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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

by 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]
  - fixxer 11y ago
    Totally. AWS kind of snaked 'em: http://aws.amazon.com/machine-learning/ http://aws.amazon.com/machine-learning/
    - fapjacks 11y ago
      Just like everybody else that had something useful to AWS.
      - fixxer 11y ago
        They also acquire a lot.
        fapjacks 11y ago
        Well, if my company caught the attention of AWS engineers, I would be way more defensive than optimistic.
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?

by sswaner 11y ago

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]
- fixxer 11y ago
  Totally. AWS kind of snaked 'em: http://aws.amazon.com/machine-learning/ http://aws.amazon.com/machine-learning/
  - fapjacks 11y ago
    Just like everybody else that had something useful to AWS.
    - fixxer 11y ago
      They also acquire a lot.
      - fapjacks 11y ago
        Well, if my company caught the attention of AWS engineers, I would be way more defensive than optimistic.

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?