4 ms·

Government organizations have never traditionally been concerned with the cost of anything. Startups traditionally are extremely aware of the cost of everything

by jgeorge 13y ago

Government organizations have never traditionally been concerned with the cost of anything. Startups traditionally are extremely aware of the cost of everything.

briandear 13y ago
I wish the voters would get aware. We keep electing these same people that are spending OUR money unwisely. It's situations like these that make me resent every dollar I must pay in taxes. If the money was actually going to help INSURE people as opposed to simply being wasted, then I'd be ok with the existing tax burden. But when a state like California is teetering on the edge of fiscal disaster, it's almost unconscionable that they'd spend 1 cent more than was actually necessary. But you're correct. Government organizations don't care -- I just wish more people could make them care!
- palidanx 13y ago
  I think what needs to happen is transparent itemized reports which are released to the public. Then the public can do their own data analysis on it (like data.gov when it was open before the shutdown).
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > I wish the voters would get aware. Many of the bureaucratic rules that increase costs are the direct results of the voters getting aware of costs and demanding that something be done to constrain them. If you want the voters to get a deep understanding of what specifically drives costs in IT (or other particular domains of concerns), that's a nice wish, but its not particularly realistic.
dragonwriter 13y ago
> Government organizations have never traditionally been concerned with the cost of anything. Actually, government organizations are obsessively concerned with costs. So much that, in the interest of controlling costs, they create extensive bureaucratic processes design to assure that every step of an IT system implementation -- and separate rules for every step of any project, IT or otherwise, that involves contracting out -- is necessary, that alternatives have been considered, and that the most cost-effective choice for that step has been taken. And elaborate reporting requirements to all the various control agencies designated to assure that these things are done properly. Now, there's a couple of perverse results of this: 1) The oversight mechanisms are themselves expensive, and 2) The procedures are mostly old, the IT-specific ones often based on 1970s models of IT with additional layers of accountability but no reexamination of the basic underlying models in the intervening decades, and the general contracting-out ones not well adapted to the specifics of IT. As a result, the constraints imposed due to cost concerns actually often serve both to create expensive bureaucratic overhead for government IT projects, but also to force the project to be big-up-front-design that gets locked in by contract, with all the well-known costs and risks that come with big-up-front-design of software systems. Its not that government is not concerned with costs, its that the people in government making decisions about how to address cost concerns don't understand what drives costs in the area of IT (the same may apply in other domains, but that's neither here nor there.)

by jgeorge 13y ago

Government organizations have never traditionally been concerned with the cost of anything. Startups traditionally are extremely aware of the cost of everything.

briandear 13y ago

I wish the voters would get aware. We keep electing these same people that are spending OUR money unwisely. It's situations like these that make me resent every dollar I must pay in taxes. If the money was actually going to help INSURE people as opposed to simply being wasted, then I'd be ok with the existing tax burden. But when a state like California is teetering on the edge of fiscal disaster, it's almost unconscionable that they'd spend 1 cent more than was actually necessary. But you're correct. Government organizations don't care -- I just wish more people could make them care!

palidanx 13y ago
I think what needs to happen is transparent itemized reports which are released to the public. Then the public can do their own data analysis on it (like data.gov when it was open before the shutdown).
dragonwriter 13y ago
> I wish the voters would get aware. Many of the bureaucratic rules that increase costs are the direct results of the voters getting aware of costs and demanding that something be done to constrain them. If you want the voters to get a deep understanding of what specifically drives costs in IT (or other particular domains of concerns), that's a nice wish, but its not particularly realistic.

dragonwriter 13y ago

> Government organizations have never traditionally been concerned with the cost of anything. Actually, government organizations are obsessively concerned with costs. So much that, in the interest of controlling costs, they create extensive bureaucratic processes design to assure that every step of an IT system implementation -- and separate rules for every step of any project, IT or otherwise, that involves contracting out -- is necessary, that alternatives have been considered, and that the most cost-effective choice for that step has been taken. And elaborate reporting requirements to all the various control agencies designated to assure that these things are done properly. Now, there's a couple of perverse results of this: 1) The oversight mechanisms are themselves expensive, and 2) The procedures are mostly old, the IT-specific ones often based on 1970s models of IT with additional layers of accountability but no reexamination of the basic underlying models in the intervening decades, and the general contracting-out ones not well adapted to the specifics of IT. As a result, the constraints imposed due to cost concerns actually often serve both to create expensive bureaucratic overhead for government IT projects, but also to force the project to be big-up-front-design that gets locked in by contract, with all the well-known costs and risks that come with big-up-front-design of software systems. Its not that government is not concerned with costs, its that the people in government making decisions about how to address cost concerns don't understand what drives costs in the area of IT (the same may apply in other domains, but that's neither here nor there.)