own developers. Hiring a GS14 (at least), who writes code all day, is going to end up being far more expensive than a contractor after paying the lavish benefits, pensions, etc. which federal employees receive. Furthermore, most government projects are only a few years long. The government uses contractors because they can get rid of the dev teams when they're finished with the project. Can't do that with gov workers. Every decade or so, there is a push to use less contracts and hire more in-house Federal workers. And then the payrolls become bloated, and the next administration goes back to less feds, more contractors.
- rrcaptain 9y ago
  >after paying the lavish benefits, pensions, etc. which federal employees receive. Federal benefits are not that lavish on an international scale. You get things that are considered human rights in other countries and a good pension. And while the benefits may cost the government more in the long wrong, the subcontractor is still taking a profit off what they're paying developers. I'd rather tax dollars go to the actual worker than some corporation. >Furthermore, most government projects are only a few years long. The government uses contractors because they can get rid of the dev teams when they're finished with the project. Can't do that with gov workers. That's part of the problem though. If you're on a contract, you know you're expendable. You have no skin in the game other than doing the bare minimum to not get fired because the actual client (the government) is several layers removed from you. And getting rid of contractors after you're done with them doesn't really add up to software. For one, many contractors work as contractors for years, moving from project to project. You can do the exact same thing in-house. Groups like 18F and USDS mean that you can move employees around as necessary.

masklinn 9y ago

> This is largely the part of independent contractors and subcontractors. Contracts go to the companies good at winning contracts, not necessarily the best company to do the job. The contractor takes an obscene profit for providing no value and then subcontracts the project to various subcontractors who may or may not employ actually qualified and skilled engineers. Frankly, I don't think that's really the case / honest here. There's been a movement to create "readable URLs" over the last few years, how many people considered that this could leak information through referers? I really can't say I remember seeing any discussion of that issue.

vidarh 9y ago
Clearly not enough people considered that it'd leak information, but awareness of it was sufficient that most mail providers and large portals had redirect servers to "clean" URLs of meaningful referrers from their pages already by 2000 or before. So I agree it's probably an issue that people still don't understand this, but it's not a new issue, and there's really no excuse for not knowing this.

belorn 9y ago

> (as no one needs to run their own data center). That can be extraordinarily expensive once it leaks out that classified government data is in the hand of uncertified third-party cloud in some other nation, and you have to rush and pay twice or three times more in order for the contract to be changed and now have local certified supplier. This is what happened here in Sweden in equivalent departments for the DMV, which later implicated a further 40 different government department which used the same practice. When the cost go up by 200%-300%, suddenly the idea of running your own data center sounds much cheaper. It ended up being the highest single cost the departments had, excluding salaries and rent. you can get quite a nice data center for those billions. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Transport_Agency%27s_law-breaking_of_security_for_computer_system https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Transport_Agency%2...

rrcaptain 9y ago
The example you bring up in Sweden is exactly what I'm talking against. Stuff was outsourced to other companies for the lowest bidder, who were not held remotely as accountable as the government. >IBM took over the agency's IT operations, and "IBM used subcontractors abroad, making sensitive information and an entire database of Swedish drivers’ licences accessible by foreign technicians who did not have the usual security clearance". IBM used subcontractors, which is the profit maximizing stuff I'm talking about. When you pass stuff off to a for-profit corporation, they're going to do what they can to maximize profit, even if it screws the government over, because people will blame the government, not them. >When the cost go up by 200%-300%, suddenly the idea of running your own data center sounds much cheaper. It ended up being the highest single cost the departments had, excluding salaries and rent. you can get quite a nice data center for those billions. The costs never were lower though. They just looked lower on paper because the bill was less. But they weren't actually getting what they paid for. There are already cloud providers certified for government use (at least in the US). But you don't need to pay a company to pay some other company. Government employees can do that fine.

TheRealDunkirk 9y ago

> Contracts go to the companies good at winning contracts, not necessarily the best company to do the job. This is worth a deeper explanation. "Good at winning contracts" involves a lot of things that have nothing to do with the ability to do the job. From legislated preferences for "minority- and women-owned" businesses (which is usually a farce), to kickbacks to the bureaucrats who award the contracts, there are a LOT of reasons why government hiring "private" companies to do work goes wrong.

sambe 9y ago

What of the story that there was later a good team who turned it all around (https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/the-secret-startup-saved-healthcare-gov-the-worst-website-in-america/397784/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/the-s...). It just one article, but I had heard something about the team also working successfully on other government projects. Doesn't rule out mistakes/lack of incentives going forward, but I'm certainly left with a good impression of them.

minusSeven 9y ago

TL DR of what you wrote is basically Government doesn't know what it is doing and can't be bothered to change. If that is the case I doubt if there is anything you do can change that unless you held Government accountable for it.

rrcaptain 9y ago
For this purpose I'm separating goverment employees and legislators. While government employees may not know specifically about software, that makes them like most clients. You need PMs and engineers to figure out what to do as the project progresses. When there's a subcontractor involved though, there's an additional profit motive involved as well as requirements legislators set up to maximize the profit for the subcontractor. It also means requirements need to be written out in advance and in a way that may not be optimal. When you're working between employees of the same organization, that's a lot less of a problem, at least as long as legislators don't put plenty of hurdles up.

hiram112 9y ago

You're not wrong - there are a lot of crappy contractor teams out there working for the government... just like in the private sector. But I've never seen a gov. contractor purposefully add analytics code. It's far more likely that one of those free frameworks, ui-kits, or fonts, benevolently provided by one of the privacy-invading Silicon Valley behemoths, ended up in the code base. Anyway, there's a good reason that the government doesn't hire their own developers. Hiring a GS14 (at least), who writes code all day, is going to end up being far more expensive than a contractor after paying the lavish benefits, pensions, etc. which federal employees receive. Furthermore, most government projects are only a few years long. The government uses contractors because they can get rid of the dev teams when they're finished with the project. Can't do that with gov workers. Every decade or so, there is a push to use less contracts and hire more in-house Federal workers. And then the payrolls become bloated, and the next administration goes back to less feds, more contractors.

rrcaptain 9y ago
>after paying the lavish benefits, pensions, etc. which federal employees receive. Federal benefits are not that lavish on an international scale. You get things that are considered human rights in other countries and a good pension. And while the benefits may cost the government more in the long wrong, the subcontractor is still taking a profit off what they're paying developers. I'd rather tax dollars go to the actual worker than some corporation. >Furthermore, most government projects are only a few years long. The government uses contractors because they can get rid of the dev teams when they're finished with the project. Can't do that with gov workers. That's part of the problem though. If you're on a contract, you know you're expendable. You have no skin in the game other than doing the bare minimum to not get fired because the actual client (the government) is several layers removed from you. And getting rid of contractors after you're done with them doesn't really add up to software. For one, many contractors work as contractors for years, moving from project to project. You can do the exact same thing in-house. Groups like 18F and USDS mean that you can move employees around as necessary.