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> Because nation states are well known for producing usable software at a reasonable cost to tax payers? Yes, they are. The software, hardware, and automated s

> Because nation states are well known for producing usable software at a reasonable cost to tax payers? Yes, they are. The software, hardware, and automated systems underlying transit systems in Japan, Taiwan, some of the UK, and a couple other countries, continues to make trains not crash into eachother for just about a hundred years now depending on the system. I don't know too much about it, but it seems the same to be true for whatever runs the stoplights around town. It's not always nationalized, but the software used to plan trash pickups and routes, bus routes, bus signage, sewer planning and control, shipyard signaling, and numerous other public works is at least tangentially taxpayer funded and government organized. Those seem to work pretty swell considering their level of complexity (at least in the countries I've lived in). Here in Taiwan the government websites can be notoriously terrible, but some are really fantastic, for example https://data.gov.tw https://data.gov.tw . There's also strict requirements for accessibility that are rigidly enforced, which is a nice thing you don't often get from private software (you have to depend on a disabled person suing a site before it'll be made accessible in the USA - abled people don't have "standing" it seems). Honestly, it sounds like you're making a very generalized libertarian argument, and I don't want to risk a politics flamewar, but I'm really not sure what alternative you're offering for governments building software, that doesn't involve total dissolution of the government. The department of motor vehicles needs a website one way or the other, they're either going to build it in house or pay contractors to do it, either way, taxpayers are paying for the website, and any additional app-like online services. Was there some specific examples you had of unusable software or unreasonably priced software that would justify such an extreme solution? Cause the dichotomy to me seems false: surely there are ways to improve the quality or reduce the cost of taxpayer funded software, if necessary? Surely that's easier than... whatever it is you're suggesting? edit: Some other good examples of nation-state provided software in Taiwan, there was some fantastic contact tracing apps and backends implemented by the government. The UI was admittedly quite.. sparse, but it was undeniably functional and accessible. And, it came with strong guarantees about data anonymity, which you can never trust from a private company. edit: I'm clicking through some various USA websites now and these all seem just fine to me. I guess the accusation is that they took too much money to develop? https://www.congress.gov https://www.congress.gov https://www.vaccines.gov/ https://www.vaccines.gov/ https://www.cdc.gov https://www.cdc.gov https://www.hhs.gov/ https://www.hhs.gov/ seems the same to me for the UK although their cookie banners are hilariously absurd https://www.nhs.uk/ https://www.nhs.uk/ https://www.gov.uk/ https://www.gov.uk/

seti0Cha 4y ago
Mostly static websites that just serve out data are fairly easy to produce and maintain, especially when they are relatively low traffic. I won't attempt to evaluate Taiwan's websites (although your own qualifications tend to support OPs claims) but those US websites are mostly just publishing information. They don't demonstrate the government is capable of providing quality email to all citizens because they don't demonstrate the ability to operate at high scale with high reliability and adequate performance while delivering highly personalized pages. The only example I can think of for the US government attempting to offer something like that at scale was the notorious healthcare marketplace created for the ACA. It catastrophically failed at launch, took months to fix, and the people who fixed it were people who left private industry to do so for philanthropic reasons. If you read the story of how it came to be in that state, it's pretty much what you'd expect. Lots of different departments arguing, contractors coming and going, tons of coordinating meetings, budget overruns, finger pointing. This despite this being a crucial piece of infrastructure for the biggest health care reform in years. That pretty much set my expectations for how good at software the federal government is, but I'm open to hearing proper counterexamples if you can supply one.

seti0Cha 4y ago

Mostly static websites that just serve out data are fairly easy to produce and maintain, especially when they are relatively low traffic. I won't attempt to evaluate Taiwan's websites (although your own qualifications tend to support OPs claims) but those US websites are mostly just publishing information. They don't demonstrate the government is capable of providing quality email to all citizens because they don't demonstrate the ability to operate at high scale with high reliability and adequate performance while delivering highly personalized pages. The only example I can think of for the US government attempting to offer something like that at scale was the notorious healthcare marketplace created for the ACA. It catastrophically failed at launch, took months to fix, and the people who fixed it were people who left private industry to do so for philanthropic reasons. If you read the story of how it came to be in that state, it's pretty much what you'd expect. Lots of different departments arguing, contractors coming and going, tons of coordinating meetings, budget overruns, finger pointing. This despite this being a crucial piece of infrastructure for the biggest health care reform in years. That pretty much set my expectations for how good at software the federal government is, but I'm open to hearing proper counterexamples if you can supply one.