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In Stockholm there's currently an IT battle underway

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Re: In Stockholm there's currently an IT battle underway

#131

Post by astrange »

bsder wrote: post #30
oscardssmith wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about blender, vlc, and Firefox?

Firefox and Blender have significant commercial investment behind them to keep them maintained. And they both started out as proprietary. VLC I don't know about. The fact that there are so few successful, non-programming examples exactly demonstrates the point.

VLC is mostly based on ffmpeg which didn't have much public commercial sponsorship for years, until the post-YouTube era, where there was some sponsorship from Google but mostly just a lot more small and large closed-source developers releasing crappy "video converter programs" and not crediting it.

It instead was mostly developed by a schizophrenic Austrian math genius in his free time from not being regularly employed, plus some other grad student types.

Re: In Stockholm there's currently an IT battle underway

#132

Post by astrange »

bjoli wrote: post #114
908B64B197 wrote: post #4

> One parent managed to access other people's private data, leading to @Stockholmsstad being fined for bad security. ... And the fine, levied by bureaucrats paid with taxpayer's money was paid with... Taxpayer's money. “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.” ― Ronald Reagan

This is unrelated, but how in the world can he be held in such high regard in the US? Over here (Europe) he was widely regarded as a clown during his presidency, and the whole Iran/contra deal, together with the pardons by Bush senior, didn't really do his legacy any favours. Just a week ago a friend of mine (who does not share my views, and is generally positive of Reaganomics) said something along the lines of: "no…

It's been a while so nobody actually remembers him or what he did, except for the Republican personality cult. Also, the economy did pretty well while he was president, although it was a coincidence because it was so bad under Carter.

What Reagan and Nixon mainly ran on, which is still the current Republican strategy, is making white people feel good about being white by telling them that all black people were criminals, and proving it by taking away their welfare and putting them all in prisons.

Re: In Stockholm there's currently an IT battle underway

#133

Post by mjevans »

jordanbeiber wrote: post #78
Twixes wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the problem here is exactly that the project was outsourced. Outsourcing is likely to lead to crap products and with clueless public funding the costs end up astronomical relative to the quality of the result. In-house software expertise could result in better quality (this budget could definitely afford a lot of great engineers) and more controllable costs.

Project model -> outsourcing -> shitty software The outsourcing is to be blamed on the project model. I could staff up a small team and build this thing on a fraction of the budget, as proven by the “competing” initiative. Many of us could! You could even outsource some of the work to individual devs around the world. What you can’t do is accomplish that under the weight of a PMO spawned project with a billion in bud…

The sad parts:

* That team is still necessary for future changes and maintenance, including security and transitions.

* The public sector has many institutions* where such a team should have tenure (and other work to fill the non-public works projects time).

Offhand, These institutions include the temples of information worship (libraries), information provisioning (higher education of all sorts; elementary and lower are for converting feral humans to educated people), and any civil engineers (civilian or military at any level).

Re: In Stockholm there's currently an IT battle underway

#135

Post by jordanbeiber »

mjevans wrote: post #133
jordanbeiber wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Project model -> outsourcing -> shitty software The outsourcing is to be blamed on the project model. I could staff up a small team and build this thing on a fraction of the budget, as proven by the “competing” initiative. Many of us could! You could even outsource some of the work to individual devs around the world. What you can’t do is accomplish that under the weight of a PMO spawned project with a billion in bud…

The sad parts: * That team is still necessary for future changes and maintenance, including security and transitions. * The public sector has many institutions* where such a team should have tenure (and other work to fill the non-public works projects time). Offhand, These institutions include the temples of information worship (libraries), information provisioning (higher education of all sorts; elementary and lower…

Exactly.

This wouldn’t as much rub me the wrong way had this been an effort of actual employees and staff at some govt agency where this were a longer term (indefinite?) initiative. At least then it turns in to:

- mostly a zero sum game with my tax money

- opens up for other, future, opportunities and lessons learned

Hiring services from consultancies and third parties that after project end will “hand-off” to maintenance and operations to... another third party. I mean. Come on!

Re: In Stockholm there's currently an IT battle underway

#136

Post by alkonaut »

hpkuarg wrote: post #28

I wonder how Swedes maintain their reputation of having a well-run, corruption-free public sector?

Among other things, that we get angry in public when this happens. Hopefully that someone will see at least some consequence. That we are even surprised and upset about this I think is a good sign. I’m sure there are places where people would shrug even if the brother of the politician in question was running the firm that got the contract. Thankfully we have very little of that.

Re: In Stockholm there's currently an IT battle underway

#137

Post by pjc50 »

bjoli wrote: post #114
908B64B197 wrote: post #4

> One parent managed to access other people's private data, leading to @Stockholmsstad being fined for bad security. ... And the fine, levied by bureaucrats paid with taxpayer's money was paid with... Taxpayer's money. “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.” ― Ronald Reagan

This is unrelated, but how in the world can he be held in such high regard in the US? Over here (Europe) he was widely regarded as a clown during his presidency, and the whole Iran/contra deal, together with the pardons by Bush senior, didn't really do his legacy any favours. Just a week ago a friend of mine (who does not share my views, and is generally positive of Reaganomics) said something along the lines of: "no…

Like Trump, he was an actor that told a story about America that helped people feel good about themselves, and talked up the fight against the designated enemies: Iran, communism, and unions.

Loyalty politics beats actual accountability. That's why the man who illegally sold arms to an enemy of America ended up as head of the NRA selling arms to America.

Re: In Stockholm there's currently an IT battle underway

#138

Post by alkonaut »

renewiltord wrote: post #41

Government organizations are terrified about open source initiatives. There's something strange about it. You could volunteer to do all the work and they'll still oppose you at every turn. My hope is that we'll reach a stage where citizen participatory programming is normal for all. Where my dad could offer a PR to fix a typo on a government page casually as he browses it. I have a feeling we're not far off but you n…

It’s still “no one got fired for buying IBM” at play.

I can see why you’d be defensive and make a project together with the firm that is the biggest player in software for the public sector (although their reputation is poor).

What I don’t understand is why the project is a Big Bang release type thing. Or why the contract can’t have clauses about openness or interoperability? If the supplier is scared by that or charges more for it - switch. Having source visible or exposed APIs doesn’t mean they have to accept PRs (although that would be great PR)

Re: In Stockholm there's currently an IT battle underway

#140

Post by odiroot »

bjoli wrote: post #114
908B64B197 wrote: post #4

> One parent managed to access other people's private data, leading to @Stockholmsstad being fined for bad security. ... And the fine, levied by bureaucrats paid with taxpayer's money was paid with... Taxpayer's money. “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.” ― Ronald Reagan

This is unrelated, but how in the world can he be held in such high regard in the US? Over here (Europe) he was widely regarded as a clown during his presidency, and the whole Iran/contra deal, together with the pardons by Bush senior, didn't really do his legacy any favours. Just a week ago a friend of mine (who does not share my views, and is generally positive of Reaganomics) said something along the lines of: "no…

> Over here (Europe) he was widely regarded as a clown during his presidency

Over here in Europe he is praised for liberating us from communism.

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