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The interesting thing is that Obama had this figured out and it helped him get reelected...here's what the guy who ran his campaign's IT infrastructure looks li

by curun1r 12y ago

The interesting thing is that Obama had this figured out and it helped him get reelected...here's what the guy who ran his campaign's IT infrastructure looks like: http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/science/harperalone.jpg http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/science/harperal.... The story (http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-the-nerds-go-marching-in/265325/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-t...) of how much better Obama's IT was than Romney's is a fascinating read. But there are so many regulations to government contracting that you can't simply choose the people most able to complete the project. You have to choose from the limited set of people that have jumped through all the necessary hoops and cleared all the necessary hurdles, which basically eliminates anyone capable of producing something usable/stable. When all hell's breaking loose and you're attempting to avert a crisis, only then does it seem that you can bring in qualified people, but those people aren't going to be paid the hundreds of millions of dollars that the original incompetent team was paid to create the mess in the first place.

esaym 12y ago
I read the articles. I am not sure what to think now that I know the reason Obama was reelected was because a bunch of smart people got together and wrote software. Not sure if that is the way the system is supposed to run...
GVIrish 12y ago
There are multiple layers to the woes bedeviling government IT (and government work in general). The contract award process is indeed broken and often awards contracts to the large fish who fail regularly. Part of that is because 'prior performance' carries signifiant weight, meaning that if you're Lockheed Martin and you've done a 15000 user enterprise resource planning project before you have a leg up on the 50 person IT shop that hasn't, even if said IT shop is far more competent. But really before you even get to the contract, the fact of the matter is that a lot of the full time government employees making the IT decisions are flat out incompetent. The contractor might have smart people that can do excellent work but if the FTE continually makes bad strategic decisions the best coders in the world are not going to be able to deliver a great system. The original article goes a little bit into that where it talks about how technical people in government don't have the power. Another problem is that government people are rarely held accountable for their failures. They in turn often don't hold contractors accountable. Then there's the fact that the government has systematically reduced the amount of full time employee programmers in favor of contractors. That isn't necessarily bad in some ways, but basically it results in the government paying a lot more money to get the same technical expertise. The argument is usually, "Yeah but we don't have to pay for a contractor's benefits." Yet the government is paying 2 or more times the cost of a full-time employee per year for the contractor bill rate. I think for government IT to truly improvement there needs to be some serious structural changes to the way government work is done from contract awards to employee accountability to the composition of the government work force. It really will need to come from the top, and unfortunately the people at the top usually don't make things like that their priority which is why we're here today.

by curun1r 12y ago

esaym 12y ago

I read the articles. I am not sure what to think now that I know the reason Obama was reelected was because a bunch of smart people got together and wrote software. Not sure if that is the way the system is supposed to run...

GVIrish 12y ago

There are multiple layers to the woes bedeviling government IT (and government work in general). The contract award process is indeed broken and often awards contracts to the large fish who fail regularly. Part of that is because 'prior performance' carries signifiant weight, meaning that if you're Lockheed Martin and you've done a 15000 user enterprise resource planning project before you have a leg up on the 50 person IT shop that hasn't, even if said IT shop is far more competent. But really before you even get to the contract, the fact of the matter is that a lot of the full time government employees making the IT decisions are flat out incompetent. The contractor might have smart people that can do excellent work but if the FTE continually makes bad strategic decisions the best coders in the world are not going to be able to deliver a great system. The original article goes a little bit into that where it talks about how technical people in government don't have the power. Another problem is that government people are rarely held accountable for their failures. They in turn often don't hold contractors accountable. Then there's the fact that the government has systematically reduced the amount of full time employee programmers in favor of contractors. That isn't necessarily bad in some ways, but basically it results in the government paying a lot more money to get the same technical expertise. The argument is usually, "Yeah but we don't have to pay for a contractor's benefits." Yet the government is paying 2 or more times the cost of a full-time employee per year for the contractor bill rate. I think for government IT to truly improvement there needs to be some serious structural changes to the way government work is done from contract awards to employee accountability to the composition of the government work force. It really will need to come from the top, and unfortunately the people at the top usually don't make things like that their priority which is why we're here today.