> The big issue I see with the government getting involved in tech is that they don't know what they really want, they don't know how to filter out bullshit/ups

> The big issue I see with the government getting involved in tech is that they don't know what they really want, they don't know how to filter out bullshit/upsells, and they'll frequently overpay for things they don't need and underpay for things that would be very helpful. These are good points (as were your original ones). Thanks for the thoughtful reply—I’m just trying to push back slightly on the “government/contractors are all incompetent” narrative where I see it, since I don’t think that’s the root of the problem (the DMV area is the most highly education region of the US, as one counterpoint). Discussion around incentive structures is a lot more productive. I didn’t give very specific examples with grants, but I just wanted to draw attention to that as an often overlooked and major source of government spending. The federal grants process does have multiple stages of project performance monitoring/evaluation, though that process itself could be made more efficient. Also, sometimes grants do directly support software projects with public benefits. Just as a single example, Stanford DeepDive (now Snorkel) is a system for knowledge base construction that has been used to fight human trafficking, among other things: http://deepdive.stanford.edu/showcase/apps http://deepdive.stanford.edu/showcase/apps