The way government does tech is outdated and risky • Hacker News Board

Re: The way government does tech is outdated and risky

#141

Post by moron4hire » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 3:04 PM UTC

moron4hire wrote: post #101

vonmoltke wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the government, depending on how "involved" your customer is in the contract, they might have a shitfit if they find out you are doing this. As another poster in this section noted, there are plenty of government and quasi-government[1] employees who seriously believe that you can't start writing code until you have defined all your requirements and prepared a design to meet those requirements. [1] People who wo…

You are right, which is why I don't actually do government contracts anymore. It's just too easy to end up working for a complete, abject moron.

I should say, this is also why I don't work for Fortune 500 companies anymore, and also why I don't do work for fly-by-night, no-technical-cofounder startups, either.

Re: The way government does tech is outdated and risky

#142

Post by hga » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 3:08 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #107

john_b wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large companies in well established industries sometimes operate with near monopoly power and are only threatened when the entire industry undergoes a long term, permanent change. Most people don't consider such a situation a functioning, healthy market. Healthcare and banking are two great examples of industries whose dynamics tend to result in a small number of powerful entities calling the shots, the former due to…

Bad software development processes are everywhere. I've seen more than one successful companies that aren't massive corporations futz around and produce garbage. I've also seen highly effective government organizations produce some awesome product.

While I wouldn't call it "awesome" (bit too clunky for that), the Medicare.gov site that CGI Federal is responsible for (don't know if they built it or the recent Plan D shopping and enrollment part) is pretty good, very solid and gets the job done.

Re: The way government does tech is outdated and risky

#143

Post by hga » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 3:12 PM UTC

allochthon wrote: post #114

sien wrote: post #43

It's not just the US government that has crazy, weird, inefficient technology. I'd be surprised if every government wasn't like this. The biggest IT failure in the world was the UK's attempt at healthcare computing that cost 12Bn GBP and didn't deliver a functioning system. I work as a contractor for the Australian government. I personally know of multiple project failures in the 10s of millions of AUD range and a fe…

You make some good points. Thinking a little more about the situation, consider that the majority of startups fail. I would not be surprised, if one were to take a look at the success rates of internal projects in large companies, to learn that those are fairly low as well. So if the private sector is more efficient than the public sector in IT, the differences are probably more subtle than one would at first think.…

Yes, it's believed that most of those internal projects fail. Canceled, declare victory because of the internal political stakes but quietly not used (very much), delivered with a fraction of the original features, etc.

For some time I've thought this was one of the primary attractions of offshoring: if you must maintain the pretense of developing new programs and systems, it's a cheaper way to inevitably fail....

Re: The way government does tech is outdated and risky

#144

Post by walshemj » Wed, Oct 23, 2013, 5:49 PM UTC

bpyne wrote: post #134

zb wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever seen water jump back up a few stages of a waterfall? (Hint: no.) It's called the Waterfall model exactly because that kind of thing is explicitly not part of it (see Figure 2 in the Royce paper linked above). That's the whole point of the name. It goes without saying that no software development effort has ever lived up to this standard. Nonetheless, the fact that it is not possible to develop non-trivi…

You're being a bit too literal. The name came from the resemblance of a diagram in the paper to a waterfall. The name wasn't meant to constrain the methodology to strict characteristics of a waterfall. The steps are meant to be followed in order. It is gated. But, nothing constrains the steps from being repeated. That is the crux of the difference between Dr. Royce's paper and what the military formed as a standard b…

I wonder if they will say the same about Object Orientation or the "cloud" in ten years time innocent smile

Re: The way government does tech is outdated and risky

#145

Post by eru » Thu, Oct 24, 2013, 3:05 PM UTC

allochthon wrote: post #137

eru wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you should look at the smaller countries. Like Singapore?

I like that idea. There might be a good process in place at a smaller scale that can be scaled up. What is it about Singapore's procurement process that stands out to you? (I don't know anything about it.)

I don't know enough about the process to comment, but judging by the results it must be pretty good. They have a good track record of finishing government projects on schedule and budget.