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Having been involved in long, arduous government procurement processes, I can assure you that it will leave you shaking your head and wondering how ANYTHING in

by gregd 13y ago

Having been involved in long, arduous government procurement processes, I can assure you that it will leave you shaking your head and wondering how ANYTHING in government gets done. The trip from RFP to signed contract is maddening and has probably driven more than one government worker to an alcoholic stupor, wishing for the sweet embrace of death. On a side note, I'm no longer a government employee. My name is Greg and I'm an alcoholic....

greghinch 13y ago
When I was freelancing, I did some government work. I was flabbergasted by the slow pace at which things moved, and that I had to create accounts in 3 separate systems to submit and get paid for even very basic invoices. Government is a place that is ripe for disruption, but the walls around it are so high, I don't know how to really breach them. There is a huge machine in place of contractors and lobbyists which essentially maintain a strict control over all IT contracts that come out of the public sector. Massive corporate entities with an entrenched web of influencers at every level of government, ensuring that only a select few even have an opportunity to realistically compete for the jobs. The amount of overspending that could be eliminated with the disruption of those entities probably represents a significant portion of local, state, and national budgets, not to mention the likely better solutions that could be presented by folks more accustomed to working efficiently. I'm not necessarily saying the 20 somethings who were going to make "Snapchat for dogs" could do a better job as government contractors. But certainly someone who designed infrastructure for Twitter might have some interesting perspective on how to manage 911 traffic.
- jdavis703 13y ago
  This kind of disruption can happen. When I was in school I worked at a small 8(a) (women or minority owned federal contractor) firm. All the developers and designers were under 30 and we built all kinds of CRUD apps for the federal government. Now I work at a startup and the real main difference is that everything moves much faster. Not everyone can start an 8(a) firm but we could get legislation passed that creates a more competitive way for any small business to work with the federal government.
  - gregd 13y ago
    I'm not entirely sure this type of disruption CAN happen because this whole process starts and ends with the Legislature, at least at the State level. I was mired in so much bureaucracy it felt like trying to run in molasses. We certainly had the technical capabilities to disrupt the process, but the process itself isn't even self-aware enough to know it's the problem..
- mjn 13y ago
  > But certainly someone who designed infrastructure for Twitter might have some interesting perspective on how to manage 911 traffic. This program seems aimed at bringing in some of those kinds of people to government agencies: http://www.whitehouse.gov/innovationfellows http://www.whitehouse.gov/innovationfellows I think I've seen a few of them posting on HN, but I can't remember who. They seem to be especially pushing to get things like data.gov working in a modern way.
  - 5vforest 13y ago
    FWIW I was one of the fellows, and happy to chat about it if anyone's interested. (contact info in my profile) if anyone wants to help us fix the broken procurement policies that lead to systems like the one described in the article, let's talk too :)
    - jlgaddis 13y ago
      The "Fellows" did some really cool things. Great job!
- milhous 13y ago
  Large scale disruption is impossible because the government and its employees are protected by guns and the force of law, permitting special interests, cronyism, and incompetence to flourish. We in the marketplace (minus Industrial Military Complex) have no such protections, and actually have to produce value to make a living in a fair exchange of goods and services. Most government employees are unemployable in the marketplace, so it's in their interest to follow orders, at whatever cost, to keep their jobs. The best thing for young professionals is to fight the system intelligently for those that have the resources to do so, or avoid it entirely. Edit: As is with NYC's 911 boondoggle, a SF startup could've built out an amazing system at a fraction of the price. But that wouldn't be the government thing to do. It has nothing to do with building a quality product.
  - milhous 13y ago
    >> Most government employees are unemployable in the marketplace, so it's in their interest to follow orders, at whatever cost, to keep their jobs. Some good points were raised about this, and what I should've said instead is that it would be extremely difficult to suddenly absorb a lot of displaced government workers into private industry. But aside from the protections they receive of near-absolute job security in any market condition, I subscribe to the thesis that as government expands, rights are lost.
  - jowiar 13y ago
    > Most government employees are unemployable in the marketplace, so it's in their interest to follow orders, at whatever cost, to keep their jobs. Citation needed. If you actually have evidence, I'll bite, but my anecdotal evidence tends to indicate otherwise. Generally, issues are caused by good people being hamstrung by ridiculous rules, not by bad people.
  - wonderzombie 13y ago
    > permitting special interests, cronyism, and incompetence to flourish. We in the marketplace (minus Industrial Military Complex) have no such protections, and actually have to produce value to make a living in a fair exchange of goods and services. Cronyism and incompetence may or may not be inversely correlated with success, but the market does not select against those traits, specifically. To abuse a metaphor: as a business, you don't have to outrun the bear. You don't even have to outrun the other guys. And businesses are, in the end, run by collections of irrational-in-aggregate human beings.
- drostie 13y ago
  > Government is a place that is ripe for disruption, but the walls around it are so high, I don't know how to really breach them. I have had this attitude before, but I am not sure it's a healthy way to look at the problem. What you were flabbergasted by was the inefficiency of bureaucracy. But this is not a government problem per se: large companies can also become bureaucracies; large militaries tend to have similar tiering and divisions to bureaucracies. I think we sometimes think of bureaucracy acausally -- "it's just always been that way, it always will" -- when the truth seems more subtle: something like "bureaucracy is a scaling choice." I really think that bureaucracies are born as a sort of divide-and-conquer approach to scaling a social system. So it's something like an O(n * log n) total overhead, where n is some abstract quantity of resources; and what you see on-the-ground when interacting with the government is (overhead)/(resource), which grows like O(log n). And it seems to have unbelievable overhead just because n is very large. The pain point which drives this scaling choice is probably free-rider problems. If you can't address free-rider problems, then the potential exploiters grow at least linearly with the number of resources you command, and your scaling is O(n^2) at best. So maybe in some sense bureaucratic solutions are "efficient" -- as crazy as that sounds. In other words, if you ask "Why do people get shackled by these strict rules?", there are two tones (meanings) you might intend: one is despair ("surely we can do better!") the other is curious ("really, I want to know why that rule is in place!"). Usually the curious tone reveals some sort of free-rider threat. That nice guy who drives the schoolbus is constrained by bureaucracy; he can't hug or praise a student who tells him that she's feeling sad today because kids are picking on her for her perceived smartness; he must act as a robot driver. But why do those rules exist? Probably due to a fear of predators who might become able to lurk in the blurred lines. And the fear of predators is created by the scale of the school-system, which makes it hard for the human discretion of administrators to protect the system from having pockets of abuse without spending even more money than bureaucracy would cost. Don't get me wrong, if an alternative system of government can do O(n), I'd love to see how it deals with free-riders. I'm really interested in crypto-anarchism. I'm just cautioning you that maybe the status-quo -- which yes, at this scale involves big companies with political connections paralyzing the process -- protects against a lot of people just running off with the money in exchange for the government-contract equivalent of vaporware.
  - 13y ago

by gregd 13y ago

greghinch 13y ago

When I was freelancing, I did some government work. I was flabbergasted by the slow pace at which things moved, and that I had to create accounts in 3 separate systems to submit and get paid for even very basic invoices. Government is a place that is ripe for disruption, but the walls around it are so high, I don't know how to really breach them. There is a huge machine in place of contractors and lobbyists which essentially maintain a strict control over all IT contracts that come out of the public sector. Massive corporate entities with an entrenched web of influencers at every level of government, ensuring that only a select few even have an opportunity to realistically compete for the jobs. The amount of overspending that could be eliminated with the disruption of those entities probably represents a significant portion of local, state, and national budgets, not to mention the likely better solutions that could be presented by folks more accustomed to working efficiently. I'm not necessarily saying the 20 somethings who were going to make "Snapchat for dogs" could do a better job as government contractors. But certainly someone who designed infrastructure for Twitter might have some interesting perspective on how to manage 911 traffic.

jdavis703 13y ago
This kind of disruption can happen. When I was in school I worked at a small 8(a) (women or minority owned federal contractor) firm. All the developers and designers were under 30 and we built all kinds of CRUD apps for the federal government. Now I work at a startup and the real main difference is that everything moves much faster. Not everyone can start an 8(a) firm but we could get legislation passed that creates a more competitive way for any small business to work with the federal government.
- gregd 13y ago
  I'm not entirely sure this type of disruption CAN happen because this whole process starts and ends with the Legislature, at least at the State level. I was mired in so much bureaucracy it felt like trying to run in molasses. We certainly had the technical capabilities to disrupt the process, but the process itself isn't even self-aware enough to know it's the problem..
mjn 13y ago
> But certainly someone who designed infrastructure for Twitter might have some interesting perspective on how to manage 911 traffic. This program seems aimed at bringing in some of those kinds of people to government agencies: http://www.whitehouse.gov/innovationfellows http://www.whitehouse.gov/innovationfellows I think I've seen a few of them posting on HN, but I can't remember who. They seem to be especially pushing to get things like data.gov working in a modern way.
- 5vforest 13y ago
  FWIW I was one of the fellows, and happy to chat about it if anyone's interested. (contact info in my profile) if anyone wants to help us fix the broken procurement policies that lead to systems like the one described in the article, let's talk too :)
  - jlgaddis 13y ago
    The "Fellows" did some really cool things. Great job!
milhous 13y ago
Large scale disruption is impossible because the government and its employees are protected by guns and the force of law, permitting special interests, cronyism, and incompetence to flourish. We in the marketplace (minus Industrial Military Complex) have no such protections, and actually have to produce value to make a living in a fair exchange of goods and services. Most government employees are unemployable in the marketplace, so it's in their interest to follow orders, at whatever cost, to keep their jobs. The best thing for young professionals is to fight the system intelligently for those that have the resources to do so, or avoid it entirely. Edit: As is with NYC's 911 boondoggle, a SF startup could've built out an amazing system at a fraction of the price. But that wouldn't be the government thing to do. It has nothing to do with building a quality product.
- milhous 13y ago
  >> Most government employees are unemployable in the marketplace, so it's in their interest to follow orders, at whatever cost, to keep their jobs. Some good points were raised about this, and what I should've said instead is that it would be extremely difficult to suddenly absorb a lot of displaced government workers into private industry. But aside from the protections they receive of near-absolute job security in any market condition, I subscribe to the thesis that as government expands, rights are lost.
- jowiar 13y ago
  > Most government employees are unemployable in the marketplace, so it's in their interest to follow orders, at whatever cost, to keep their jobs. Citation needed. If you actually have evidence, I'll bite, but my anecdotal evidence tends to indicate otherwise. Generally, issues are caused by good people being hamstrung by ridiculous rules, not by bad people.
- wonderzombie 13y ago
  > permitting special interests, cronyism, and incompetence to flourish. We in the marketplace (minus Industrial Military Complex) have no such protections, and actually have to produce value to make a living in a fair exchange of goods and services. Cronyism and incompetence may or may not be inversely correlated with success, but the market does not select against those traits, specifically. To abuse a metaphor: as a business, you don't have to outrun the bear. You don't even have to outrun the other guys. And businesses are, in the end, run by collections of irrational-in-aggregate human beings.
drostie 13y ago
> Government is a place that is ripe for disruption, but the walls around it are so high, I don't know how to really breach them. I have had this attitude before, but I am not sure it's a healthy way to look at the problem. What you were flabbergasted by was the inefficiency of bureaucracy. But this is not a government problem per se: large companies can also become bureaucracies; large militaries tend to have similar tiering and divisions to bureaucracies. I think we sometimes think of bureaucracy acausally -- "it's just always been that way, it always will" -- when the truth seems more subtle: something like "bureaucracy is a scaling choice." I really think that bureaucracies are born as a sort of divide-and-conquer approach to scaling a social system. So it's something like an O(n * log n) total overhead, where n is some abstract quantity of resources; and what you see on-the-ground when interacting with the government is (overhead)/(resource), which grows like O(log n). And it seems to have unbelievable overhead just because n is very large. The pain point which drives this scaling choice is probably free-rider problems. If you can't address free-rider problems, then the potential exploiters grow at least linearly with the number of resources you command, and your scaling is O(n^2) at best. So maybe in some sense bureaucratic solutions are "efficient" -- as crazy as that sounds. In other words, if you ask "Why do people get shackled by these strict rules?", there are two tones (meanings) you might intend: one is despair ("surely we can do better!") the other is curious ("really, I want to know why that rule is in place!"). Usually the curious tone reveals some sort of free-rider threat. That nice guy who drives the schoolbus is constrained by bureaucracy; he can't hug or praise a student who tells him that she's feeling sad today because kids are picking on her for her perceived smartness; he must act as a robot driver. But why do those rules exist? Probably due to a fear of predators who might become able to lurk in the blurred lines. And the fear of predators is created by the scale of the school-system, which makes it hard for the human discretion of administrators to protect the system from having pockets of abuse without spending even more money than bureaucracy would cost. Don't get me wrong, if an alternative system of government can do O(n), I'd love to see how it deals with free-riders. I'm really interested in crypto-anarchism. I'm just cautioning you that maybe the status-quo -- which yes, at this scale involves big companies with political connections paralyzing the process -- protects against a lot of people just running off with the money in exchange for the government-contract equivalent of vaporware.
- 13y ago