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That's exactly right. The staff organizing the project for the government gets advice (bad advice) on the technologies that it should use from approved developm
by dm2 12y ago
That's exactly right. The staff organizing the project for the government gets advice (bad advice) on the technologies that it should use from approved development firms then make using that technology a strict requirement. These firms are some of the few that have developers that use that technology and win the bid, everybody except the hired firm loses.
Any small competent development team can built almost anything imaginable with 6 years of time, proper funding, and without unnecessary restrictions.
$300 million to develop anything is insane. I can't imagine what happens when the check is cut, "let's hire 100 programmers, 10 managers, 5 accountants, 10 support staff and they'll figure it out."
Maybe there needs to be some kind of "insurance" company that oversees the project and has to pay back a portion of the money if the project fails. I'm not sure if that's reasonable, just an idea. If the project starts going off-track then they start letting people go and find competent replacements.
Plan projects out, have milestones, goals, backup plans. If they spend 6 years and $300 million dollars on a computer system and fail then they were just winging it from the beginning. The managers responsible should be identified and go on a blacklist. Right now it's either "oh well, hopefully we'll do better next time".
- untog 12y agoStartups certainly don't help themselves in this regard, though. The sheer number that shut down, get acquired etc. means that I don't totally blame government bodies that choose large, established companies.
- dm2 12y agoMaybe there is an opportunity for a private company to be the middle-man between government projects and small competent development teams. To ensure they meet the requirements and to provide real advice to the government agencies that need projects built.
- ebiester 12y agoThat's what's really happening behind the scenes with 99% of this stuff. You have a prime contractor that then subcontracts the actual work to small companies and then the prime just handles project management and the government interface. However, this ends up causing problems with the motivations of the individual actors not lining up.
- mox1 12y agoYour sort of talking about FFRDC's. Part of their role as a non-profit , non-government agency is to "Consult" with the government. I worked at one for a while, we were held in very high regard amongst the Government. When they doled out new contracts they basically asked us our opinion for which company to choose, based on past performance. We would also review other contractors work and give it the thumbs up / thumbs down. This was on a much smaller scale. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federally_funded_research_and_development_centers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federally_funded_resear...