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I work for the federal government, and I work with (but not for) HP/EDS in the building, as they supply the majority of infrastructure services to this agency (
by bmelton 16y ago
I work for the federal government, and I work with (but not for) HP/EDS in the building, as they supply the majority of infrastructure services to this agency (including Active Directory, DNS, core and edge network, etc.)
While HP is a competitor to me here, we work cooperatively more than not, and I've never had an issue where another contractor was the impediment.
Conflicting, or impossible-to-meet requirements are the norm from the government. Schedules shift in ways that aren't humanly possible to complete. The government competes the work out to contractors, establishes a contract for the work, and then refuses to live up to the terms of the agreements made.
As part of a video collection effort I was working on, the government wanted to use a reporting tool in place of a document management system... as a document management system. When we explained that we could not purchase that software for them in good faith, they bought it anyway, and then insisted that we use it instead of the document management system we'd proposed (but had not yet purchased) -- citing that we should 'leverage existing resources'.
Rest assured, even at the best of times, the government is a difficult customer, and impossible to comprehend. I understand that DOD-agencies are supposed to be a little better, but I've yet to see anything even remotely close to what I'd consider rational in a business sense.
- noonespecial 16y agoEvery government system that actually does anything that I've ever come in contact with looks the same. A few racks of windows servers crammed with expensive consulting-ware all chosen and acquired using the "strippers and steak" purchasing method... and one or two 'unauthorized' linux servers actually doing the work. I guess its good that our computers model the human structures in government. At least we're consistent.
- Tamerlin 16y agoMy experience was similar. We tended to receive implementation directives that frequently contradicted the functional requirements, and when we requested clarification got no response. The government tended to make exceedingly expensive purchases based on politics (my guess is that there were kickbacks involved) that were entirely inappropriate for the project, yet we had to use them. And our advice rarely had any effect on decisions, as far as I could tell. So far, I've only worked for one organization that was genuinely more convoluted, irrational, and technologically backward than the government... and that was amazon.