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I am tired of HN (and the rest of the country) taking shots at government employees. They're talented. They work hard. They take pride in their work. They do a

by jowiar 13y ago

I am tired of HN (and the rest of the country) taking shots at government employees. They're talented. They work hard. They take pride in their work. They do a damn good job. If you look at any good technology product that's come out of government, it's almost always been a creation of federal employees: CFPB. Data.gov. Healthcare.gov. Some neat things coming out of the OPM. Accumulo. There are Github repositories: https://github.com/GSA https://github.com/GSA-OCSIT https://github.com/cfpb https://github.com/opengovplatform To quote Deputy CIO of CFPB Matthew Burton: Got two out-of-the-blue emails today asking "who is behind http://CFPB.gov's great graphic design." I'm proud to say: civil servants" [1] On the other hand, feel free to tear apart the contracting system all you want. The system of "who can check all the boxes for the lowest price" is an unmitigated train wreck. It basically mandates a waterfall-designed usability disaster. The sooner we can tear apart that system, the better (and I say that as someone who has spent a majority of my career as a government contractor). [1]: https://twitter.com/matthewburton/status/359747466339418113 https://twitter.com/matthewburton/status/359747466339418113

LekkoscPiwa 13y ago
yeah, sure just have more forms for folks taking 911 calls -- I call it the Government efficiency!
- moocowduckquack 13y ago
  Is funny to watch people decry state enterprise as being always doomed and wasteful, on the internet.
  - LekkoscPiwa 13y ago
    I don't. I think 911 should be run by the Government. I just see the difference between 911 calls I had in the US and their equivalent in Eastern Europe (Poland). To exaggarate: in the US you're like: "Help! Fast! Somebody's dying here! That's the address right here:..." Dispatcher:" What is your name, last name, shoe size, and how do you like the weather? Wait! Too fast! Typying it down!". Poland:"what is the address? what's happening" Bam, dispatch!
bmelton 13y ago
While I'm not attempting to come off contrarian, I should say that trading potshots at government workers for potshots at government contractors seems short-sighted and highly hypocritical. Having worked in both, I can say that both have their strengths and weaknesses. Where you would fault contractors though, I would generally fault the contracts themselves, or the faults of the contract overseers. Government contracting is adversarial, and where contractors have made major gaffes, in most of those cases you'd find that it was the government itself to blame. There's a reason it takes several hundred thousand dollars to be the lowest bid for standing up a standard Wordpress website, and I promise you, it isn't because the contractors don't know Wordpress.
- jowiar 13y ago
  Based on my experience, agreed entirely. I've worked with stellar people at multiple large and small government contractors. The structure of the contract just doesn't lead to a mentality of "let's make something great", but rather "lets get these boxes checked".
  - bmelton 13y ago
    Let's get these boxes checked... while attending two meetings a day with different groups of stakeholders with entirely different visions for the product, that want to use it completely differently. Let's get these boxes checked... while every stakeholder wants to see our project fail because they'd rather waste a few million dollars and get a proof of concept so that they can then hand the contract off to the vendor they wished had won the bid in the first place. (Note, this happens to ALL vendors, because every group has a different favorite.) Let's get these boxes checked... while having to justify every single change to the environment to the Enterprise Architecture Board ("Why do you need to use Python? Can't you build it in Java?") as well as to the Change Control Board ("Why do you need to open port 80 to this server? Can't we simply proxy that through our dated and oversaturated proxies? Why won't your load balancing work without sticky session support?") Let's get these boxes checked... even though the government has given us three conflicting visions of the project and now refuses to pay us because we're behind schedule because we cannot meet all the new feature requirements that have arisen. Etc., etc. It's a hellish game.
quanticle 13y ago
How is this a shot at government employees? If anything, this is a tale of how government employees are bearing up under pressure that would have caused any of us to quit in under a week. The government employees didn't design the craptacular computer system that's causing these problems. That was designed by Intergraph, a private company.
- jowiar 13y ago
  I wasn't replying to the article. I saw a handful of posts in the discussion blaming lazy, incompetent, or malicious government employees, and didn't want to post the same thing multiple times within the thread.
acchow 13y ago
> The system of "who can check all the boxes for the lowest price" Basically, the problem is that their system crashes. Uptime should have been specified in the contract.

by jowiar 13y ago

LekkoscPiwa 13y ago

yeah, sure just have more forms for folks taking 911 calls -- I call it the Government efficiency!

moocowduckquack 13y ago
Is funny to watch people decry state enterprise as being always doomed and wasteful, on the internet.
- LekkoscPiwa 13y ago
  I don't. I think 911 should be run by the Government. I just see the difference between 911 calls I had in the US and their equivalent in Eastern Europe (Poland). To exaggarate: in the US you're like: "Help! Fast! Somebody's dying here! That's the address right here:..." Dispatcher:" What is your name, last name, shoe size, and how do you like the weather? Wait! Too fast! Typying it down!". Poland:"what is the address? what's happening" Bam, dispatch!

bmelton 13y ago

While I'm not attempting to come off contrarian, I should say that trading potshots at government workers for potshots at government contractors seems short-sighted and highly hypocritical. Having worked in both, I can say that both have their strengths and weaknesses. Where you would fault contractors though, I would generally fault the contracts themselves, or the faults of the contract overseers. Government contracting is adversarial, and where contractors have made major gaffes, in most of those cases you'd find that it was the government itself to blame. There's a reason it takes several hundred thousand dollars to be the lowest bid for standing up a standard Wordpress website, and I promise you, it isn't because the contractors don't know Wordpress.

jowiar 13y ago
Based on my experience, agreed entirely. I've worked with stellar people at multiple large and small government contractors. The structure of the contract just doesn't lead to a mentality of "let's make something great", but rather "lets get these boxes checked".
- bmelton 13y ago
  Let's get these boxes checked... while attending two meetings a day with different groups of stakeholders with entirely different visions for the product, that want to use it completely differently. Let's get these boxes checked... while every stakeholder wants to see our project fail because they'd rather waste a few million dollars and get a proof of concept so that they can then hand the contract off to the vendor they wished had won the bid in the first place. (Note, this happens to ALL vendors, because every group has a different favorite.) Let's get these boxes checked... while having to justify every single change to the environment to the Enterprise Architecture Board ("Why do you need to use Python? Can't you build it in Java?") as well as to the Change Control Board ("Why do you need to open port 80 to this server? Can't we simply proxy that through our dated and oversaturated proxies? Why won't your load balancing work without sticky session support?") Let's get these boxes checked... even though the government has given us three conflicting visions of the project and now refuses to pay us because we're behind schedule because we cannot meet all the new feature requirements that have arisen. Etc., etc. It's a hellish game.

quanticle 13y ago

How is this a shot at government employees? If anything, this is a tale of how government employees are bearing up under pressure that would have caused any of us to quit in under a week. The government employees didn't design the craptacular computer system that's causing these problems. That was designed by Intergraph, a private company.

jowiar 13y ago
I wasn't replying to the article. I saw a handful of posts in the discussion blaming lazy, incompetent, or malicious government employees, and didn't want to post the same thing multiple times within the thread.

acchow 13y ago

> The system of "who can check all the boxes for the lowest price" Basically, the problem is that their system crashes. Uptime should have been specified in the contract.