A decade into a project to digitize U.S. immigration forms, just one is online • Hacker News Board

Re: A decade into a project to digitize U.S. immigration forms, just one is online

#31

Post by jerf » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 3:45 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #30

cs702 wrote: post #20

The root problem is not government. The same thing happens in the private sector. Large corporations routinely spend gazillions on software projects that end up working poorly or not at all. Everyone who has worked in Corporate America knows this all too well. The root problem is not bureaucracy either. Companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have fairly large bureaucracies yet they routinely successfully comple…

There are terrible projects everywhere. But when individual private companies screw up, other companies do what they tried to do better, and in the end the problem gets solved. > The root problem, I think, is that the people who are put in charge of these massive software projects -- typically, MBAs or lawyers by training -- often don't know anything about how to develop software at scale Sounds like a... branch prob…

"What is the root cause of government projects being run by incompetents?"

The incentives tend not to reward competence at achieving a task very well. They tend to reward political climbing. They don't necessarily preclude competence at a task, but energy expended competently performing a task is energy not expended playing politics, which means it tends to get outcompeted.

This is not, strictly speaking, a characteristic of "government". Large corporations that get sufficiently rich and powerful that they end up detached from market discipline develop the same problems.

Security, wealth, and comfort are even more dangerous to large organizations than they are to individuals.

Re: A decade into a project to digitize U.S. immigration forms, just one is online

#32

Post by bjitty » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 3:49 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #26

cs702 wrote: post #20

The root problem is not government. The same thing happens in the private sector. Large corporations routinely spend gazillions on software projects that end up working poorly or not at all. Everyone who has worked in Corporate America knows this all too well. The root problem is not bureaucracy either. Companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have fairly large bureaucracies yet they routinely successfully comple…

Having worked in large companies, small startups, and government, government is orders of magnitude the worst offender when it comes to simply wasting money and getting nothing done. The main difference between small and large companies was it simply took longer for people who got nothing done to be let go. In the worst cases for companies, money stops coming in the door and cuts are forced. Contrast the above with t…

> The main difference between small and large companies was it simply took longer for people who got nothing done to be let go.

That is certainly true and one major facet to the problem.

Re: A decade into a project to digitize U.S. immigration forms, just one is online

#33

Post by Someone1234 » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 3:51 PM UTC

ilamont wrote: post #5

The amount of repetitive paperwork and needless bureaucratic steps for immigration-related matters is utterly ridiculous. The closest approximation I can make to dealing with immigration-related paperwork is filing taxes without the aid of software and being forced to complete and mail in one section (and have it approved) before moving onto the next.

As someone who has gone through the IR1/CR1 process, yeah the entire thing is fucked.

- The forms themselves are poorly designed (needlessly complex, come with misleading/incomplete instructions, tons of "gotchas," etc). Between me and my wife we have three degrees and a masters, are native English speakers, yet we still had to Google to figure things out.

- Instead of having one form, they have three, and you cannot submit the latter two until the proceeding one is accepted (even if they're completely independant). They don't actually check the proceeding forms until the visa is complete (we know that because they flagged something months later).

- Paying fees is a nightmare.

- Even their embassies know how terrible it all is. They often hold workshops for people going through the process and are pretty frank about the bureaucracy. They describe the NVC as a "blackhole" (where things often get lost/delayed/mistakenly rejected).

Digitalisation is useful but the US's house is in such disarray that it seems like the tip of the iceberg. I legitimately believe that the US uses bureaucracy and delays as a way to discourage people from applying for visas and or push visas into the next calendar year. It is the only explanation that makes sense.

To be honest the entire US visa process could be done, end to end, in one day if they wished (ex. background check). And in fact US embassies in exceptional circumstances actually do accomplish the entire visa in 24-48 hours (yes, even for immigration visa).

Re: A decade into a project to digitize U.S. immigration forms, just one is online

#34

Post by Someone1234 » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 3:55 PM UTC

kchoudhu wrote: post #16

ralfruns wrote: post #3

I went through the green card process last year. From my experience, it is nearly impossible without a lawyer. I wonder how much of the delay can be attributed to lobbying from the immigration lawyers that profit from the complicated, paper based process.

I filed: * A permanent residency application based on my marriage. * An application to remove conditions on said permanent residency * An expedited naturalization application We didn't bother getting a lawyer: the paperwork was easy. The problem isn't that the paperwork is hard. The problem is that there is so much paperwork to file.

I think you're overstating it slightly. "Easy" is not the word I'd choose to use.

I too decided not to get a lawyer. It went fine. But it was not "easy" it was long, painful, and trivial to make an error (the paperwork is extremely poorly designed, we used online guides instead of the official instructions to avoid tons of gotchas, in particular with the financials).

People just need to be extremely careful without a lawyer. It isn't "easy" but it isn't so hard that you NEED a lawyer either (which could cost thousands).

Re: A decade into a project to digitize U.S. immigration forms, just one is online

#35

Post by chapium » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 3:57 PM UTC

tvanantwerp wrote: post #6

ralfruns wrote: post #3

I went through the green card process last year. From my experience, it is nearly impossible without a lawyer. I wonder how much of the delay can be attributed to lobbying from the immigration lawyers that profit from the complicated, paper based process.

I remember taking my wife for her medical exam as part of her green card process. What a joke! The doctor--who he has to select as someone on a small approved list--was basically retired and using his position on that list as a way to make extra money. I don't think he did a thing to examine her. He just chatted and told us stories about when he was fighting in Korea and accidentally stepped in a kimchi pot. Very nic…

The medical exams are a really odd requirement. You can live on an H1-B for 10 years, but they still have to check if you cough funny before granting a greencard.

Re: A decade into a project to digitize U.S. immigration forms, just one is online

#36

Post by bograt » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 4:01 PM UTC

cs702 wrote: post #20

The root problem is not government. The same thing happens in the private sector. Large corporations routinely spend gazillions on software projects that end up working poorly or not at all. Everyone who has worked in Corporate America knows this all too well. The root problem is not bureaucracy either. Companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have fairly large bureaucracies yet they routinely successfully comple…

I have experience of developing large software systems for both government and corporations, in the UK.

Large IT systems fail in many ways, small and large and I don't think it's possible to isolate a single root cause but I do have one observation which I think is often overlooked.

When a company like Amazon or Google release a new service or a new product, they generally have the luxury of choosing which customer requirements they want to meet. The more customers they satisfy, the more customers they can hope to win.

This freedom means that these companies can follow the common trajectory of releasing a simple realization of their product which is then honed by iteration. But companies contracted to produce government and corporate systems rarely have this freedom in my experience, but for different reasons.

In the case of government systems it is politically (and often morally) unacceptable to exclude specific classes of end users from a system; the requirement to make a system available to nearly 100% of possible users while at the same time catering for the labyrinthine complexities of local and national government is simply very difficult.

In corporate environments, there is a similar pressure to meet 100% of customer needs, but in this case the users are often staff and though the problem is similar at a technical level, the source of the pressure is different:

Google is a large corporation, and when it releases a product like Gmail, users can choose to use it, or not: they can't singly demand changes, so Google has the power to stand up to users and, in short, be a good custodian of the user experience.

When developing software for corporate customers, this relationship is inverted, and very often, every wrinkle in every corporate business process is expected to be modelled in the software. As a contractor, you know you could produce better software for the corporation, if they were willing to adapt some of their processes in the same way customer adapt their behaviour to using Gmail, but they have the power.

The result is the same in both cases: excess complexity.

Re: A decade into a project to digitize U.S. immigration forms, just one is online

#37

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 4:03 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #26

cs702 wrote: post #20

The root problem is not government. The same thing happens in the private sector. Large corporations routinely spend gazillions on software projects that end up working poorly or not at all. Everyone who has worked in Corporate America knows this all too well. The root problem is not bureaucracy either. Companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have fairly large bureaucracies yet they routinely successfully comple…

Having worked in large companies, small startups, and government, government is orders of magnitude the worst offender when it comes to simply wasting money and getting nothing done. The main difference between small and large companies was it simply took longer for people who got nothing done to be let go. In the worst cases for companies, money stops coming in the door and cuts are forced. Contrast the above with t…

[deleted]

Re: A decade into a project to digitize U.S. immigration forms, just one is online

#38

Post by yanilkr » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 4:05 PM UTC

This looks like an opportunity. There should be an app like facebook where you enter all your data and an app store for forms. Want insurance or DMV or immigration? download the relevant form and it tells you what's missing so you can fill it and the app also give an updated status on your application.

Re: A decade into a project to digitize U.S. immigration forms, just one is online

#39

Post by api » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 4:25 PM UTC

cs702 wrote: post #20

The root problem is not government. The same thing happens in the private sector. Large corporations routinely spend gazillions on software projects that end up working poorly or not at all. Everyone who has worked in Corporate America knows this all too well. The root problem is not bureaucracy either. Companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have fairly large bureaucracies yet they routinely successfully comple…

I say this very often:

The MBA (who has no other expertise) is capitalism's answer to the Soviet "apparatchik."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparatchik

"Management" is a secondary skill in the sense that it only makes any sense if one also has a primary skill. An engineer might learn to manage and thus become an engineering manager. A baker might learn to manage and might manage a baking company or a restaurant/cafe. But only knowing "management" alone is absurd and vapid. I truly cannot comprehend how anyone could purport to manage something they do not understand at the ground level.

To some extent I blame academia for pushing the idea that one can get an MBA and manage things without understanding what one is managing.

Programming is particularly bad. There are no physical analogies for it. It's so alien to ordinary human experience that asking someone with no experience in it to manage it is like asking a blind person to direct a silent film. Actually the latter is far more likely to be successful. I can't actually think of an analogy right now that suitably captures just how inept a non-developer is at managing developers.

From the link:

"Members of the "apparat" were frequently transferred between different areas of responsibility, usually with little or no actual training for their new areas of responsibility. Thus, the term apparatchik, or "agent of the apparatus" was usually the best possible description of the person's profession and occupation."

"It is often considered a derogatory term, with negative connotations in terms of the quality, competence, and attitude of a person thus described."

Re: A decade into a project to digitize U.S. immigration forms, just one is online

#40

Post by jackgavigan » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 4:35 PM UTC

api wrote: post #39

cs702 wrote: post #20

The root problem is not government. The same thing happens in the private sector. Large corporations routinely spend gazillions on software projects that end up working poorly or not at all. Everyone who has worked in Corporate America knows this all too well. The root problem is not bureaucracy either. Companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have fairly large bureaucracies yet they routinely successfully comple…

I say this very often: The MBA (who has no other expertise) is capitalism's answer to the Soviet "apparatchik." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparatchik "Management" is a secondary skill in the sense that it only makes any sense if one also has a primary skill. An engineer might learn to manage and thus become an engineering manager. A baker might learn to manage and might manage a baking company or a restaurant/caf…

> The MBA (who has no other expertise) is capitalism's answer to the Soviet "apparatchik."

I'm an MBA. Are you suggesting that I have no other expertise? Do you think that we undergo some sort of specialised lobotomy at business school to remove the knowledge and experience we accumulated before enroling in business school, and to prevent us from learning anything thereafter?