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The Pentagon’s procurement system is so broken they are calling on Watson

washingtonpost.com

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Re: The Pentagon’s procurement system is so broken they are calling on Watson

#21

Post by dzdt »

yompers888 wrote: post #6
dzdt wrote: post #4

My understanding is procurement is and remains broken because there are entrenched powers who benefit greatly from that situation. It is working as designed by the people who wrote the rules, bringing great profit to the intended recipients. No change of the system will be allowed that threatens this property.

Could you elaborate on who benefits from a poor procurement system? Does it benefit them in that in conforms to their ideology, or does it do so tangibly? I'm familiar with people being in favor of government being cumbersome, but I can't picture how someone within government who has the power to effect this change would support this. Edit: 'this' in the last sentence ambiguously refers to the nauseatingly lengthy an…

The complexity of the current procurement system means that only giant contractors with an office of red tape experts can effectively bid on the big contracts. These giant contractors get giant and hugely profitable contracts which would have required more competitive bids with a less broken procurement system. In turn the giant contractors reward the politicians that keep the system working in their favor with campaign contributions, hefty speaking fees, cushy positions after leaving elected office, and so on.

Re: The Pentagon’s procurement system is so broken they are calling on Watson

#22

Post by thom »

On a slightly tangentially related note, I was astonished to hear a couple of years back that the UK has legislation written in the proprietary dialect of some patented Oracle software:

http://www.oracle.com/us/industries/public-sector/058991.htm...

Re: The Pentagon’s procurement system is so broken they are calling on Watson

#23

Post by secabeen »

dzdt wrote: post #21
yompers888 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on who benefits from a poor procurement system? Does it benefit them in that in conforms to their ideology, or does it do so tangibly? I'm familiar with people being in favor of government being cumbersome, but I can't picture how someone within government who has the power to effect this change would support this. Edit: 'this' in the last sentence ambiguously refers to the nauseatingly lengthy an…

The complexity of the current procurement system means that only giant contractors with an office of red tape experts can effectively bid on the big contracts. These giant contractors get giant and hugely profitable contracts which would have required more competitive bids with a less broken procurement system. In turn the giant contractors reward the politicians that keep the system working in their favor with campa…

Mostly yes. They also don't actually do much of the real work, they subcontract that out to smaller firms after taking their rent.

Re: The Pentagon’s procurement system is so broken they are calling on Watson

#24

Post by jonathankoren »

yompers888 wrote: post #6
dzdt wrote: post #4

My understanding is procurement is and remains broken because there are entrenched powers who benefit greatly from that situation. It is working as designed by the people who wrote the rules, bringing great profit to the intended recipients. No change of the system will be allowed that threatens this property.

Could you elaborate on who benefits from a poor procurement system? Does it benefit them in that in conforms to their ideology, or does it do so tangibly? I'm familiar with people being in favor of government being cumbersome, but I can't picture how someone within government who has the power to effect this change would support this. Edit: 'this' in the last sentence ambiguously refers to the nauseatingly lengthy an…

Via http://warisboring.com/articles/the-pentagons-pricey-culture... :

"The root of the problem is the revolving door between the Pentagon and private military contractors.

Remember the big white blimp that broke free from its mooring in Maryland last year and floated across rural Pennsylvania? That’s a good example of an underperforming and expensive military program the government should have canceled years ago.

In fact, the Army did try to cut the program, officially called JLENS, in 2010 — only to have then-vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. James Cartwright, rescue it. Shortly after his retirement from the Marine Corps in 2011, Cartwright joined the board of directors of Raytheon, the prime contractor for — you guessed it — the JLENS.

Re: The Pentagon’s procurement system is so broken they are calling on Watson

#26

Post by yo-code-sucks »

hvindin wrote: post #12

Every time I see an article which talks about "Watson" as an individual solution to a problem I find myself wondering what the people paying for it all think that "Watson" is? Realistically its like 10+ racks filled with POWER systems loaded up with terabytes of RAM running SUSE Linux using Apache Hadoop for distributed computing, then some IBM Proprietary software solutions + a few other open bits and pieces (ie Apa…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UIMA

Re: The Pentagon’s procurement system is so broken they are calling on Watson

#27

Post by jonathankoren »

Dwolb wrote: post #14

Why are they throwing even more complex solutions at the complicated procurement procedure? Couldn't the solution be to simplify the procedure itself?

No one wants a simple process.

The craptastic [1-4] F-35 has ties to 42 states plus Puerto Rico if I counted correctly [0]. That's one of the reasons why it can't be canceled.

The defense contractors want the systems confusing so they can spread out production across as many congressional districts as possible in order to maintain clout. (A vote to cancel the Radioactive Ferret Launcher, is a vote kill 50 jobs in your hometown!). Also confusion allows for ample padding.

Another problem that isn't talked about is that since World War II, and especially since the end of the draft, the number of people that have seen how the military actually works, is pretty small, yet at the same time it's standing as an institution has increased. Arguably this is because people only see the recruiting videos, and not the political bureaucracy that the military (and all large organizations) actually is. Congress doesn't push back when the military and their contractors do... well asinine stuff. Say try to make a one-size-fits all fighter that, that has never worked. Or makes a carrier without testing it.[5]

[0] https://www.f35.com/about/economic-impact-map [1] https://medium.com/war-is-boring/everything-wrong-with-the-f... [2] http://warisboring.com/articles/the-f-35-is-still-horribly-b... [3] http://warisboring.com/articles/we-have-proof-the-u-s-air-fo... [4] https://medium.com/war-is-boring/test-pilot-admits-the-f-35-... [5] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-11/navy-order...

Re: The Pentagon’s procurement system is so broken they are calling on Watson

#28

Post by rspeer »

ProAm wrote: post #18
hvindin wrote: post #12

Every time I see an article which talks about "Watson" as an individual solution to a problem I find myself wondering what the people paying for it all think that "Watson" is? Realistically its like 10+ racks filled with POWER systems loaded up with terabytes of RAM running SUSE Linux using Apache Hadoop for distributed computing, then some IBM Proprietary software solutions + a few other open bits and pieces (ie Apa…

NLP is perfect for understanding purchasing requirements, rules, laws, etc.... You right, watson is just a task specific tuned supercomputer, but I see this as a good fit.

NLP pretty much has to be task-specific, but the task-specific NLP that will solve the Pentagon's particular problem almost certainly doesn't exist until someone writes it.

When you describe "Watson" as a task-specific supercomputer, if you mean the Watson that played Jeopardy, that's certainly not what they're going to be using. "Watson" here means hiring IBM consultants to write them some software that runs on IBM hardware.

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