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Drupal and PHP is the standard chose? How? Were alternatives explored? This seems very odd as the choice for standardized websites. A better solution would be

Drupal and PHP is the standard chose? How? Were alternatives explored? This seems very odd as the choice for standardized websites. A better solution would be standardize a backend apis and setup standards around how data is queried and stored. Next standardize how that data is presented to the user and how the user can manipulate that data. None of this requires a specific technology and sounds like decisions were made by people that don’t understand the problem they’re trying to solve or are being influenced by others with something to gain (like your big Drupal house).

VampireWillow 5y ago
You make a strong case for software not being engineering. Who should the client trust when every expert has something to sell, is not bound by an ethical code, and has experience that is incommensurable with every other expert's experience? Who are you to the client but another expert with a different solution to sell?
- jbluepolarbear 5y ago
  I mean, I just gave the solution for software being engineering. Standards need experts to make decisions. Government shouldn’t reach out to an existing firm that’s locked into a specific technology. The experts need to continue to audit, refine, and integrate on the standards. Locking in a specific technology is shortsighted and will cost a lot later.
moksly 5y ago
> A better solution would be standardize a backend apis and setup standards around how data is queried and stored. We have actually attempted to do this on a national scale in Denmark because it was silly to have 98 municipalities handle organisational data (and other things) in 98 different ways. So we created something called rammearkitekturen (framework architecture) which specifies what an “employee” is and how you’re supposed to transfer them between systems. The suppliers hired to build this, and these are companies like IBM, Systematic and Netcompany somehow still manage to build things in such a manner that the next company needs to spend a whole year beyond their estimate to get things running after a public procurement process that saw an ownership change. Some of these are complicated, bur most of them aren’t. Or at least they aren’t supposed to be. Now, either IBM is completely devoid of talent, or maybe software “engineering” just isn’t “engineering” at all. At least not on a level that is in any way acceptable to us as enterprise customers. I’m still not sure why we tolerate year long delays on software projects. It’s not like building a new hospital never gets delayed, but the consequences of those delays are typically bosses losing their jobs and companies paying delay fines (or whatever you call that in English), where as with software the consequences are just a few shrugs and a joke about that pesky IT. I actually don’t disagree with you as such. My point is simply that when you hire two talented engineers from the same background to build the exact same thing. Then they will both rather easily understand what the other did and how he/she did it, unless it was software.

VampireWillow 5y ago

You make a strong case for software not being engineering. Who should the client trust when every expert has something to sell, is not bound by an ethical code, and has experience that is incommensurable with every other expert's experience? Who are you to the client but another expert with a different solution to sell?

jbluepolarbear 5y ago
I mean, I just gave the solution for software being engineering. Standards need experts to make decisions. Government shouldn’t reach out to an existing firm that’s locked into a specific technology. The experts need to continue to audit, refine, and integrate on the standards. Locking in a specific technology is shortsighted and will cost a lot later.

moksly 5y ago

> A better solution would be standardize a backend apis and setup standards around how data is queried and stored. We have actually attempted to do this on a national scale in Denmark because it was silly to have 98 municipalities handle organisational data (and other things) in 98 different ways. So we created something called rammearkitekturen (framework architecture) which specifies what an “employee” is and how you’re supposed to transfer them between systems. The suppliers hired to build this, and these are companies like IBM, Systematic and Netcompany somehow still manage to build things in such a manner that the next company needs to spend a whole year beyond their estimate to get things running after a public procurement process that saw an ownership change. Some of these are complicated, bur most of them aren’t. Or at least they aren’t supposed to be. Now, either IBM is completely devoid of talent, or maybe software “engineering” just isn’t “engineering” at all. At least not on a level that is in any way acceptable to us as enterprise customers. I’m still not sure why we tolerate year long delays on software projects. It’s not like building a new hospital never gets delayed, but the consequences of those delays are typically bosses losing their jobs and companies paying delay fines (or whatever you call that in English), where as with software the consequences are just a few shrugs and a joke about that pesky IT. I actually don’t disagree with you as such. My point is simply that when you hire two talented engineers from the same background to build the exact same thing. Then they will both rather easily understand what the other did and how he/she did it, unless it was software.