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Bulgaria's new eGov minister is a software engineer

309 points by phoronixrly 5y ago

phoronixrly 5y ago
Also featured multiple times on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=techblog.bozho.net&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- yorwba 5y ago
  Looks like he posted his site a bit too often and now his submissions get autokilled: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=bozho https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=bozho
  - dang 5y ago
    Yes, HN's software filters submissions that it categorizes as promotional (from https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff occasionally, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity.") However, bozho's submission history is maybe borderline rather than over the line, so I've restored the posts now. The software can be a bit overzealous and I need to tweak it.
    - yorwba 5y ago
      Maybe it would be a good idea to let users know when their submissions are detected as too promotional and remind them about the guidelines rather than automatically silencing them. (Like the "you're posting too fast" message, except less vague.) That would also tip off actual spammers, but if they evade the detector by posting less often... mission accomplished, I guess?
      - dang 5y ago
        Unfortunately most of these measures would lose their effectiveness if we did that, so it's not really an option.
        yorwba 5y ago
        I'm sure you've thought about this for longer than I did, so I'll take your word on it. It's just always a bit sad to see people who appear genuinely confused as to what they're doing wrong: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29542828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29542828 Though maybe explaining it to them wouldn't work either.
        dang 5y ago
        People can always email us at hn@ycombinator.com, which is listed under "Contact" on every page, and get a clear answer about what is happening. Many do just that.
        yorwba 5y ago
        I know, and it's great how responsive you are, but the problem is that people first need to notice that they're shouting into a void...
        dang 5y ago
        Seasoned users can (and do) also notice these cases and email to let us know. And of course we review as many submissions as we can and rescue the good ones that have been caught in software filters. It's true that some good posts don't get recovered this way. But I'm not aware of an alternative that would fix that without also seriously diluting the quality of HN. Not all, but certainly most of those posts are dead for good reason.
        yorwba 5y ago
        > we review as many submissions as we can and rescue the good ones Rescuing good submissions is great, I just wish there were a way to somehow rescue good people making bad submissions, so that they start posting good ones instead. (Or at least stop wasting their time.)
baybal2 5y ago
More about the new Bulgarian government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petkov_Government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petkov_Government We can wish the new government success. They will need a lot of it to purge the corrupt mafia demons. Administrative corruption was the scourge of 20th century. Political corruption is the scourge of our time.
- tbojanin 5y ago
  Pretty exciting to see the party being led by two Harvard grads imo.
  - brnt 5y ago
    If neoliberalism is your thing, sure it's great.
  - ggerganov 5y ago
    Indeed, people are very excited here. The majority strongly believes that the previous politicians somehow stole so much of their money that their lives became miserable. The new government promises to fix this and eliminate 100% of the corruption - we are yet to see exactly how this will be achieved.
    - lollina 5y ago
      > Indeed, people are very excited here Alas. The funny thing (for some definition of funny) is that the rise to stardom of the new PM -- the one to "eliminate 100% of the corruption" -- started on a document crime and a blatant transgression of Bulgarian constitution. The way this happened: he was appointed as an 'Economy Minister' in the caretaker cabinet preceding the current one and so he had to sign a declaration that his only citizenship is Bulgarian. (Bulgarian Constitution forbids foreign citizens from holding minster office). Yet, later it turned out he also had Canadian citizenship at the time. He tried to justify that falsification of an official document, saying, quite politician-ly, that the truth/facts didn't matter as he had "always held Bulgaria first in his heart". In the end, though, almost no one seemed to care about that and people voted for him. So, yeah, people are excited but perhaps, at least for some of them, that's for a different reason.
wiseowise 5y ago
And anybody should care why?
- ben-gy 5y ago
  When did an active software engineer last get elected to use their skills as a politician in your electorate?
  - drexlspivey 5y ago
    Ministers get appointed not elected
    - phoronixrly 5y ago
      He was elected as a member of parliament, then nominated by the prime minister and approved by parliament as a minister.
- beebeepka 5y ago
  Well, I care. The status quo for the last 20 years have tried to pit software developers against the general population numerous times. Why? Developers make good money compared to the masses. Not to mention the countless intentionally botched e-gov projects. Oh, I care deeply We read about country specific stuff on this site every day. Cut us some slack, will you
marcodiego 5y ago
I think a minister should be a good administrator. It is good if they are also specialist in the area, but not a requirement. Brazil science, technology and innovation minister is an astronaut and not much has improved in the area.
- mrtksn 5y ago
  Hot shot businessmen, investigative journalists and prestigious academics make some of the worst failures as politicians in Turkey too. However, in this case maybe there’s a chance because his post seems quite domain specific and not very policy heavy.
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    >Hot shot businessmen probably the worst of all the listed specimen and it reminded me of a prescient Hitchens moment from the early 90s https://youtu.be/j1MynYJDyE0 https://youtu.be/j1MynYJDyE0
    - emmelaich 5y ago
      Ike said it well... >... Yet in holding scientific discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_address https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_addres...
- bluetomcat 5y ago
  He is a well-known and reputable speaker at many local tech conferences, primarily on Java and security topics. He has also shown commitment in pointing out the numerous problems regarding the sorry state of Bulgarian electronic governance - no synchronisation of data between institutions, duplication of data, the need for getting paper verification notices from one institution to be admitted in another. In case he sets up a good team of techies, I think he would be able to guide them in the right direction, because he is aware of the problems and has the technical competence for choosing the viable solutions.
yumraj 5y ago
It seemed great, but then I read: founder of a blockchain-based SIEM startup Now I'm worried for Bulgaria.
- MitPitt 5y ago
  Why?
  - renzo88 5y ago
    "blockchain based siem" is a completely useless phrase.
    - mlinksva 5y ago
      I wonder what "blockchain" means here. The word is all over https://logsentinel.com/ https://logsentinel.com/ but it may be just to make "immutable audit trail" more buzzwordy. In 2017 they posted a skeptical https://techblog.bozho.net/blockchain-its-all-greek-to-me/ https://techblog.bozho.net/blockchain-its-all-greek-to-me/ which in linked to from very recent https://techblog.bozho.net/digital-transformation-and-technological-utopianism/ https://techblog.bozho.net/digital-transformation-and-techno... > Technology alone will not solve anything. And my blockchain skepticism is a hint in that direction – many blockchain enthusiasts are claiming that blockchain will solve many problems in many areas of life. It won’t. At least not just through clever cryptography and consensus algorithms.
      - bozho 5y ago
        It's exactly that marketing worda for tamper-evident audit log
        mlinksva 5y ago
        I'm a bit sad that marketing words work on customers, but that's just how the world is apparently. :) Thanks for the reply and major congratulations and good luck!
akmarinov 5y ago
He's also #40 on the all time rank on Stack Overflow - https://stackexchange.com/leagues/1/alltime/stackoverflow/2008-07-31/203907#203907 https://stackexchange.com/leagues/1/alltime/stackoverflow/20...
- orangepanda 5y ago
  Enough of a qualification, no?
  - akmarinov 5y ago
    Being a helpful person that gives back to the community? Yeah, absolutely
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- V__ 5y ago
  That alone is really impressive.
- fastball 5y ago
  That's literally in the OP.
  - akmarinov 5y ago
    Yeah, but who reads the article?
kreetx 5y ago
Yet his blog is also served over http..
- ThalesX 5y ago
  What are the technical advantages of serving a static website with https?
  - krasin 5y ago
    Some ISPs inject their own ads on non-encrypted pages. It was a prevalent practice in Russia as early as 2007-2010. Not sure if it's true for other countries and modern times, but the technical point is still valid: by using HTTPS, this kind of attack on your personal blog is eliminated.
    - gsich 5y ago
      It's not an attack on your blog, but the client accessing it.
      - krasin 5y ago
        If your goal is to pass a certain message publicly, then the injection is an attack to your goal. These injections often completely broke functionality of any even slightly non-standard blog engines, as they were not tested by the designers of the injectors.
        gsich 5y ago
        No, it's still an attack on the client. The content on your server does not change. "Goal" seems very subjective here. True.
  - kreetx 5y ago
    Anyone between the site and the user can inject any content to the site.
MrPowers 5y ago
Look into technocracy if you're interested in learning more about appointing government officials based on their technical knowledge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy Anyone know of any studies of famous techocrats and the overall view on the effectiveness of appointing ppl that aren't career politicians?
- kleton 5y ago
  The PRC is one ongoing study. The leaders of four of China's provinces are former aerospace engineers. The minister of education, as one might expect, is a computer scientist.
  - cutemonster 5y ago
    The PRC and the Soviet Union -- it'd be interesting with democratic countries too. But what if, in democratic countries, it's more important to be good at making an impression (being a career politician), to win more votes
    - necovek 5y ago
      That's equally important for non-politicians: only the most capable will get their lack of social skills ignored, and only sometimes. Engineer-turning-politicians in non-democracies also do not need to make an impression on a wider public, but just on a restricted set of decision makers (or political mentors). USA has had its own share of non-politician politicians (think Schwarzenegger and Trump, to name the few most prominent ones). And I am sure you can find many politicians throughout Europe who have an engineering background, it's just never highlighted. In the USA, it's also that business accomplishments are valued more than problem solving skills, and in politics, you don't get the same freedom as in business: eg. late Steve Jobs would probably have an easy job of getting elected, but what would he have done afterwards? His mode of operation would not translate to democratic governance (even though, arguably, Trump attempted a similar style with less charisma), IMO. Maybe Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg could run for the office? I'd honestly wonder what would the polls say about them (Zuckerberg is maybe not going to do so well with all the privacy-related negatives, but I wonder how much would people care about net worth vs that). But again, these are top-of-the-line businessmen, not top-of-the-line engineers, even if they've got engineering background.
tuukkah 5y ago
Also, Audrey Tang is the Digital Minister of Taiwan since 2016: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audrey_Tang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audrey_Tang
- emmelaich 5y ago
  Haskell hacker and worked on Perl6/PUGS (thanks to Diederich for the correction)
  - Diederich 5y ago
    Pugs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pugs_(programming) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pugs_(programming)
- bozho 5y ago
  I've listened to Tang's talks a number of times. A great example.
emmelaich 5y ago
Diomidis Spinellis was General Secretary of Information Systems at the Greek Ministry of Finance for a while. Also IOCCC winner, FreeBSD contributor and more. Occasionally comments here on HN. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diomidis_Spinellis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diomidis_Spinellis
- antman 5y ago
  Lets remember his answer on stackexchange regarding how many Greeks pay high taxes vs Greek owners of Porshe Cayennes, when he not recognized and was asked for references for his figures: "Hi, can you provider references for your figures? - Skiiv The figures come directly from SQL queries I executed on the General Secreteriat for Information Systems database.... – Diomidis Spinellis" https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/6883 https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/6883
axegon_ 5y ago
Well... As a Bulgarian citizen and software engineer, I can't say I'm too enthusiastic about him(or the entire new government for that matter). Apparently founded a cyber security company yet his blog is hosted on: 1. The most godawful place on the planet. I used the company's services when I was 12-13 and I'm still embarrassed to say I've had anything to do with them, even as a client. 2. Didn't even bother to put an ssl certificate which takes literally two minutes and is free with, say, letsecrypt.
- ratww 5y ago
  SSL looks fine to me: https://blog.bozho.net https://blog.bozho.net
  - axegon_ 5y ago
    http://blog.bozho.net/ http://blog.bozho.net/ should be a redirect then, that's still bad. And his twitter links to the http version so yeah...
    - lwouis 5y ago
      HTTPS is not a strict improvement over HTTP. Indeed it adds SSL requirements to the client, increases resources needed to access/serve the content, requires to acquire and maintain a certificate, etc. It's a common practice to offer HTTPS, but you shouldn't think of it as dogma. It's perfectly reasonable to provide both so that people using old terminals (an iPad v1, or an old game console for example) can access the content without technical issues. Or if you want a very low-resources device to access it. It's all trade-offs and use-cases. One is not a superset of the other. It's like saying every door should have a lock. No, not every door is improved by adding a lock. Many use-cases are actually not possible with a lock. Different situations have different tradeoffs, and different people value different things.
      - axegon_ 5y ago
        The point of https here is to serve as a guarantee that the content you see is the content that was provided by the server and not something that was injected by somewhere between the two ends of the wire. The idea that it should support ipad 1 or old game consoles is just as valid as the idea that websites should support internet explorer 6 or that the linux kernel should have kept support for the i386. No, it's almost 2022, even potatoes can deal with tls.
nbzso 5y ago
So what? People don't have a clue about the reality of politics in Bulgaria. To put it simply: It is a mixture of crooks and shady billionaires with ties to underground criminal organizations and ex Bulgarian Secret Services operators. To clarify further, things are so corrupt and chaotic that people voted a local TV star Slavi Trifonov to power. Which failed so miserably, that now they elected a government with some "new actors" and bunch of old corrupted faces. There is now even a local Hip-hop star in the parliament. Go figure:) Even if this guy has good intentions, or technical expertise, fixing the always "broken" e-government (https://cnn.it/3m0f1CE https://cnn.it/3m0f1CE) will not be easy or remotely possible. To much corruption is lurking in the shadows.
- gostsamo 5y ago
  He is involved for years in public initiatives for developing the e-government, he is not taken from the closest to the parliament Starbugs.
- phoronixrly 5y ago
  Ah, a prime example of the infamous Bulgarian pessimism. Let me counter with some positive stuff: 1. For the first time in 10+ years the Bulgarian IT community is represented. To add to that, it's represented in both parliament and government. This is a huge change on its own. 2. For the first time in 10+ years there are new faces and young people (20 and 30-somethings) in the parliament and the government. Yes, this includes among many others, TV stars, musicians, artists. They are representing the people who voted for them and that I find is positive. 3. Fixing the broken e-gov, or starting anew, is indeed a hard task. That is why the local IT community needs to be positive and helpful. It's for the best of everyone and an important prerequisite to reducing corruption. This includes both administrative corruption (by reducing the number of people on administrative positions) and political corruption (by providing transparency through easing access to data and fostering public involvement in policymaking).
  - nbzso 5y ago
    I have a first hand experience working with political parties and business entities in Bulgaria for more than two decades. Pessimism or optimism are states of illusion and tolerance non relevant to the reality of the situation. New faces don't change corrupt practices. Jail-time for corrupt politicians and related third parties can. But the Judicial System is full with corrupt judges with ties to Secret Service and criminal underground and EU is not making any efforts to change this. For the last 20 years there is not one representative, from any party, with proven corruption practices to serve jail time. All of this in country which is famous for one of the highest death rates in the world and one of the lowest standard of living in the EU. Sorry, for being a realist.
andreskytt 5y ago
Speaking as somebody with 20 years of international egov experience. Why is there an egov minister? There is no weird separate “electronic government” that’s somehow distinct from the “real government”. What typically happens in these scenarios is that the “egov people” are given a bunch of money to go play with in the corner while the grownups continue with business as usual. Also, having engineers that high up in the hierarchy is not sustainable. Come next elections, he is going to be out, and very likely all his reforms and changes will be undone by the next person. Just look what happened to the GDS in UK. The engineering responsibility should be low in the hierarchy with wide political support across all ministries. Unless the ministry of social affairs sees, that the only sensible way to fulfill their mandate is to offer electronic services and is also able to execute that, nothing will get better in that area. The egov minister might walk back and forth the government meeting room on his eyebrows but he will not be granted the power to tell other ministries how to do their jobs.
- BulgarianIdiot 5y ago
  A position represents an area that the government wants to focus on. That area may look more like vertical or horizontal integration. In this case it'd be horizontal integration, where an eGov is a function of all other aspects of the government, but also requires a common approach in terms of infrastructure, engineers etc. You can think about it like object orientation (vertical) vs. functional programming (horizontal). Both have their use cases. The drawbacks you're concerned about are resolved through communication. If there's ongoing communication, there will be synchronization.
- mrtksn 5y ago
  The actual title it "Ministry of electronic governance" and there's also a "Ministry of effective governance". These look like ministries introduced to address specific concerns or goals of the leadership. When something is "ministry of something" gets budgets and freedom to use these budgets and other tools that may not be possible if it was just "department of something under the ministry of other thing". When Turkey used to be friendly with EU and had a goal of joining the EU, there was "Ministry of EU".
ChrisRR 5y ago
From the UK, it would be nice if our ministers were actually experts in their field
- phoronixrly 5y ago
  You seem to have an over-abundance of politicians. Unfortunately I'm not yet sure which is better -- having politicians with no expert knowledge, or having experts with no political experience... I guess we'll see.
- antihero 5y ago
  It would be nice if they were experts in anything, they are seemingly just picked because they either supported brexit or haven't pissed off bojo lately.
rurban 5y ago
So, to summarize. We do have software engineers in those governments: Singapore (the chancellor himself), Israel (min. of justice and now interior), Taiwan (egov min.), Bulgaria (egov min.). Then Greece (Spinellis was just a secretary in finance). Israel has one more in the office of the prime minister, India has 2, but not in the state government and I'm probably missing Estonia and more Baltics. But in Estonia I only see Lipp working in some ministry, not leading it.

309 points by phoronixrly 5y ago

Also featured multiple times on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=techblog.bozho.net&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

yorwba 5y ago
Looks like he posted his site a bit too often and now his submissions get autokilled: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=bozho https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=bozho
- dang 5y ago
  Yes, HN's software filters submissions that it categorizes as promotional (from https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff occasionally, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity.") However, bozho's submission history is maybe borderline rather than over the line, so I've restored the posts now. The software can be a bit overzealous and I need to tweak it.
  - yorwba 5y ago
    Maybe it would be a good idea to let users know when their submissions are detected as too promotional and remind them about the guidelines rather than automatically silencing them. (Like the "you're posting too fast" message, except less vague.) That would also tip off actual spammers, but if they evade the detector by posting less often... mission accomplished, I guess?
    - dang 5y ago
      Unfortunately most of these measures would lose their effectiveness if we did that, so it's not really an option.
      - yorwba 5y ago
        I'm sure you've thought about this for longer than I did, so I'll take your word on it. It's just always a bit sad to see people who appear genuinely confused as to what they're doing wrong: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29542828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29542828 Though maybe explaining it to them wouldn't work either.
        dang 5y ago
        People can always email us at hn@ycombinator.com, which is listed under "Contact" on every page, and get a clear answer about what is happening. Many do just that.
        yorwba 5y ago
        I know, and it's great how responsive you are, but the problem is that people first need to notice that they're shouting into a void...
        dang 5y ago
        Seasoned users can (and do) also notice these cases and email to let us know. And of course we review as many submissions as we can and rescue the good ones that have been caught in software filters. It's true that some good posts don't get recovered this way. But I'm not aware of an alternative that would fix that without also seriously diluting the quality of HN. Not all, but certainly most of those posts are dead for good reason.
        yorwba 5y ago
        > we review as many submissions as we can and rescue the good ones Rescuing good submissions is great, I just wish there were a way to somehow rescue good people making bad submissions, so that they start posting good ones instead. (Or at least stop wasting their time.)

baybal2 5y ago

More about the new Bulgarian government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petkov_Government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petkov_Government We can wish the new government success. They will need a lot of it to purge the corrupt mafia demons. Administrative corruption was the scourge of 20th century. Political corruption is the scourge of our time.

tbojanin 5y ago
Pretty exciting to see the party being led by two Harvard grads imo.
- brnt 5y ago
  If neoliberalism is your thing, sure it's great.
- ggerganov 5y ago
  Indeed, people are very excited here. The majority strongly believes that the previous politicians somehow stole so much of their money that their lives became miserable. The new government promises to fix this and eliminate 100% of the corruption - we are yet to see exactly how this will be achieved.
  - lollina 5y ago
    > Indeed, people are very excited here Alas. The funny thing (for some definition of funny) is that the rise to stardom of the new PM -- the one to "eliminate 100% of the corruption" -- started on a document crime and a blatant transgression of Bulgarian constitution. The way this happened: he was appointed as an 'Economy Minister' in the caretaker cabinet preceding the current one and so he had to sign a declaration that his only citizenship is Bulgarian. (Bulgarian Constitution forbids foreign citizens from holding minster office). Yet, later it turned out he also had Canadian citizenship at the time. He tried to justify that falsification of an official document, saying, quite politician-ly, that the truth/facts didn't matter as he had "always held Bulgaria first in his heart". In the end, though, almost no one seemed to care about that and people voted for him. So, yeah, people are excited but perhaps, at least for some of them, that's for a different reason.

wiseowise 5y ago

And anybody should care why?

ben-gy 5y ago
When did an active software engineer last get elected to use their skills as a politician in your electorate?
- drexlspivey 5y ago
  Ministers get appointed not elected
  - phoronixrly 5y ago
    He was elected as a member of parliament, then nominated by the prime minister and approved by parliament as a minister.
beebeepka 5y ago
Well, I care. The status quo for the last 20 years have tried to pit software developers against the general population numerous times. Why? Developers make good money compared to the masses. Not to mention the countless intentionally botched e-gov projects. Oh, I care deeply We read about country specific stuff on this site every day. Cut us some slack, will you

marcodiego 5y ago

I think a minister should be a good administrator. It is good if they are also specialist in the area, but not a requirement. Brazil science, technology and innovation minister is an astronaut and not much has improved in the area.

mrtksn 5y ago
Hot shot businessmen, investigative journalists and prestigious academics make some of the worst failures as politicians in Turkey too. However, in this case maybe there’s a chance because his post seems quite domain specific and not very policy heavy.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  >Hot shot businessmen probably the worst of all the listed specimen and it reminded me of a prescient Hitchens moment from the early 90s https://youtu.be/j1MynYJDyE0 https://youtu.be/j1MynYJDyE0
  - emmelaich 5y ago
    Ike said it well... >... Yet in holding scientific discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_address https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_addres...
bluetomcat 5y ago
He is a well-known and reputable speaker at many local tech conferences, primarily on Java and security topics. He has also shown commitment in pointing out the numerous problems regarding the sorry state of Bulgarian electronic governance - no synchronisation of data between institutions, duplication of data, the need for getting paper verification notices from one institution to be admitted in another. In case he sets up a good team of techies, I think he would be able to guide them in the right direction, because he is aware of the problems and has the technical competence for choosing the viable solutions.

yumraj 5y ago

It seemed great, but then I read: founder of a blockchain-based SIEM startup Now I'm worried for Bulgaria.

MitPitt 5y ago
Why?
- renzo88 5y ago
  "blockchain based siem" is a completely useless phrase.
  - mlinksva 5y ago
    I wonder what "blockchain" means here. The word is all over https://logsentinel.com/ https://logsentinel.com/ but it may be just to make "immutable audit trail" more buzzwordy. In 2017 they posted a skeptical https://techblog.bozho.net/blockchain-its-all-greek-to-me/ https://techblog.bozho.net/blockchain-its-all-greek-to-me/ which in linked to from very recent https://techblog.bozho.net/digital-transformation-and-technological-utopianism/ https://techblog.bozho.net/digital-transformation-and-techno... > Technology alone will not solve anything. And my blockchain skepticism is a hint in that direction – many blockchain enthusiasts are claiming that blockchain will solve many problems in many areas of life. It won’t. At least not just through clever cryptography and consensus algorithms.
    - bozho 5y ago
      It's exactly that marketing worda for tamper-evident audit log
      - mlinksva 5y ago
        I'm a bit sad that marketing words work on customers, but that's just how the world is apparently. :) Thanks for the reply and major congratulations and good luck!

akmarinov 5y ago

He's also #40 on the all time rank on Stack Overflow - https://stackexchange.com/leagues/1/alltime/stackoverflow/2008-07-31/203907#203907 https://stackexchange.com/leagues/1/alltime/stackoverflow/20...

orangepanda 5y ago
Enough of a qualification, no?
- akmarinov 5y ago
  Being a helpful person that gives back to the community? Yeah, absolutely
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
V__ 5y ago
That alone is really impressive.
fastball 5y ago
That's literally in the OP.
- akmarinov 5y ago
  Yeah, but who reads the article?

kreetx 5y ago

Yet his blog is also served over http..

ThalesX 5y ago
What are the technical advantages of serving a static website with https?
- krasin 5y ago
  Some ISPs inject their own ads on non-encrypted pages. It was a prevalent practice in Russia as early as 2007-2010. Not sure if it's true for other countries and modern times, but the technical point is still valid: by using HTTPS, this kind of attack on your personal blog is eliminated.
  - gsich 5y ago
    It's not an attack on your blog, but the client accessing it.
    - krasin 5y ago
      If your goal is to pass a certain message publicly, then the injection is an attack to your goal. These injections often completely broke functionality of any even slightly non-standard blog engines, as they were not tested by the designers of the injectors.
      - gsich 5y ago
        No, it's still an attack on the client. The content on your server does not change. "Goal" seems very subjective here. True.
- kreetx 5y ago
  Anyone between the site and the user can inject any content to the site.

MrPowers 5y ago

Look into technocracy if you're interested in learning more about appointing government officials based on their technical knowledge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy Anyone know of any studies of famous techocrats and the overall view on the effectiveness of appointing ppl that aren't career politicians?

kleton 5y ago
The PRC is one ongoing study. The leaders of four of China's provinces are former aerospace engineers. The minister of education, as one might expect, is a computer scientist.
- cutemonster 5y ago
  The PRC and the Soviet Union -- it'd be interesting with democratic countries too. But what if, in democratic countries, it's more important to be good at making an impression (being a career politician), to win more votes
  - necovek 5y ago
    That's equally important for non-politicians: only the most capable will get their lack of social skills ignored, and only sometimes. Engineer-turning-politicians in non-democracies also do not need to make an impression on a wider public, but just on a restricted set of decision makers (or political mentors). USA has had its own share of non-politician politicians (think Schwarzenegger and Trump, to name the few most prominent ones). And I am sure you can find many politicians throughout Europe who have an engineering background, it's just never highlighted. In the USA, it's also that business accomplishments are valued more than problem solving skills, and in politics, you don't get the same freedom as in business: eg. late Steve Jobs would probably have an easy job of getting elected, but what would he have done afterwards? His mode of operation would not translate to democratic governance (even though, arguably, Trump attempted a similar style with less charisma), IMO. Maybe Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg could run for the office? I'd honestly wonder what would the polls say about them (Zuckerberg is maybe not going to do so well with all the privacy-related negatives, but I wonder how much would people care about net worth vs that). But again, these are top-of-the-line businessmen, not top-of-the-line engineers, even if they've got engineering background.

tuukkah 5y ago

Also, Audrey Tang is the Digital Minister of Taiwan since 2016: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audrey_Tang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audrey_Tang

emmelaich 5y ago
Haskell hacker and worked on Perl6/PUGS (thanks to Diederich for the correction)
- Diederich 5y ago
  Pugs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pugs_(programming) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pugs_(programming)
bozho 5y ago
I've listened to Tang's talks a number of times. A great example.

emmelaich 5y ago

Diomidis Spinellis was General Secretary of Information Systems at the Greek Ministry of Finance for a while. Also IOCCC winner, FreeBSD contributor and more. Occasionally comments here on HN. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diomidis_Spinellis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diomidis_Spinellis

antman 5y ago
Lets remember his answer on stackexchange regarding how many Greeks pay high taxes vs Greek owners of Porshe Cayennes, when he not recognized and was asked for references for his figures: "Hi, can you provider references for your figures? - Skiiv The figures come directly from SQL queries I executed on the General Secreteriat for Information Systems database.... – Diomidis Spinellis" https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/6883 https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/6883

axegon_ 5y ago

Well... As a Bulgarian citizen and software engineer, I can't say I'm too enthusiastic about him(or the entire new government for that matter). Apparently founded a cyber security company yet his blog is hosted on: 1. The most godawful place on the planet. I used the company's services when I was 12-13 and I'm still embarrassed to say I've had anything to do with them, even as a client. 2. Didn't even bother to put an ssl certificate which takes literally two minutes and is free with, say, letsecrypt.

ratww 5y ago
SSL looks fine to me: https://blog.bozho.net https://blog.bozho.net
- axegon_ 5y ago
  http://blog.bozho.net/ http://blog.bozho.net/ should be a redirect then, that's still bad. And his twitter links to the http version so yeah...
  - lwouis 5y ago
    HTTPS is not a strict improvement over HTTP. Indeed it adds SSL requirements to the client, increases resources needed to access/serve the content, requires to acquire and maintain a certificate, etc. It's a common practice to offer HTTPS, but you shouldn't think of it as dogma. It's perfectly reasonable to provide both so that people using old terminals (an iPad v1, or an old game console for example) can access the content without technical issues. Or if you want a very low-resources device to access it. It's all trade-offs and use-cases. One is not a superset of the other. It's like saying every door should have a lock. No, not every door is improved by adding a lock. Many use-cases are actually not possible with a lock. Different situations have different tradeoffs, and different people value different things.
    - axegon_ 5y ago
      The point of https here is to serve as a guarantee that the content you see is the content that was provided by the server and not something that was injected by somewhere between the two ends of the wire. The idea that it should support ipad 1 or old game consoles is just as valid as the idea that websites should support internet explorer 6 or that the linux kernel should have kept support for the i386. No, it's almost 2022, even potatoes can deal with tls.

nbzso 5y ago

So what? People don't have a clue about the reality of politics in Bulgaria. To put it simply: It is a mixture of crooks and shady billionaires with ties to underground criminal organizations and ex Bulgarian Secret Services operators. To clarify further, things are so corrupt and chaotic that people voted a local TV star Slavi Trifonov to power. Which failed so miserably, that now they elected a government with some "new actors" and bunch of old corrupted faces. There is now even a local Hip-hop star in the parliament. Go figure:) Even if this guy has good intentions, or technical expertise, fixing the always "broken" e-government (https://cnn.it/3m0f1CE https://cnn.it/3m0f1CE) will not be easy or remotely possible. To much corruption is lurking in the shadows.

gostsamo 5y ago
He is involved for years in public initiatives for developing the e-government, he is not taken from the closest to the parliament Starbugs.
phoronixrly 5y ago
Ah, a prime example of the infamous Bulgarian pessimism. Let me counter with some positive stuff: 1. For the first time in 10+ years the Bulgarian IT community is represented. To add to that, it's represented in both parliament and government. This is a huge change on its own. 2. For the first time in 10+ years there are new faces and young people (20 and 30-somethings) in the parliament and the government. Yes, this includes among many others, TV stars, musicians, artists. They are representing the people who voted for them and that I find is positive. 3. Fixing the broken e-gov, or starting anew, is indeed a hard task. That is why the local IT community needs to be positive and helpful. It's for the best of everyone and an important prerequisite to reducing corruption. This includes both administrative corruption (by reducing the number of people on administrative positions) and political corruption (by providing transparency through easing access to data and fostering public involvement in policymaking).
- nbzso 5y ago
  I have a first hand experience working with political parties and business entities in Bulgaria for more than two decades. Pessimism or optimism are states of illusion and tolerance non relevant to the reality of the situation. New faces don't change corrupt practices. Jail-time for corrupt politicians and related third parties can. But the Judicial System is full with corrupt judges with ties to Secret Service and criminal underground and EU is not making any efforts to change this. For the last 20 years there is not one representative, from any party, with proven corruption practices to serve jail time. All of this in country which is famous for one of the highest death rates in the world and one of the lowest standard of living in the EU. Sorry, for being a realist.

andreskytt 5y ago

Speaking as somebody with 20 years of international egov experience. Why is there an egov minister? There is no weird separate “electronic government” that’s somehow distinct from the “real government”. What typically happens in these scenarios is that the “egov people” are given a bunch of money to go play with in the corner while the grownups continue with business as usual. Also, having engineers that high up in the hierarchy is not sustainable. Come next elections, he is going to be out, and very likely all his reforms and changes will be undone by the next person. Just look what happened to the GDS in UK. The engineering responsibility should be low in the hierarchy with wide political support across all ministries. Unless the ministry of social affairs sees, that the only sensible way to fulfill their mandate is to offer electronic services and is also able to execute that, nothing will get better in that area. The egov minister might walk back and forth the government meeting room on his eyebrows but he will not be granted the power to tell other ministries how to do their jobs.

BulgarianIdiot 5y ago
A position represents an area that the government wants to focus on. That area may look more like vertical or horizontal integration. In this case it'd be horizontal integration, where an eGov is a function of all other aspects of the government, but also requires a common approach in terms of infrastructure, engineers etc. You can think about it like object orientation (vertical) vs. functional programming (horizontal). Both have their use cases. The drawbacks you're concerned about are resolved through communication. If there's ongoing communication, there will be synchronization.
mrtksn 5y ago
The actual title it "Ministry of electronic governance" and there's also a "Ministry of effective governance". These look like ministries introduced to address specific concerns or goals of the leadership. When something is "ministry of something" gets budgets and freedom to use these budgets and other tools that may not be possible if it was just "department of something under the ministry of other thing". When Turkey used to be friendly with EU and had a goal of joining the EU, there was "Ministry of EU".

ChrisRR 5y ago

From the UK, it would be nice if our ministers were actually experts in their field

phoronixrly 5y ago
You seem to have an over-abundance of politicians. Unfortunately I'm not yet sure which is better -- having politicians with no expert knowledge, or having experts with no political experience... I guess we'll see.
antihero 5y ago
It would be nice if they were experts in anything, they are seemingly just picked because they either supported brexit or haven't pissed off bojo lately.

rurban 5y ago

So, to summarize. We do have software engineers in those governments: Singapore (the chancellor himself), Israel (min. of justice and now interior), Taiwan (egov min.), Bulgaria (egov min.). Then Greece (Spinellis was just a secretary in finance). Israel has one more in the office of the prime minister, India has 2, but not in the state government and I'm probably missing Estonia and more Baltics. But in Estonia I only see Lipp working in some ministry, not leading it.