4 ms·
I can't speak too much to the first several points, but noting - agency micromanagement of contractors - general red tape is very fitting and a direct
by zdragnar 4y ago
I can't speak too much to the first several points, but noting
- agency micromanagement of contractors
- general red tape
is very fitting and a direct contribution to
- too little competition
I worked with a startup company ~8 years ago that wanted to go after government contracts. According to the owners, everyone they demo'd the product to said it was very clearly superior to what they were currently using.
Unfortunately, the people who would use it are not the people that sign off on paying for it. Those people had checklists of irrelevant requirements, slow response times, almost certainly pressure to select "certain" vendors (i.e. those who threw money into lobbying the right folk). It got to the point where they seriously considered hiring a consulting company whose sole purpose was to help others navigate all the red tape that gets thrown in your way when you try to get government contracts.
In the end, they realized that they were better off pivoting entirely to the private sector instead of doing a half and half approach.
I seem to recall a similar tale with the lead pipe retrofitting in Flint, MI... contractors to do the job were picked not necessarily by speed and capability, but by other qualities. Regardless of how they were chosen, though, the city failed to deliver. Despite the crisis starting in April 2014, residents and activists had to sue the city in 2017 to actually get the work completed, and it still isn't done. Mostly done, but not completely... 8 years later.
- nine_k 4y ago> the people that sign off on paying for it. Those people had checklists of irrelevant requirements, slow response times, almost certainly pressure to select "certain" vendors This reads like a lack of democratic influence and even direct corruption. That is, these "stakeholders" are not concerned that the voters would be unhappy with their performance, and would fire them (directly or through an action of a newly elected official). They seem to be conveniently shielded from feedback of the population which they nominally are hired to serve.
- eru 4y agoI'm not sure. Too me it reads like why too much democracy..
- wildrhythms 4y agoHow do you figure that?
- eru 4y agoSee https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/why-is-everything-liberal https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/why-is-everything-libe... Political control (ie democratic control) is not value neutral. Though the actual important bit is actually a quote from https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-the-new-sultan https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-the-new-su...
- zdragnar 4y agoThere is very little democratic influence in the bureaucracy of most governments. Most functions aren't political, and most politicians don't actually have any direct authority to manage a random government employee's job performance.
- megablast 4y ago> According to the owners, everyone they demo'd the product to said it was very clearly superior to what they were currently using. And owners have never lied about the superiority of their product, or what other people think. Except that is pretty much all they do.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- h2odragon 4y ago> the people who would use it are not the people that sign off on paying for it. Reminds me of a demo I did for some Congresscritters once. The staffer said "It'll take $50k per record to bring this database online" so they refused to look at the live, running demo I had of the database online. I heard, later, that someone else got "$50k per record" as a contract.
- acdha 4y ago> Those people had checklists of irrelevant requirements, slow response times, almost certainly pressure to select "certain" vendors (i.e. those who threw money into lobbying the right folk) That last part isn’t true in my experience, but that makes it harder to solve: every procurement officer I’ve worked with has been very scrupulous about not favoring a vendor but they’re operating under rules for things like fairness and security which are hard to comply with. A huge company can hire a room full of people to document how they’re complying with everything but a startup is going to run into exactly the problem you described. The big guys all support this since it has the effect of limiting options without actually being illegal — who’s going to argue against risk reduction, right?