211–220 of 241 posts
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Where was that? I am thrilled to hear it and eager to learn what factors made that possible.
This was for the libraries in the "between the lakes" region in Sweden (it was not for the "state"-level, I missremebered). Here is a link (swedish) https://kohasverige.se/nyheter
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When we are talking about centralized government institutions - then we kind of left the free market place.
Well, this thread gives an example of a private initiative that provides a better alternative. :)
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> 4. The requirements are often flat out wrong. Isn't this basically a given? I find it hard to imagine that any organization could come up with good, complete requirements before they've had any software written.
Which is why most governments struggle with big IT projects. Governments by their nature tend to approach everything from a legal perspective. This then means the requirements of these big IT project end up being a mass of legal documents which try to describe what is being delivered by whom. Then when the whole thing falls apart it ends up in the courts and the court then decides who promised what based on those ori…
Something government contractors learn to be good at is following a spec. These lawsuits often end-up costing the taxpayer a fortune for the government to be told that everything was delivered according to their spec.
The consulting company will then recoup it's losses from the lawsuit using their hourly billing clause where it stipulates that they can modify the software for X$/hour.
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I don't doubt that writing a new laws is complicated, but if I write code, and realise that I constantly need to tack on more code to handle special cases, then I will normally revisits my design. It is not my impression that politicians do the same with laws. One major issue, at least with Danish law makers, is that they want to target special groups, but that would be discriminating, so instead they attempt to targ…
It's crazy out here in DK. The most embarrassing example of such crazy targeted laws is the "hand shake with the mayor" requirement for new Danish citizens, clearly target at a certain ethnicity that would hesitate to do just that. The intent is to make it difficult to that ethnicity, the result is just a veiled law that makes them "appear" just enough secular and non-discriminatory. There's a lot I love about life i…
One might wonder what would happen do Danes abroad not respecting the local customs in certain conservative countries.
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> 4. The requirements are often flat out wrong. Isn't this basically a given? I find it hard to imagine that any organization could come up with good, complete requirements before they've had any software written.
Right. But the client should never come up with the detailed spec. If they know what needs to be done it'd literally be faster for them to code it themselves. They should never produce more than a page or two of specs, outside of the central task itself, because most everything will change when under production anyways. A project like this is big enough that apps became a thing, and fundamentally changed twice, in th…
They would need to hire software engineers and, quite frankly, most municipal governments aren't capable of adequately compensating these positions.
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Right. But the client should never come up with the detailed spec. If they know what needs to be done it'd literally be faster for them to code it themselves. They should never produce more than a page or two of specs, outside of the central task itself, because most everything will change when under production anyways. A project like this is big enough that apps became a thing, and fundamentally changed twice, in th…
> If they know what needs to be done it'd literally be faster for them to code it themselves. They would need to hire software engineers and, quite frankly, most municipal governments aren't capable of adequately compensating these positions.
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> If they know what needs to be done it'd literally be faster for them to code it themselves. They would need to hire software engineers and, quite frankly, most municipal governments aren't capable of adequately compensating these positions.
Right, so they also don't have the capability of writing the spec. Knowing that they should just hand it all off.
The best solution would be for government IT to simply be competitive with the private sector for talent acquisition. That would probably mean that most senior software engineers will end-up being above the mayor's paygrade however.
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Right. But the client should never come up with the detailed spec. If they know what needs to be done it'd literally be faster for them to code it themselves. They should never produce more than a page or two of specs, outside of the central task itself, because most everything will change when under production anyways. A project like this is big enough that apps became a thing, and fundamentally changed twice, in th…
> If they know what needs to be done it'd literally be faster for them to code it themselves. They would need to hire software engineers and, quite frankly, most municipal governments aren't capable of adequately compensating these positions.
Of course they are, because they already are compensating them plus contract management overhead on both sides of the contracting arrangements (which are usually made even greater because they have different contractors for different phases of an effort), plus contractor profits.
Aside from simple corrupt motives (both by responsible managers involved in deals directly and higher-level politicians who favor inefficiency of kicking things off to industry because it buys support from the beneficiaries), this is done because it spreads the blame in the event of failure, which is seen by many involved as more important than maximizing likelihood of success or cost efficiency.
But citizens (well, at least those not corruptly benefitting) shouldn't tolerate that.
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Right, so they also don't have the capability of writing the spec. Knowing that they should just hand it all off.
That would be even worse! Can you imagine the headlines where it's a private company that tells the government what they need to buy AND sells it? Horrible conflict of interest. The best solution would be for government IT to simply be competitive with the private sector for talent acquisition. That would probably mean that most senior software engineers will end-up being above the mayor's paygrade however.
No organization should expand outside its desired core competency. Specialization is for organizations. If you want competency you hire it as a consultant. If you need to check that consultant, hire another.
Hire one company to write the spec and the product. Hire two others, small firms, one in the problem space (tax, airlines, etc) to check the business requirements and one in the software space to make sure spec/dev/test processes are adequate.
> Can you imagine the headlines
Yes, 100% lies written by a bitter communist. Modern corporate media in a nutshell. But the government already took the brunt of that for screwing up earlier. The screwup you mention would be no worse. Partly because the news is hyperbolic and nobody believes it these days - every problem reported is the worst ever.