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Recoding America[1] is an excellent book about this problem, but it extends a lot further than just contractors charging inflated rates. The government itself h

• j45 3y ago
  Bureaucrats are so risk averse to such an extent that the culture can have an allergy to trying to do things different or better too quickly (including innovation).
  • fkyoureadthedoc 3y ago
    Did you just strip the context and rephrase exactly what the parent comment says?
    • j45 3y ago
      Not at all. Sincerely asking, does your question intend to pre-suppose that everyone must have and express a unique perspective and no one can independently have anything in common? Or some other faux pas such a comment would run a-foul of? When I saw original post, I had this comment. There was kinship with the parent post. Sometimes echoing your support with another comment is a valid comment too. If you may want more novelty and context and details: My professional experience includes working across multiple industries of bureaucrats, and that was my visceral reaction to the piece. Change usually means studying change, analysis, design and ultimately decision fatigue by committee. There's many hard working and great bureaucrats. My statement tends to apply to the leadership and management layers. In terms of keepign things the same or very slow and tiny changes incrementaly, there's a lot of neat reading around institutionalization as it relates to not only government but bureaucracy here. An exciting part is how the pandemic challenged and made it OK for bureaucracies to try things and to roll out programs that weren't fully thought out or known and update them regularly. In environments many people could not handle navigating. Most of all I'm flattered by the downvotes.. happy to take those for the parent too. Perhaps I phrased it in a way that might have triggered some bureaucrats since they exist in enterprise, government, education, healthcare and more. Or maybe it bothered the dopamine seekers in only novel and unique comments have worth.
      • bumby 3y ago
        >that was my visceral reaction to the piece Comments here are supposed to be substantive and thoughtful, not knee-jerk and visceral.
• jmac01 3y ago
  So what you're saying is, government is too..... Conservative? :p Maybe we are just feeling the effects that the modern American "left" is basically just the American right of the 60s lol We need some actual liberals who aren't just socially liberal but also willing to spend money on new ideas.
  • iAMkenough 3y ago
    Trouble there is whenever spending is promised for new ideas, it becomes campaign fodder for someone to stop that spending because "taxes are too high" or whatever line gets conservative voters foaming at the mouth. It's an uphill battle to get new funding, and talking points move faster than budget approvals and program results.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • j45 3y ago
      Sometimes talking and consulting with people is seen as the work output too.
  • godzillabrennus 3y ago
    We spend plenty of money on ideas. We need to pay for results. We should stop pretending government is ever going to be good at buying/building tech and change procurement to pay for innovative results. How many $50 or $100M government tech projects have to fail before we let them post an RFP that basically says do this thing in this amount of time for this amount of money with payment after we get the “thing” in time. I know an entire industry of innovative people (tech startups) who would find a way to get it done.
    • Spoom 3y ago
      Going through the procurement process itself results in massive delays (have you tried bidding on a federal government contract?), a race to the bottom (since the government more or less has to accept the lowest bid), and massive overspecification by policy writers (mostly to try to salvage some quality from these RFPs). Echoing that Recoding America is a great book to read even if you have nothing to do with the federal government. You might see some similarities in how large companies operate.
• waynesonfire 3y ago
  Sounds like the TLDR is privatize the profits?
  • varelse 3y ago
    Which is pretty much what the proposed regulations on AI will do as well whist destroying small company innovation and treating consumer AI like software and media piracy. I guess the president felt bad about banning GPU sales to China so he decided to gimp America too.
• jerry1979 3y ago
  > she proposes effectively would be an expansion of the US Digital Service (which the author spearheaded) into something that approximates the British civil service This sounds like a very brave proposal.
  • dr_dshiv 3y ago
    https://18f.gsa.gov/ https://18f.gsa.gov/ Here’s essentially, what exists today. Pretty impressive people.
• KineticLensman 3y ago
  > that approximates the British civil service, which is actually highly functional and effective Not when it procuring large systems, IT or otherwise. As routinely discussed and complained about by the National Audit Office (NAO) [0]. The civil service relies massively on external consultants and contractors to achieve anything. [0] https://www.nao.org.uk/ https://www.nao.org.uk/
  • nonrandomstring 3y ago
    Sadly our track record on IT is disgraceful, yes. Billion pound IT black holes are strewn across health, education, defence.... It's a legacy of cronyism and corruption from the incumbent Tory "government". Consider Sunak's connections. OTOH our Civil Service remains a beacon of competence in a sea of insane policies, reshuffles, resignations, criminal scandals and total absenteeism. It runs on "values", plus a bit of spit and prayer. There's no money. Running something equivalent to the International Atomic Energy Agency but for AI will need funds and support of the same order.
    • nightpool 3y ago
      Which parts of the UK Civil Service would you say are more competent / effective in your personal experience? From the outside (US) perspective it's hard to see it as anything except the same-old bureaucracy and crazy rules that make it impossible to have any positive impact in America. (For example, the UK rules for getting a passport basically make it impossible to find somebody to countersign your application unless you happen to know a lot of lawyers / doctors professionally)
      • nonrandomstring 3y ago
        That's a good question, because I'm speaking now as a regular citizen, civilian, and discounting any "professional" contact I have with government. A lot of it is feel, and also by comparison to how _bad_ it once was, and the kind of thing I've experienced in mainland Europe. In Britain the cs are basically providing long-term continuity regardless of how chaotic and volatile party politics becomes. What we see is that most of the machinery of state keeps working, despite the circus in the Commons. Despite Covid. Despite Brexit. So, without subscribing to an anarchic take, we somehow concede that somebody, somewhere, must be doing some work :) Most people's contact is through online, if you can fire up even the most basic browser almost every interaction is clear, fast and smooth. When you start dealing at a higher level (business and contracting) then you see behind the Wizard of Oz's curtain a bit. Things go more smoothly if you have the right documents and history. Isn't that the same in every country though? So, it serves regular citizens very well, but less considerately as your needs are more complex. Effective maybe, but I didn't say "fair" :) Certainly there must be many people find it harder, and I'm probably showing my privilege.
• claytongulick 3y ago
  I was recruited by, and damn near did a tour with USDS. I ended up passing on it. They wanted an "entrepreneur in residence" to help drive change, which sounded great to me. Then they did the whole "we need you to keep in a cup" thing. I wouldn't have had any problem passing the test, but I told the recruiter "this is where the change needs to start". There's no way I can attract and retain good technical talent if we're still ruling out candidates because of smoking pot. Plus, I find the whole "pee in a cup" thing demeaning, intrusive and offensive. The recruiter and I were both very frustrated by the situation. I wasn't the first candidate they'd lost over the issue. I don't know if it's still like that, but the feds seriously need to get their act together in hiring process before we can improve the quality of government systems.
  • hipadev23 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • datadrivenangel 3y ago
      Pee in a cup - drug test.
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  • ToucanLoucan 3y ago
    I mean no offense, but this is sort of, with regard to your principles at least, cutting off one's nose to spite one's face? I get that incremental reform is frustrating, but here you had a chance to enter an org you know needed changes, and you blew it because you refused to take a basic drug test that you openly state you could've passed easily. Like, it's bullshit that they asked, it is an invasion of privacy, it shouldn't be a reason to forgo employment of a candidate they otherwise liked, but at the same time, it wasn't an issue of like, you wouldn't get hired because of your race or gender, it was an issue of like, you'd have to abstain drugs for a while. And then, once you're part of that organization, you can help push for the exact changes you want to see in it. It's the same reason I get frustrated with my generation not wanting to run for office: we spend all our time complaining about how awful the government is, but precious few are putting themselves out there as the instruments of that change. I don't know if it'll work out or not but I know damn well it won't if we refuse to even try.
• sngz 3y ago
  I actually considered applying for the US Digital Services, I was okay with the salary decrease as long as I could continue to work fully remote, but they require you to work in DC. Telling ppl to take a huge pay cut AND to have to show up to the office is a huge ask.
  • philsnow 3y ago
    from https://www.usds.gov/faq https://www.usds.gov/faq : > As of April 2023, we began formally hiring remote as well as DC (local) based employees who report in-person to our D.C. office or the agency they are partnering with. I'm also fine with the salary decrease but at least with USDS they have you work a "tour" (like a tour of duty, I guess) which lasts between 3 months and 4 years. First, that's a little ambiguous; who decides the duration of the tour? It also feels like it would be off-putting to get to the end of your fourth year and it's your best-performing year so far, but you're just Logan's Run'ed out of there. Even more so because neither Congress nor the Supreme Court, nor the overwhelming majority of state Congresses, have term limits. from https://www.usds.gov/how-we-work https://www.usds.gov/how-we-work , > With tours of service lasting no more than four years, the U.S. Digital Service brings fresh perspectives on technology and delivery to the government. Feels like " 'fresh perspectives' for thee but not for me".
    • wslack 3y ago
      Representatives have elections to determine how long they can serve; career civil servants have strong protections against firing but the downside is a challenging hiring process that can be very slow. USDS's willingness to use term hires makes hiring folks in easier, in addition to ensuring that the office doesn't become stagnant.
    • janeerie 3y ago
      It was explained to me that they have to do the "tour" model (which is a minimum of 1 year, up to 4 years) because it is the only way they can bypass the usual lengthy government hiring process.
      • 3y ago
• bumby 3y ago
  >it's actually dangerous to the careers of civil servants to do anything innovative As a general rule, this is probably true. But there are certainly roles where people are encourage to innovate. Remember, the government is huuuge. If you get a job in a legitimate research lab, you are not only encouraged, but expected to innovate. I'd be careful we're not conflating something like an operations role with that of a research role. (Although, to your point, there is some value in ops people innovating, too).
  • aduffy 3y ago
    Yes I meant people in government who are responsible for spending money and overseeing programs. NASA and NIH scientists and DARPA PMs are amazing innovators that should be celebrated. All of these people are responsible for an incredibly small piece of government spending.
    • bumby 3y ago
      Surprisingly, a relatively large amount of NASA work is done contractors. Civil servants are often relegated to support and administrative roles.
  • Frost1x 3y ago
    As someone who has worked at such research labs I disagree. Innovation is encouraged, sure, but the research funding model, agencies, and most research labs create environments that push work on small iterative efforts and system gaming. We as a society have stopped making sure our folks have overall stability in their jobs and as such, maintaining stable income for most is a priority. We don't accept failure, we don't proportionately reward risk taking (and instead, promote risk passing/mitigating), and were increasingly forgetting that regular failure is part of life. As such, even "innovative" labs are increasingly becoming less innovative, IMHO. Where you see innovation happening is where there's typically piles of capital that provide people the stability and environments to take risks and fail, combined of course with luck or foresight in choosing the correct paths forward. That or in places where people sacrifice aspects of their own life to move something forward through some passion, obsession, etc. which is not a market of people I want to compete with.