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I think a lot of this advice does not apply widely outside of the federal government. For example, I sell COTS software to school districts. There are 15,000 ju
by jasonpbecker 7y ago
I think a lot of this advice does not apply widely outside of the federal government. For example, I sell COTS software to school districts. There are 15,000 jurisdictions in the US that operate autonomously, but to achieve very similar goals and with very similar operation. While there are differences in state law that can be important, there's far more in common across school districts than not.
To pick on one part of the bureaucracy, if you're the Department of Health and Human Services in the US, there may only be one of you, with pretty unique requirements that change when the law or regulations change. If you're a state agency who largely implements federal programs, there may only be 50 of you. Yeah, that's a market, but a pretty small one and more likely to have meaningful quirks. But a lot of the US is not like this-- school districts, municipal and county government, etc would do pretty poorly to follow some parts of these guidelines, and quite well served to follow others.
With a document like this, I feel like it's important to state the audience and some assumptions up front. They try to do this with some basic definitions, but I've too often seen someone take a document like this to justify maintaining a custom built municipal accounting system on an AS400 that three people in their sixties know how to maintain, as though there isn't a very robust COTS accounting system market for municipalities.
- Ozzie_osman 7y agoFwiw that wasn't my interpretation of what the document was saying. I read it to say you should be cautious of underestimating the work involved in using a supposedly off the shelf solution, but you should still be thoughtful about build vs buy solutions.
- wslack 7y ago> But a lot of the US is not like this-- school districts, municipal and county government, etc would do pretty poorly to follow some parts of these guidelines, and quite well served to follow others. True - I think the playbook is specifically oriented to state government folks - not as much municipal or county. > I've too often seen someone take a document like this to justify maintaining a custom built municipal accounting system Please feel free to submit a PR to help make that clearer! I would only say that some COTS solutions can also end up in a "no one knows how to maintain this" after enough custom code has been added.
- projektfu 7y agoWorse, nobody knows how to maintain it and the vendor is gone and took the source with them.
- wslack 7y agoThis happens. I've also seen cases where the vendor, by contract, does not permit government staff outside of 1-2 people from viewing the source code.
- jasonpbecker 7y agoIn general, I think there should be a high burden for most folks on whether custom code should be permitted in these cases. I have absolutely seen the same, and this almost always comes after someone makes a reasonable decision to go with COTS, followed by new folks in the role abandoning that rationale for that commitment and companies not knowing how to tell customers "no" or even more importantly "We don't solve that problem, but we're happy to support ways for our system to work with something you procure or build that _does_ solve that problem."