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My hell as a 911 operator

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Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#21

Post by jdavis703 »

greghinch wrote: post #15
gregd wrote: post #9

Having been involved in long, arduous government procurement processes, I can assure you that it will leave you shaking your head and wondering how ANYTHING in government gets done. The trip from RFP to signed contract is maddening and has probably driven more than one government worker to an alcoholic stupor, wishing for the sweet embrace of death. On a side note, I'm no longer a government employee. My name is Greg…

When I was freelancing, I did some government work. I was flabbergasted by the slow pace at which things moved, and that I had to create accounts in 3 separate systems to submit and get paid for even very basic invoices. Government is a place that is ripe for disruption, but the walls around it are so high, I don't know how to really breach them. There is a huge machine in place of contractors and lobbyists which ess…

This kind of disruption can happen. When I was in school I worked at a small 8(a) (women or minority owned federal contractor) firm. All the developers and designers were under 30 and we built all kinds of CRUD apps for the federal government. Now I work at a startup and the real main difference is that everything moves much faster.

Not everyone can start an 8(a) firm but we could get legislation passed that creates a more competitive way for any small business to work with the federal government.

Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#22

Post by mjn »

greghinch wrote: post #15
gregd wrote: post #9

Having been involved in long, arduous government procurement processes, I can assure you that it will leave you shaking your head and wondering how ANYTHING in government gets done. The trip from RFP to signed contract is maddening and has probably driven more than one government worker to an alcoholic stupor, wishing for the sweet embrace of death. On a side note, I'm no longer a government employee. My name is Greg…

When I was freelancing, I did some government work. I was flabbergasted by the slow pace at which things moved, and that I had to create accounts in 3 separate systems to submit and get paid for even very basic invoices. Government is a place that is ripe for disruption, but the walls around it are so high, I don't know how to really breach them. There is a huge machine in place of contractors and lobbyists which ess…

> But certainly someone who designed infrastructure for Twitter might have some interesting perspective on how to manage 911 traffic.

This program seems aimed at bringing in some of those kinds of people to government agencies: http://www.whitehouse.gov/innovationfellows

I think I've seen a few of them posting on HN, but I can't remember who. They seem to be especially pushing to get things like data.gov working in a modern way.

Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#23

Post by hga »

mjn wrote: post #18
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #10

Pre-9-11, I spent some time doing some high-level analysis, talking to users and administrators, of a nation-wide EMS system for an entire country (Sorry, can't say which) It was a U.S. firm interested in figuring out exactly how much it would cost to create a national system so they could bid on it. This does not have to be a very complicated system at all. It's basically a real-time workflow system. Information com…

The technical complexity of the problem has nothing at all to do with the political and legal maneuvering required to get and execute a large government contract. Or a large contract with any organization, as far as I can tell. In universities, the whole education-ware thing is a mess, with huge piles of contractor dollars going to junk like Blackboard, who manage to sell things to high-level administrators. By far t…

If petrochemical company project was mostly a document imaging project, when did that happen?

I ask because I started playing that game when it was cutting edge, and finished about the time it was "very easy" (early to mid-90s).

Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#24

Post by tomsaffell »

doki_pen wrote: post #14
tomsaffell wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There are years of ... Yes, First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. Sorry, I know it's trite, but there's some truth there. Being ignored for years is not necessarily a reason not to do something. In some cases it's the very best reason to do it. [EDIT] - would those people down-voting please explain why?

I don't see how you could develop such a system without partnership from some government. How would you test it?

Maybe you could partner with just one small government to start. Of all the municipalities in the world, you'd think at-least one would be open to the idea, even if in tandem.

Maybe it could be started by a person who works (or worked) at the dispatch center, and is also a programmer (there must be at-least one of those in the world too).

The point is that NYC laughing/ignoring/fighting you is not a good enough reason not to start. (and who's to say that NYC would do any of those things, given the current state of affairs)

Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#25

Post by dakotasmith »

doki_pen wrote: post #14
tomsaffell wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There are years of ... Yes, First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. Sorry, I know it's trite, but there's some truth there. Being ignored for years is not necessarily a reason not to do something. In some cases it's the very best reason to do it. [EDIT] - would those people down-voting please explain why?

I don't see how you could develop such a system without partnership from some government. How would you test it?

Test it somewhere with a private sector need for such a service, like Detroit?

Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#26

Post by hga »

siculars wrote: post #17

Twitter can handle north of 4k tweets per second on virtually entirely open source software and these morons can't record phone calls. If this is not a glaring example of government mismanagement and waste I don't know what is. Where are the criminal indictments?

Errr, people keep citing Twitter; doesn't anyone remember the Fail Whale?

Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#27

Post by gregd »

jdavis703 wrote: post #21
greghinch wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was freelancing, I did some government work. I was flabbergasted by the slow pace at which things moved, and that I had to create accounts in 3 separate systems to submit and get paid for even very basic invoices. Government is a place that is ripe for disruption, but the walls around it are so high, I don't know how to really breach them. There is a huge machine in place of contractors and lobbyists which ess…

This kind of disruption can happen. When I was in school I worked at a small 8(a) (women or minority owned federal contractor) firm. All the developers and designers were under 30 and we built all kinds of CRUD apps for the federal government. Now I work at a startup and the real main difference is that everything moves much faster. Not everyone can start an 8(a) firm but we could get legislation passed that creates…

I'm not entirely sure this type of disruption CAN happen because this whole process starts and ends with the Legislature, at least at the State level. I was mired in so much bureaucracy it felt like trying to run in molasses.

We certainly had the technical capabilities to disrupt the process, but the process itself isn't even self-aware enough to know it's the problem..

Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#28

Post by DanielBMarkham »

mjn wrote: post #18
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #10

Pre-9-11, I spent some time doing some high-level analysis, talking to users and administrators, of a nation-wide EMS system for an entire country (Sorry, can't say which) It was a U.S. firm interested in figuring out exactly how much it would cost to create a national system so they could bid on it. This does not have to be a very complicated system at all. It's basically a real-time workflow system. Information com…

The technical complexity of the problem has nothing at all to do with the political and legal maneuvering required to get and execute a large government contract. Or a large contract with any organization, as far as I can tell. In universities, the whole education-ware thing is a mess, with huge piles of contractor dollars going to junk like Blackboard, who manage to sell things to high-level administrators. By far t…

Absolutely. And they're dysfunctional for many of the same reasons.

I've worked both, and government is the big leagues. I've seen private organizations squander a few hundred million bucks here or there on disasters, but government projects can easily break into the billions or tens of billions of bucks -- and drag on for years. There's just much more money available, many more players who all want some random benefit from the project, and random rules to stick to. But you're right: this is a function of large numbers of really smart people all trying as hard as they can to do the best job possible. That's the craziest part about it. It's a systemic problem, not one that you fix by just somehow getting smarter people involved or buying a new project management tool.

Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#29

Post by epochwolf »

siculars wrote: post #17

Twitter can handle north of 4k tweets per second on virtually entirely open source software and these morons can't record phone calls. If this is not a glaring example of government mismanagement and waste I don't know what is. Where are the criminal indictments?

And twitter was buggier than the 911 software for the first two years of it's existence.

Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#30

Post by 300bps »

Holy hyperbole. Definitely seems like this worker is frustrated beyond sense or has an agenda with saying things like:

They give rookie operators two months training, and after that just throw ’em in. They’re not ready.

Two months training is not enough training? This is implausible. At its core, they're answering the phone, determining the reason for a call and typing information from the call into a computer. They're not driving out to a site and performing cardiac bypass on people having a heart attack.

The whole thing seemed targeted toward eliciting an emotional response rather than a rational one.

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