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If you've ever worked for or with the government this isn't shocking news. In fact I also wouldn't be surprised to find that their email is also unreliable. T

by pmorici 13y ago

If you've ever worked for or with the government this isn't shocking news. In fact I also wouldn't be surprised to find that their email is also unreliable. There just isn't much accountability with these things it's a HUGE problem. I don't know what the solution is.

jeffdavis 13y ago
"I don't know what the solution is." Not have such a massive federal government that is always spending other people's money? When people spend their own money, they often find much more efficient use of it.
- pmorici 13y ago
  Yeah, sure, but we all know it is inevitable the government is going to spend some money so as a practical matter just cutting government doesn't really address the problem of making the remaining parts more efficient.
  - jeffdavis 13y ago
    The smaller the government (or any entity) the fewer things look like a "drop in the bucket that's not worth looking at". So reducing the size of government will (I believe) increase the efficiency.
    - pmorici 13y ago
      I think you misunderstand the fundamental problem. Even if the Federal government were cut by 50% in terms of $ spent it would still be massive. they wouldn't all of a sudden have an epiphany and realize they were being ripped off by all these beltway bandits. They would just do less stuff in the same inefficient way. You might feel better about it because you would be paying lower taxes but the taxes you are paying would still be spent inefficiently.
      - AnthonyMouse 13y ago
        That isn't necessarily true. The number of e.g. Senators is set by the constitution. If the government were doing half as much stuff, each Senator would have twice as much time to allocate to each thing. Then they might find more waste to remove and reduce the budget even more.
        pmorici 13y ago
        I'm not sure politicizing IT decisions would make things more efficient. Not to mention that there is strong incentive to increase the amount spent because contractors can then turn around and donate some of those juicy profits to the senator's campaign.
        realityseries 13y ago
        > If the government were doing half as much stuff, each Senator would have twice as much time to allocate to each thing I find the assumption that 'How much stuff the government is doing is proportionate to how much time each Senator has to act as a finder and remover of waste' as an assumption based on a normative view of what Senators should be doing in the Senate, rather than what their schedules would reveal. This image of Senators is questionable, given what Senators actually do as part of their jobs (campaigning, meeting with lobbyists, reviewing poll data with advisors to refine their message and image). In terms of the priorities of politicians keeping their jobs and raising more money, I would estimate they probably have a much higher margin of return by campaigning, meeting with lobbyists, and reviewing poll data with their advisors than they do by going page by page through the federal register and legislation to find waste. Indeed, many if not most bills get passed without even a single Senator reading its contents in entirety. Some Senators that claim fiscal responsibility as part of their Senatorial passions pay people to do this for them from time to time. But each little bit that has to change has to go through an enormously long process, so it's far easier to just focus on the hot button issue of the day that the party leadership can whip everyone (politicians and lobbyists included) into agreement on. Typically this never results in reduced government waste, but quite the opposite given the nature of the relationship between politicians and industry lobbies. The problems with any given piece of legislation are clear as day, but given how much skin in the game the interest-groups and lobbyists each have in their own pet bills, there's little chance the current legislative modification apparatus could successfully change 50% of it within decades, even if the accumulation of waste stopped today.
    - dools 13y ago
      That ignores the fact that their are efficiencies achieved through centralisation that save money as well. It's a complex topic; "make government smaller" isn't a strategy, it's an outcome.
  - pzxc 13y ago
    You have it reversed. It is inevitable that government is going to be inefficient, so as a practical matter the lower-hanging fruit is to decrease the magnitude of the waste. Not try to put lipstick on a pig. Reducing the scope of government spending requires the flick of a pen. Reducing the scope of government inefficiency requires changing human nature.
    - brazzy 13y ago
      Reducing the scope of government spending without negatively impacting many, many lives is, however, impossible. Whether the net negative effects would be worse remains to be proven.
  - Shivetya 13y ago
    Well a good first step would be to consolidate the overlapping number of subsidy programs of which there are over twenty two hundred. They even made a nice pie chart for us to see them all https://www.cfda.gov/ https://www.cfda.gov/ Assistance programs and just like taxes, there are so many rules and requirements all because politicians use our money to reward those who do as they are told and those who don't, well there is a rule against supporting them or supporting them not as well.
- guelo 13y ago
  How about electing people that actually want to make the government better instead of the people that say they want to destroy it.
- namdnay 13y ago
  But people are rarely spending their own money: if you cut government, the same work will be done by some random mega-service-corp, with exactly the same waste. In my experience, waste is a more or less inevitable consequence of large organisations, be they public or private. In both cases, the managers aren't paying out of their own pockets.
pbreit 13y ago
Non-governmental orgs do stupid stuff like this all the time. It's the nature of large organizations.
rdl 13y ago
The biggest solution I could see would be allowing more in-house groups to work on projects without huge stigma if they fail. The success rate for external/contracted projects isn't actually as high as you'd want, but it's generally more politically acceptable for something like that to fail, plus the contractor absorbs some of the de-risking up front in evaluating the bid. I'd prefer if government had more in-house projects rather than contracting, on the explicit assumption that some of the projects (even most of them!) would be failures -- I don't see a big problem with duplicated work at the early stages, then internal-to-government competition to find the best solution, then rolling it out. A side benefit of this would be making GS employment more attractive to great people -- it already pays well, is very stable, has great EoE, etc. If I were a minority/female/etc. engineer, and I wanted a workplace with minimal discrimination, government would be a great place -- historically, it was one of the first major employers of black people in white-collar roles in the 1960s-1980s. The other key area would be an increase in off-the-shelf products, vs. custom implementations, and focusing on off the shelf systems which are commodity. Government is actually quite efficient at purchasing certain classes of items -- GSA gets good prices for "anything someone in 1940 could explain". It just is bad at "systems", and IT in general.

by pmorici 13y ago

jeffdavis 13y ago

"I don't know what the solution is." Not have such a massive federal government that is always spending other people's money? When people spend their own money, they often find much more efficient use of it.

pmorici 13y ago
Yeah, sure, but we all know it is inevitable the government is going to spend some money so as a practical matter just cutting government doesn't really address the problem of making the remaining parts more efficient.
- jeffdavis 13y ago
  The smaller the government (or any entity) the fewer things look like a "drop in the bucket that's not worth looking at". So reducing the size of government will (I believe) increase the efficiency.
  - pmorici 13y ago
    I think you misunderstand the fundamental problem. Even if the Federal government were cut by 50% in terms of $ spent it would still be massive. they wouldn't all of a sudden have an epiphany and realize they were being ripped off by all these beltway bandits. They would just do less stuff in the same inefficient way. You might feel better about it because you would be paying lower taxes but the taxes you are paying would still be spent inefficiently.
    - AnthonyMouse 13y ago
      That isn't necessarily true. The number of e.g. Senators is set by the constitution. If the government were doing half as much stuff, each Senator would have twice as much time to allocate to each thing. Then they might find more waste to remove and reduce the budget even more.
      - pmorici 13y ago
        I'm not sure politicizing IT decisions would make things more efficient. Not to mention that there is strong incentive to increase the amount spent because contractors can then turn around and donate some of those juicy profits to the senator's campaign.
      - realityseries 13y ago
        > If the government were doing half as much stuff, each Senator would have twice as much time to allocate to each thing I find the assumption that 'How much stuff the government is doing is proportionate to how much time each Senator has to act as a finder and remover of waste' as an assumption based on a normative view of what Senators should be doing in the Senate, rather than what their schedules would reveal. This image of Senators is questionable, given what Senators actually do as part of their jobs (campaigning, meeting with lobbyists, reviewing poll data with advisors to refine their message and image). In terms of the priorities of politicians keeping their jobs and raising more money, I would estimate they probably have a much higher margin of return by campaigning, meeting with lobbyists, and reviewing poll data with their advisors than they do by going page by page through the federal register and legislation to find waste. Indeed, many if not most bills get passed without even a single Senator reading its contents in entirety. Some Senators that claim fiscal responsibility as part of their Senatorial passions pay people to do this for them from time to time. But each little bit that has to change has to go through an enormously long process, so it's far easier to just focus on the hot button issue of the day that the party leadership can whip everyone (politicians and lobbyists included) into agreement on. Typically this never results in reduced government waste, but quite the opposite given the nature of the relationship between politicians and industry lobbies. The problems with any given piece of legislation are clear as day, but given how much skin in the game the interest-groups and lobbyists each have in their own pet bills, there's little chance the current legislative modification apparatus could successfully change 50% of it within decades, even if the accumulation of waste stopped today.
  - dools 13y ago
    That ignores the fact that their are efficiencies achieved through centralisation that save money as well. It's a complex topic; "make government smaller" isn't a strategy, it's an outcome.
- pzxc 13y ago
  You have it reversed. It is inevitable that government is going to be inefficient, so as a practical matter the lower-hanging fruit is to decrease the magnitude of the waste. Not try to put lipstick on a pig. Reducing the scope of government spending requires the flick of a pen. Reducing the scope of government inefficiency requires changing human nature.
  - brazzy 13y ago
    Reducing the scope of government spending without negatively impacting many, many lives is, however, impossible. Whether the net negative effects would be worse remains to be proven.
- Shivetya 13y ago
  Well a good first step would be to consolidate the overlapping number of subsidy programs of which there are over twenty two hundred. They even made a nice pie chart for us to see them all https://www.cfda.gov/ https://www.cfda.gov/ Assistance programs and just like taxes, there are so many rules and requirements all because politicians use our money to reward those who do as they are told and those who don't, well there is a rule against supporting them or supporting them not as well.
guelo 13y ago
How about electing people that actually want to make the government better instead of the people that say they want to destroy it.
namdnay 13y ago
But people are rarely spending their own money: if you cut government, the same work will be done by some random mega-service-corp, with exactly the same waste. In my experience, waste is a more or less inevitable consequence of large organisations, be they public or private. In both cases, the managers aren't paying out of their own pockets.

pbreit 13y ago

Non-governmental orgs do stupid stuff like this all the time. It's the nature of large organizations.

rdl 13y ago

The biggest solution I could see would be allowing more in-house groups to work on projects without huge stigma if they fail. The success rate for external/contracted projects isn't actually as high as you'd want, but it's generally more politically acceptable for something like that to fail, plus the contractor absorbs some of the de-risking up front in evaluating the bid. I'd prefer if government had more in-house projects rather than contracting, on the explicit assumption that some of the projects (even most of them!) would be failures -- I don't see a big problem with duplicated work at the early stages, then internal-to-government competition to find the best solution, then rolling it out. A side benefit of this would be making GS employment more attractive to great people -- it already pays well, is very stable, has great EoE, etc. If I were a minority/female/etc. engineer, and I wanted a workplace with minimal discrimination, government would be a great place -- historically, it was one of the first major employers of black people in white-collar roles in the 1960s-1980s. The other key area would be an increase in off-the-shelf products, vs. custom implementations, and focusing on off the shelf systems which are commodity. Government is actually quite efficient at purchasing certain classes of items -- GSA gets good prices for "anything someone in 1940 could explain". It just is bad at "systems", and IT in general.