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I saw the "Saving Healthcare.gov" talk at Uber.The speakers were excellent and their observations were terrifying. If you are believe in progressive goals and

by zmanian 12y ago

I saw the "Saving Healthcare.gov" talk at Uber.The speakers were excellent and their observations were terrifying. If you are believe in progressive goals and methods, the success or failure of the U.S. Digital Service will have a far greater impact on relevancy of progressive goals than who wins the next election or the election after that. The "Saving Healthcare.gov" presentation portrayed the Federal Government as brittle, dysfuctional and broken. I came away believing that insider's in the federal government are largely aware of ongoing failure of the federal government. I suspect the expansion of security state agencies like NSA and Homeland Security is in many ways driving by the need to protect a failing system from any plausible external threat.

esbranson 12y ago
Just the federal government? At least the federal government has an official journal/government gazette where federal regulations etc. are published (online, in XML, for free). Compare that to the states of Massachusetts, which charges money for online access, and Georgia, which doesn't even have one. If you think the federal government is broken, you haven't seen nothin' yet.
cge 12y ago
>If you are believe in progressive goals and methods, the success or failure of the U.S. Digital Service will have a far greater impact on relevancy of progressive goals than who wins the next election or the election after that. It's increasingly become my view that fundamental political ideologies as a whole have less impact on success or failure (societal, economic, or otherwise) than governmental efficiency and policy implementation. I'm not sure it matters too much whether the goals are progressive, conservative or even anything non-delusional, if they're implemented effectively, and even the most brilliant goals are pointless if the implementation is dysfunctional. Viewing government as software, it's as though politicians are spending their time arguing about what sort of programming paradigm should be used, and not particularly caring whether the software actually works.
- _delirium 12y ago
  I think it's fairly widely recognized in politics that whether government is perceived to "work well" has a large impact on what people trust the government to do. So politicians sort of agree and are acting on it. Enough that it's become a fairly common debate whether politicians are acting in good faith, or are rather trying to manipulate the efficiency / perceived efficiency of policies in order to achieve ideological goals. For example, left-leaning Americans frequently allege that the current GOP policy is precisely based on that. Rather than (only) trying to convince people ideologically that small government is good, Norquist-style, the allegation is that their policy is to actively try to sabotage the government's ability to deliver social services, so people see it as inefficient/broken and therefore stop supporting it. Also occasionally a debate in Europe, especially around infrastructure projects (local/provincial politicians from the opposite party are sometimes accused of trying to actively cause a big infrastructure project of the ruling party to turn into a boondoggle, so the party can seem incompetent). In the other direction, officials are sometimes accused of cooking the books to make something that isn't running efficiently seem like it is. I think a lot of this kind of terrain is where modern politics is fought once you get beyond the first layer.

by zmanian 12y ago

esbranson 12y ago

Just the federal government? At least the federal government has an official journal/government gazette where federal regulations etc. are published (online, in XML, for free). Compare that to the states of Massachusetts, which charges money for online access, and Georgia, which doesn't even have one. If you think the federal government is broken, you haven't seen nothin' yet.

cge 12y ago

>If you are believe in progressive goals and methods, the success or failure of the U.S. Digital Service will have a far greater impact on relevancy of progressive goals than who wins the next election or the election after that. It's increasingly become my view that fundamental political ideologies as a whole have less impact on success or failure (societal, economic, or otherwise) than governmental efficiency and policy implementation. I'm not sure it matters too much whether the goals are progressive, conservative or even anything non-delusional, if they're implemented effectively, and even the most brilliant goals are pointless if the implementation is dysfunctional. Viewing government as software, it's as though politicians are spending their time arguing about what sort of programming paradigm should be used, and not particularly caring whether the software actually works.

_delirium 12y ago
I think it's fairly widely recognized in politics that whether government is perceived to "work well" has a large impact on what people trust the government to do. So politicians sort of agree and are acting on it. Enough that it's become a fairly common debate whether politicians are acting in good faith, or are rather trying to manipulate the efficiency / perceived efficiency of policies in order to achieve ideological goals. For example, left-leaning Americans frequently allege that the current GOP policy is precisely based on that. Rather than (only) trying to convince people ideologically that small government is good, Norquist-style, the allegation is that their policy is to actively try to sabotage the government's ability to deliver social services, so people see it as inefficient/broken and therefore stop supporting it. Also occasionally a debate in Europe, especially around infrastructure projects (local/provincial politicians from the opposite party are sometimes accused of trying to actively cause a big infrastructure project of the ruling party to turn into a boondoggle, so the party can seem incompetent). In the other direction, officials are sometimes accused of cooking the books to make something that isn't running efficiently seem like it is. I think a lot of this kind of terrain is where modern politics is fought once you get beyond the first layer.