11 ms·

Inside Obama's stealth startup

121 points by fred256 11y ago

conductr 11y ago
"user-friendly government" ... awesome, start with voting. This has potential to touch every "user" and should be low hanging fruit for such a crack team.
- apendleton 11y ago
  That'd be swell, but unfortunately for the most part, voting isn't the within the purview of the federal government, because it's not one of the enumerated powers in the constitution. Thank the 10th amendment, federalism, etc.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
sswaner 11y ago
I hope they are able to make some good, lasting progress. I fear that a Republican administration would dismantle the startup style team and replace it with a more enterprise approach (bring in IBM or Accenture type companies) that would spend substantially more and accomplish substantially less. The basis for this concern is the contrast in technology efforts in the last presidential campaign, where Obama brought in Harper Reid and a small team of very talented people. Romney hired some big companies. 18 months is not a lot of time to change the federal government.
- jonlucc 11y ago
  There was a lot of talk in the wake of the Obama/Romney election that Obama's digital efforts gave them a very important advantage, so I think it is likely that the main Republican campaigns will have changed to that approach this cycle.
- jmspring 11y ago
  Seriously? Party affiliation automatically means bringing in an "enterprise" entity? Both parties are pretty heavily in bed with many of those. I think both learned from the last two elections.
- fixxer 11y ago
  Don't let the marketing machine fool you. Both sides use a ton of enterprise software and are in bed with companies that practice strong enterprise tactics (DNC & Catalist; GOP & whatever the Kochs/Rove are calling their thing). The Obama campaign had a great organization with a ton of youth techies in control (funny things happen to organizational structure when salaries are 50% of what one can get in the private sector), but so much of what you read is absolute hype. Regarding the performance of Narwhal, lots of sour feelings between the analytics team and the tech team.
  - d_shaw 11y ago
    The not-so-new-anymore GOP one is called Para Bellum. http://www.parabellumlabs.com/ http://www.parabellumlabs.com/
    - fixxer 11y ago
      Looks like an awesome start-up. They've got Macs and there is a picture of a girl diagramming something with "Web" in it. The future is now.
      - fapjacks 11y ago
        It shouldn't surprise me at all that their name means "Prepare for war"...
    - mattste 11y ago
      They gave a talk at my school. One of their head engineers knew his stuff, but it seemed the guy on the political side of things didn't "get it." They definitely understood they were behind, but said they had the same amount of data as the DNC, just they weren't using it.
  - selimthegrim 11y ago
    How many successful launches has Civis had again? (tumbleweeds roll)
    - deleted 11y ago
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- snowwrestler 11y ago
  Obama had some structural advantages in 2012 because he was the incumbent. Obama already had a lot funds in the bank, and names on his lists, from his huge 2008 win. Romney is rich, but was starting from essentially scratch in building his volunteer army and voter database. Obama was able to start investing in his national campaign infrastructure way before Romney because he did not have to win a primary first. Almost every early dollar Romney brought in had to be spent right away on short-term ads and organizing to make sure he won the primary. And Obama was able to access the national Democratic party infrastructure from the beginning. Romney did not have access to the national Republican infrastructure until he won the nomination. The effect of all this was that Obama was able to take his time and build all his software custom, while Romney had to wait until the last minute and buy things from external sources. By the way, 2012 also demonstrated that shortcomings of Super PACs. They can spend a ton of money on TV ads, but they're no help at all with the (increasing important) data operations, because they are forbidden from coordinating with the campaign. While Romney was supported heavily by Super PACs, almost all of Obama's fundraising went directly into his campaign--where it could pay for core technologies. --- As for lasting progress, the U.S. Digital Service is not going to last beyond Obama, at least not in its current incarnation. It's housed under the Executive Office of the President and it is a political operation--their job is to make sure that the President's policy priorities have good technology. Obviously a new administration (of either party) is going to have different policies and priorities. There's also the ephemeral "Obama magic"--he's just built a good reputation for using and appreciating technology. Pretty much no other candidate in the 2016 race has that (at least yet). Alpha geeks might not stick around for a more "old school" president like Hillary, Jeb, etc. Things look a lot better for 18F because it is housed under GSA and it is intended to be politically neutral. And there's also a push on right now to get agencies to hire more digitally savvy people directly into staff roles--those would also be more likely to persist into the next administration.
  - myblake 11y ago
    Yeah very good point about USDS being in a political and less bureaucratic / civil service part of government. However, I'd argue anyone that wins in 2016 regardless of age or party (not that there aren't huge differences) will have to figure out how to leverage technology to effectively govern, so we may yet be surprised.
- ra1n85 11y ago
  Didn't CGI (among an army of other large, "enterprise" companies) build most of Healthcare.gov? https://www.cgi.com/en/us-federal/services-solutions https://www.cgi.com/en/us-federal/services-solutions
  - daveloyall 11y ago
    Is that the link you meant to post? Did it change?
civilian 11y ago
I heard about this a couple months ago, with largely the same sales pitch: "We're looking for software developers to help rebuild the government's systems. You won't make as much as you make in the private sector. You should think of it as a tour of duty. And we're looking for 500 people! Also you'll be relocating to DC." If I was rebuilding important systems, I'd happily take 300 people at market rates over 500 people at government salaries. -_-;
- phillmv 11y ago
  Not that many people who work directly for the government work for market rates. Cabinet members for instance make about $200,000 - which is not comparable to executive salaries in 2015.
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    They are also "paid" in name recognition and political access, and those retain some value after that person has left the office. Furthermore, the base salary does not include the value of various benefits available to the government employee, which varies wildly by the office to be filled. These often include immunity from prosecution, defined benefit pensions, service discounts, medical benefits, protections against arbitrary dismissal, and others. Even so, those barely obfuscated benefits are probably not nearly enough to match the usual differential between a competitive market rate and the government pay scales. Just a few years ago, I was asked by an Army officer to consider a job with the government. She said, "The government needs good programmers." As I politely disengaged, I thought silently to myself, "Yes, well, that's because the government only pays for awful to mediocre programmers." Unlike some other positions in the bureaucracy that may be indirectly monetized, the only truly remunerative route I see on this proposed team is to work in it for a few years, writing obscure arcana into the code, then quit to become a consultant in working around the quirks in the very same code you just wrote. I don't know anyone who works as a bureaucrat who does it out of a sense of patriotism.
    - jkestner 11y ago
      Likewise, you could say that these engineers are "paid" in recognition/agency (from the President) and meaningful work. Yes, it doesn't need to be mutually exclusive with market pay, but if they're attracting great programmers now, I'd say the market is working.
ianstallings 11y ago
I think the biggest impact they'll have is on the mindset of the US government has as a whole. Particularly their involvement in health care technology reforms such as the HITECH additions to HIPAA regulations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Information_Technology_for_Economic_and_Clinical_Health_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Information_Technology_... Or Medicare's Meaningful Use initiative: http://www.healthit.gov/providers-professionals/meaningful-use-definition-objectives http://www.healthit.gov/providers-professionals/meaningful-u... If you visit your doctor and see new technology in place, and also see data privacy taken seriously, there's a good chance that government incentives were involved. Now these guys might not have been directly involved in the trench-related work, but the administration is definitely pushing these agendas.
- GolfyMcG 11y ago
  They are pushing these agendas but unfortunately the standards are rather abysmal. "Meaningful Use" has become the butt of many jokes. HITECH is the preferred compliance framework for Healthcare companies but it takes dramatically longer, and by extension is more expensive than comparable frameworks like SOC 2. The UX of most new Healthcare IT is embarrassing, by the standards of anyone who grew up in Web 2.0. Add to this the amount of money being spent for this innovation and it's painful how inefficient of an investment the government is making. There are some companies really trying to push the envelope but the majority of the industry is mired in red tape and antique thinking.
kelvin0 11y ago
The problem with this is the entrenched culture and feudal turf wars within various departements in gvt will likely need to be addressed, even if you have the top tech talent of the universe working on this ... I wonder how they expect to get everyone to play nice with the new 'recruits'
adwww 11y ago
This is at least in part inspired by the (for the most part) success of the UK cabinet office's Government Digital Services. Despite years of multi billion pound IT projects at the hands of Microsoft, HP, Crapita etc going over budget and delivering poor results late, the small internal team have produced some very modern, very successful web services. They even had a GitHub and PivitolTracker board publicly available if I recall. So yeah, whether it can resist being outsourced and off shored is one thing, but with the right people (sounds good so far!) I wouldn't write it off as another government IT disaster just yet.
- l4in 11y ago
  Do you have any more information about the success of the UK's GDS? How do you evaluate their success? Are there any similar EU organs? Do you know any ways for a CS student to learn more about governance?
pdeuchler 11y ago
The religious and reverent tone of this article gives away the true purpose for this initiative. Power. Make no mistake, those pushing this project are Machiavellians of the highest order. They did not spend their entire lives playing the political game and manipulating their way to the top in order to "do good" and "change government". If they truly wanted to "do good" they could very easily accomplish huge strides with a single stroke of a pen, yet this fails to happen day in and day out. Furthermore the very idea that those who control the machinations of government would want to change that system is ludicrous on face, and requires significant cognitive dissonance to believe. This is about leverage. Before the Snowden revelations the government had most of the tech companies comfortably in their pocket with no real downside to those companies. Those revelations have forced companies to choose between consumers and the government, a choice that seems to be slightly leaning towards consumers recently (rollouts of security features, encryption by default). Regardless of the vast abilities of the NSA, they still rely on Silicon Valley for an absurd percentage of their intelligence gathering. This scares the Washington elite (please note this elite is not constrained by political party), and so they go after the cornerstone of Silicon Valley's own power base. Talent. This is a warning shot, a demonstration that a 45 minute meeting with the president is sufficient to fully co-opt some of the best and brightest SV has to offer. Let's be real here. If the President really cared about the VA he wouldn't have waited until he was a lame duck to spearhead some website when the reality is the VA is woefully underfunded and highly dysfunctional as an organization from structure to implementation. No javascript front end will change those things. This lip service to building better systems to "help people" is a poor mask over the fact that they would control the people who designed and built that very system, and thus, control the system. He who has the power to destroy has the ultimate power. Everyone on this website knows Google is one of the most powerful companies on earth because of their talent. Everyone knows that startups die when the lead engineer gets poached. You don't take talent from Google to not compete with them... this is just war games on a much more abstracted level.
- ethanbond 11y ago
  Could you give an example of how the President could "very easily accomplish huge strides with a single stroke of a pen?" The government is specifically designed against what you are stating is/should be the norm. This is literally the antithesis of the American government's mandate and design.
sabalaba 11y ago
Is the federal government's inability to recruit and retain top talent really a mystery? It's surprising that an institution that is capable of confiscating double digit percentages of it's people's labor and capital gains[1] is unwilling to pay market or above market salaries to its employees. If they want to capture the best and brightest, they'll have to do more than just appeal to patriotism. [1] http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=456 http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Doc...
- navait 11y ago
  What does tax policy have to do with how the federal government compensates it's employees?
  - gboone42 11y ago
    Taxes, in one form or another, are where the federal government gets the money it uses to pay its employees.
- linkregister 11y ago
  Several agencies in the federal government strive to increase salaries to approach market values, but Congress typically prevents these measures [1]. In this case, it's my opinion that they're representing their constituents' desire to limit public sector salaries, and risk reelection by legislating otherwise. I think that over 50% of Americans suspect federal employees are overpaid. The issue isn't improved by misleading stories in the media [2]. [1] http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/house-gop-release-bill-to-reverse-obamas-pay-raise-for-federal-employees/article/2518773 http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/house-gop-release-bill-to-... [2] http://www.factcheck.org/2010/12/are-federal-workers-overpaid/ http://www.factcheck.org/2010/12/are-federal-workers-overpai...
- qdpb 11y ago
  It's not appropriate to use the word "confiscate" in this context. If you're not satisfied with the social contract of this country, you're free to leave and earn money elsewhere.
- 11y ago
ajays 11y ago
These folks all seem like political appointees. What happens in 18 months when Obama is gone? I hope the successor keeps the initiative going, as it seems like a good cause.
TheMagicHorsey 11y ago
My friend has been a Presidential Innovation Fellow for the last year. Basically people can't get things done because they are being stonewalled by the old-guard in the various departments they've been tasked with reforming. There are outside vendors with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts on the line, and they don't want those contracts to be cancelled by implementing commonsense new technology reforms. My friend described a process in one government department where digital documents were received, were printed, were then physically mailed to a back office site, and then manually entered into a system by typing. The contract for the scanning was worth millions. The contract for the back-end was worth millions. People's jobs depended on there being this whole useless exercise. Nothing could be reformed. I think its important that we have optimism, but nothing short of sledgehammer and mass layoffs of government employees and contractors is going to improve government.
- iandanforth 11y ago
  Name names please. Perhaps it's naive, but I imagine that if we have a specific instance to work with we're much more likely to be able to force change.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Don't even need to name names. Give me a department/division name so I can start firing up MuckRock with FOIA requests.
  - TheMagicHorsey 11y ago
    The problem is people can't go public with this stuff. They will be blacklisted from ever working in government again. And these are regulatory agencies that can make trouble for you in the private sector world too. This is why I'm being so vague. I could actually give you specific details, but then my friend would be identified. My friend said even with the small level of reforming he was trying to do, people stopped inviting him to meetings--because he was embarrassing with the way he was saying the Emperor has No Clothes, with respect to the processes being used. Imagine a tech company where everyone basically has tenure, and promotions are based on how long you've been warming your seat. Now bake that organization for 50 years. That is your govt. IT department.
DanielBMarkham 11y ago
I need to remind the somewhat younger and more idealistic HN crowd that national service is just that: national service. If it's "Obama's startup", it ain't national service. It's partisan service. It's an important point, because time will tell how some future Republican administration will both treat and be treated by this group. If you're working with millions of federal jobs, you'd better be ready to play the long game; not just play the PR game. I wish guys joining the best. But if you're only in it because of Obama? Please don't go. I wouldn't want to see a situation where IT systems favored by one party were automated while those favored by another were not. That would take what could be a great good and turn it into a great evil.

121 points by fred256 11y ago

"user-friendly government" ... awesome, start with voting. This has potential to touch every "user" and should be low hanging fruit for such a crack team.

apendleton 11y ago
That'd be swell, but unfortunately for the most part, voting isn't the within the purview of the federal government, because it's not one of the enumerated powers in the constitution. Thank the 10th amendment, federalism, etc.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

sswaner 11y ago

I hope they are able to make some good, lasting progress. I fear that a Republican administration would dismantle the startup style team and replace it with a more enterprise approach (bring in IBM or Accenture type companies) that would spend substantially more and accomplish substantially less. The basis for this concern is the contrast in technology efforts in the last presidential campaign, where Obama brought in Harper Reid and a small team of very talented people. Romney hired some big companies. 18 months is not a lot of time to change the federal government.

jonlucc 11y ago
There was a lot of talk in the wake of the Obama/Romney election that Obama's digital efforts gave them a very important advantage, so I think it is likely that the main Republican campaigns will have changed to that approach this cycle.
jmspring 11y ago
Seriously? Party affiliation automatically means bringing in an "enterprise" entity? Both parties are pretty heavily in bed with many of those. I think both learned from the last two elections.
fixxer 11y ago
Don't let the marketing machine fool you. Both sides use a ton of enterprise software and are in bed with companies that practice strong enterprise tactics (DNC & Catalist; GOP & whatever the Kochs/Rove are calling their thing). The Obama campaign had a great organization with a ton of youth techies in control (funny things happen to organizational structure when salaries are 50% of what one can get in the private sector), but so much of what you read is absolute hype. Regarding the performance of Narwhal, lots of sour feelings between the analytics team and the tech team.
- d_shaw 11y ago
  The not-so-new-anymore GOP one is called Para Bellum. http://www.parabellumlabs.com/ http://www.parabellumlabs.com/
  - fixxer 11y ago
    Looks like an awesome start-up. They've got Macs and there is a picture of a girl diagramming something with "Web" in it. The future is now.
    - fapjacks 11y ago
      It shouldn't surprise me at all that their name means "Prepare for war"...
  - mattste 11y ago
    They gave a talk at my school. One of their head engineers knew his stuff, but it seemed the guy on the political side of things didn't "get it." They definitely understood they were behind, but said they had the same amount of data as the DNC, just they weren't using it.
- selimthegrim 11y ago
  How many successful launches has Civis had again? (tumbleweeds roll)
  - deleted 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
snowwrestler 11y ago
Obama had some structural advantages in 2012 because he was the incumbent. Obama already had a lot funds in the bank, and names on his lists, from his huge 2008 win. Romney is rich, but was starting from essentially scratch in building his volunteer army and voter database. Obama was able to start investing in his national campaign infrastructure way before Romney because he did not have to win a primary first. Almost every early dollar Romney brought in had to be spent right away on short-term ads and organizing to make sure he won the primary. And Obama was able to access the national Democratic party infrastructure from the beginning. Romney did not have access to the national Republican infrastructure until he won the nomination. The effect of all this was that Obama was able to take his time and build all his software custom, while Romney had to wait until the last minute and buy things from external sources. By the way, 2012 also demonstrated that shortcomings of Super PACs. They can spend a ton of money on TV ads, but they're no help at all with the (increasing important) data operations, because they are forbidden from coordinating with the campaign. While Romney was supported heavily by Super PACs, almost all of Obama's fundraising went directly into his campaign--where it could pay for core technologies. --- As for lasting progress, the U.S. Digital Service is not going to last beyond Obama, at least not in its current incarnation. It's housed under the Executive Office of the President and it is a political operation--their job is to make sure that the President's policy priorities have good technology. Obviously a new administration (of either party) is going to have different policies and priorities. There's also the ephemeral "Obama magic"--he's just built a good reputation for using and appreciating technology. Pretty much no other candidate in the 2016 race has that (at least yet). Alpha geeks might not stick around for a more "old school" president like Hillary, Jeb, etc. Things look a lot better for 18F because it is housed under GSA and it is intended to be politically neutral. And there's also a push on right now to get agencies to hire more digitally savvy people directly into staff roles--those would also be more likely to persist into the next administration.
- myblake 11y ago
  Yeah very good point about USDS being in a political and less bureaucratic / civil service part of government. However, I'd argue anyone that wins in 2016 regardless of age or party (not that there aren't huge differences) will have to figure out how to leverage technology to effectively govern, so we may yet be surprised.
ra1n85 11y ago
Didn't CGI (among an army of other large, "enterprise" companies) build most of Healthcare.gov? https://www.cgi.com/en/us-federal/services-solutions https://www.cgi.com/en/us-federal/services-solutions
- daveloyall 11y ago
  Is that the link you meant to post? Did it change?

civilian 11y ago

I heard about this a couple months ago, with largely the same sales pitch: "We're looking for software developers to help rebuild the government's systems. You won't make as much as you make in the private sector. You should think of it as a tour of duty. And we're looking for 500 people! Also you'll be relocating to DC." If I was rebuilding important systems, I'd happily take 300 people at market rates over 500 people at government salaries. -_-;

phillmv 11y ago
Not that many people who work directly for the government work for market rates. Cabinet members for instance make about $200,000 - which is not comparable to executive salaries in 2015.
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  They are also "paid" in name recognition and political access, and those retain some value after that person has left the office. Furthermore, the base salary does not include the value of various benefits available to the government employee, which varies wildly by the office to be filled. These often include immunity from prosecution, defined benefit pensions, service discounts, medical benefits, protections against arbitrary dismissal, and others. Even so, those barely obfuscated benefits are probably not nearly enough to match the usual differential between a competitive market rate and the government pay scales. Just a few years ago, I was asked by an Army officer to consider a job with the government. She said, "The government needs good programmers." As I politely disengaged, I thought silently to myself, "Yes, well, that's because the government only pays for awful to mediocre programmers." Unlike some other positions in the bureaucracy that may be indirectly monetized, the only truly remunerative route I see on this proposed team is to work in it for a few years, writing obscure arcana into the code, then quit to become a consultant in working around the quirks in the very same code you just wrote. I don't know anyone who works as a bureaucrat who does it out of a sense of patriotism.
  - jkestner 11y ago
    Likewise, you could say that these engineers are "paid" in recognition/agency (from the President) and meaningful work. Yes, it doesn't need to be mutually exclusive with market pay, but if they're attracting great programmers now, I'd say the market is working.

ianstallings 11y ago

I think the biggest impact they'll have is on the mindset of the US government has as a whole. Particularly their involvement in health care technology reforms such as the HITECH additions to HIPAA regulations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Information_Technology_for_Economic_and_Clinical_Health_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Information_Technology_... Or Medicare's Meaningful Use initiative: http://www.healthit.gov/providers-professionals/meaningful-use-definition-objectives http://www.healthit.gov/providers-professionals/meaningful-u... If you visit your doctor and see new technology in place, and also see data privacy taken seriously, there's a good chance that government incentives were involved. Now these guys might not have been directly involved in the trench-related work, but the administration is definitely pushing these agendas.

GolfyMcG 11y ago
They are pushing these agendas but unfortunately the standards are rather abysmal. "Meaningful Use" has become the butt of many jokes. HITECH is the preferred compliance framework for Healthcare companies but it takes dramatically longer, and by extension is more expensive than comparable frameworks like SOC 2. The UX of most new Healthcare IT is embarrassing, by the standards of anyone who grew up in Web 2.0. Add to this the amount of money being spent for this innovation and it's painful how inefficient of an investment the government is making. There are some companies really trying to push the envelope but the majority of the industry is mired in red tape and antique thinking.

kelvin0 11y ago

The problem with this is the entrenched culture and feudal turf wars within various departements in gvt will likely need to be addressed, even if you have the top tech talent of the universe working on this ... I wonder how they expect to get everyone to play nice with the new 'recruits'

adwww 11y ago

This is at least in part inspired by the (for the most part) success of the UK cabinet office's Government Digital Services. Despite years of multi billion pound IT projects at the hands of Microsoft, HP, Crapita etc going over budget and delivering poor results late, the small internal team have produced some very modern, very successful web services. They even had a GitHub and PivitolTracker board publicly available if I recall. So yeah, whether it can resist being outsourced and off shored is one thing, but with the right people (sounds good so far!) I wouldn't write it off as another government IT disaster just yet.

l4in 11y ago
Do you have any more information about the success of the UK's GDS? How do you evaluate their success? Are there any similar EU organs? Do you know any ways for a CS student to learn more about governance?

pdeuchler 11y ago

The religious and reverent tone of this article gives away the true purpose for this initiative. Power. Make no mistake, those pushing this project are Machiavellians of the highest order. They did not spend their entire lives playing the political game and manipulating their way to the top in order to "do good" and "change government". If they truly wanted to "do good" they could very easily accomplish huge strides with a single stroke of a pen, yet this fails to happen day in and day out. Furthermore the very idea that those who control the machinations of government would want to change that system is ludicrous on face, and requires significant cognitive dissonance to believe. This is about leverage. Before the Snowden revelations the government had most of the tech companies comfortably in their pocket with no real downside to those companies. Those revelations have forced companies to choose between consumers and the government, a choice that seems to be slightly leaning towards consumers recently (rollouts of security features, encryption by default). Regardless of the vast abilities of the NSA, they still rely on Silicon Valley for an absurd percentage of their intelligence gathering. This scares the Washington elite (please note this elite is not constrained by political party), and so they go after the cornerstone of Silicon Valley's own power base. Talent. This is a warning shot, a demonstration that a 45 minute meeting with the president is sufficient to fully co-opt some of the best and brightest SV has to offer. Let's be real here. If the President really cared about the VA he wouldn't have waited until he was a lame duck to spearhead some website when the reality is the VA is woefully underfunded and highly dysfunctional as an organization from structure to implementation. No javascript front end will change those things. This lip service to building better systems to "help people" is a poor mask over the fact that they would control the people who designed and built that very system, and thus, control the system. He who has the power to destroy has the ultimate power. Everyone on this website knows Google is one of the most powerful companies on earth because of their talent. Everyone knows that startups die when the lead engineer gets poached. You don't take talent from Google to not compete with them... this is just war games on a much more abstracted level.

ethanbond 11y ago
Could you give an example of how the President could "very easily accomplish huge strides with a single stroke of a pen?" The government is specifically designed against what you are stating is/should be the norm. This is literally the antithesis of the American government's mandate and design.

sabalaba 11y ago

Is the federal government's inability to recruit and retain top talent really a mystery? It's surprising that an institution that is capable of confiscating double digit percentages of it's people's labor and capital gains[1] is unwilling to pay market or above market salaries to its employees. If they want to capture the best and brightest, they'll have to do more than just appeal to patriotism. [1] http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=456 http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Doc...

navait 11y ago
What does tax policy have to do with how the federal government compensates it's employees?
- gboone42 11y ago
  Taxes, in one form or another, are where the federal government gets the money it uses to pay its employees.
linkregister 11y ago
Several agencies in the federal government strive to increase salaries to approach market values, but Congress typically prevents these measures [1]. In this case, it's my opinion that they're representing their constituents' desire to limit public sector salaries, and risk reelection by legislating otherwise. I think that over 50% of Americans suspect federal employees are overpaid. The issue isn't improved by misleading stories in the media [2]. [1] http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/house-gop-release-bill-to-reverse-obamas-pay-raise-for-federal-employees/article/2518773 http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/house-gop-release-bill-to-... [2] http://www.factcheck.org/2010/12/are-federal-workers-overpaid/ http://www.factcheck.org/2010/12/are-federal-workers-overpai...
qdpb 11y ago
It's not appropriate to use the word "confiscate" in this context. If you're not satisfied with the social contract of this country, you're free to leave and earn money elsewhere.
11y ago

ajays 11y ago

These folks all seem like political appointees. What happens in 18 months when Obama is gone? I hope the successor keeps the initiative going, as it seems like a good cause.

TheMagicHorsey 11y ago

My friend has been a Presidential Innovation Fellow for the last year. Basically people can't get things done because they are being stonewalled by the old-guard in the various departments they've been tasked with reforming. There are outside vendors with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts on the line, and they don't want those contracts to be cancelled by implementing commonsense new technology reforms. My friend described a process in one government department where digital documents were received, were printed, were then physically mailed to a back office site, and then manually entered into a system by typing. The contract for the scanning was worth millions. The contract for the back-end was worth millions. People's jobs depended on there being this whole useless exercise. Nothing could be reformed. I think its important that we have optimism, but nothing short of sledgehammer and mass layoffs of government employees and contractors is going to improve government.

iandanforth 11y ago
Name names please. Perhaps it's naive, but I imagine that if we have a specific instance to work with we're much more likely to be able to force change.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  Don't even need to name names. Give me a department/division name so I can start firing up MuckRock with FOIA requests.
- TheMagicHorsey 11y ago
  The problem is people can't go public with this stuff. They will be blacklisted from ever working in government again. And these are regulatory agencies that can make trouble for you in the private sector world too. This is why I'm being so vague. I could actually give you specific details, but then my friend would be identified. My friend said even with the small level of reforming he was trying to do, people stopped inviting him to meetings--because he was embarrassing with the way he was saying the Emperor has No Clothes, with respect to the processes being used. Imagine a tech company where everyone basically has tenure, and promotions are based on how long you've been warming your seat. Now bake that organization for 50 years. That is your govt. IT department.

DanielBMarkham 11y ago

I need to remind the somewhat younger and more idealistic HN crowd that national service is just that: national service. If it's "Obama's startup", it ain't national service. It's partisan service. It's an important point, because time will tell how some future Republican administration will both treat and be treated by this group. If you're working with millions of federal jobs, you'd better be ready to play the long game; not just play the PR game. I wish guys joining the best. But if you're only in it because of Obama? Please don't go. I wouldn't want to see a situation where IT systems favored by one party were automated while those favored by another were not. That would take what could be a great good and turn it into a great evil.