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It’s not WW2 mobilisation but I’ve always thought the UK’s Government Digital Service is a wonderful example of what government can achieve in tech: https://ww

It’s not WW2 mobilisation but I’ve always thought the UK’s Government Digital Service is a wonderful example of what government can achieve in tech: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/government-digital-service https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/government-digit... As I understand it they’re effectively a central dev shop for other government agencies. It’s worth their time investing in good practises because they’re going to use them over and over again. And from the user perspective you get a very consistent, reliable set of tools for interacting with government. A win win in my book.

franga2000 3y ago
This is something we desperately need more of in other countries. We've found something like a dozen breaches of similar severity in the last 6 years and they all came from systems developed through public tenders by companies that either aggressively under-priced or used other (legal or illegal) dirty tactics to win them. The very few things that were developed in-house have proven to be far more reliable and secure, not to mention developing them was far cheaper and the UX is better and more consistent between them.
- sfn42 3y ago
  As a software "consultant" (meaning i do what everyone else does but get paid more) the consultancy business is fucking bullshit. Just padding resumes and counting billable hours, nobody gives a fuck about quality or maintainability or anything. Just money.
FourthProtocol 3y ago
GDS did a great job building gov.uk, but everythig else they touched was an abject disaster. From the Diabetes project at the NHS, the fiasco that was the Office of the Public Guardian, the even bigger fiasco that happened at Border Force, the NHS, DWP... Sure, when they were building web sites they delivered stellar stuff. Agile, break things and all that. But when you had real complexity they just... couldn't... The Government Gateway is a prime example - single citizen login for ALL government services. It ran well, super robust and mature enough to have ironed out virtually all issues. Then GDS decided that because the Government Gateway was based on a Microsoft stack, it needed to be re-done. The tech lead didn't understand the concept of Identity Federation, let alone SAML tokens, and that you just! can't! do secure code using agile (2-week sprint no good for meaningful security testing...). I spent two long years at GDS banging my head against a wall. And then I left. And unsurprisingly the Microsoft-based Government gateway was never replaced, still going strong.

franga2000 3y ago

This is something we desperately need more of in other countries. We've found something like a dozen breaches of similar severity in the last 6 years and they all came from systems developed through public tenders by companies that either aggressively under-priced or used other (legal or illegal) dirty tactics to win them. The very few things that were developed in-house have proven to be far more reliable and secure, not to mention developing them was far cheaper and the UX is better and more consistent between them.

sfn42 3y ago
As a software "consultant" (meaning i do what everyone else does but get paid more) the consultancy business is fucking bullshit. Just padding resumes and counting billable hours, nobody gives a fuck about quality or maintainability or anything. Just money.

FourthProtocol 3y ago

GDS did a great job building gov.uk, but everythig else they touched was an abject disaster. From the Diabetes project at the NHS, the fiasco that was the Office of the Public Guardian, the even bigger fiasco that happened at Border Force, the NHS, DWP... Sure, when they were building web sites they delivered stellar stuff. Agile, break things and all that. But when you had real complexity they just... couldn't... The Government Gateway is a prime example - single citizen login for ALL government services. It ran well, super robust and mature enough to have ironed out virtually all issues. Then GDS decided that because the Government Gateway was based on a Microsoft stack, it needed to be re-done. The tech lead didn't understand the concept of Identity Federation, let alone SAML tokens, and that you just! can't! do secure code using agile (2-week sprint no good for meaningful security testing...). I spent two long years at GDS banging my head against a wall. And then I left. And unsurprisingly the Microsoft-based Government gateway was never replaced, still going strong.