51–60 of 69 posts
Interesting question, and one that opens up numerous areas of history, communications, community, control, freedom, and public vs. private operation. In the United States, the postal service from its beginning was publicly operated, and served specifically to distribute timely information and general knowledge in the form of discounted rates for newspapers, magazines, and books, as well as providing personal correspo…
All the other answers are great, but I think they're missing the biggest and most important reason: a social network run by any government entity would only run on Internet Explorer 6 or Firefox 2, would store your password in plain text, and would run on 15-year-old un-patched IIS on a few Windows XP servers stored in the basement of city hall. And it would probably all be built on top of a deprecated social media W…
The meme that (all) government is terrible at technology is getting tired. It is not necessarily true that a publicly run system will inevitably be crap/inefficient/archaic. A good example is the British gov.uk group, who have made some well thought out, usable and technologically sound systems. Please stop perpetuating this lie. You can, and should expect better of your public digital systems. Don't let them use "Pu…
There are good examples of government IT infrastructure done right (e.g. https://e-estonia.com), but the economics is stacked against them in many ways.
It doesn't have to be bad, but it almost always is.
You need roads, bridges, water, electricity, and garbage collection to fulfill basic physiological needs, and also so you can swap menial tasks for higher level work/spending time with family/enjoying a better standard of living. Framing in Maslow's pyramid [1]: Many of the goods/services the gov provides fulfill either level 1 physiological needs or level 2 security needs. Social networks fulfill level 3 and 4 needs…
We've been doing those things for a few generations now, but they haven't led to public newspapers. I don't know why we would expect them to lead to public electronic social networks.
All the other answers are great, but I think they're missing the biggest and most important reason: a social network run by any government entity would only run on Internet Explorer 6 or Firefox 2, would store your password in plain text, and would run on 15-year-old un-patched IIS on a few Windows XP servers stored in the basement of city hall. And it would probably all be built on top of a deprecated social media W…
The meme that (all) government is terrible at technology is getting tired. It is not necessarily true that a publicly run system will inevitably be crap/inefficient/archaic. A good example is the British gov.uk group, who have made some well thought out, usable and technologically sound systems. Please stop perpetuating this lie. You can, and should expect better of your public digital systems. Don't let them use "Pu…
Can't call a spade a spade because of the minuscule amount of times it might be a shovel. I suppose when making the comment GP made, they have to put an asterisk to say "most" lest the first comment immediately point out that there are exceptions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
USDS and 18F are staffed by confident people from industry. The federal government, when it comes to software, is not as incompetent as you think.
This is literally the problem. Instead of having a department make software, they are supported from a vastly superior group of developers that work temporarily with that department. Maybe its too much to ask, but shouldnt the company providing the software also employ the talent that is used to make the software?
Having some experience with why government lacks organizational development competence (TLDR; short-sighted management with the wrong goals), I don't think they can do that—they literally are addressing the wrong problem—but the idea wasn't to be a silo of technical skill.
All the other answers are great, but I think they're missing the biggest and most important reason: a social network run by any government entity would only run on Internet Explorer 6 or Firefox 2, would store your password in plain text, and would run on 15-year-old un-patched IIS on a few Windows XP servers stored in the basement of city hall. And it would probably all be built on top of a deprecated social media W…
The meme that (all) government is terrible at technology is getting tired. It is not necessarily true that a publicly run system will inevitably be crap/inefficient/archaic. A good example is the British gov.uk group, who have made some well thought out, usable and technologically sound systems. Please stop perpetuating this lie. You can, and should expect better of your public digital systems. Don't let them use "Pu…
And obviously wrong, when you consider the origins of the computer, the internet and the WWW.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The meme that (all) government is terrible at technology is getting tired. It is not necessarily true that a publicly run system will inevitably be crap/inefficient/archaic. A good example is the British gov.uk group, who have made some well thought out, usable and technologically sound systems. Please stop perpetuating this lie. You can, and should expect better of your public digital systems. Don't let them use "Pu…
Is there a meme that we can use for "most" or is it a lie because you can find outliers so every single government entity technically isn't terrible at technology? What I grow tried of is the defense of general government ineptness using outliers. Can't call a spade a spade because of the minuscule amount of times it might be a shovel. I suppose when making the comment GP made, they have to put an asterisk to say "mo…
"Hey most public stuff is crap, this is bad" - Fine by me. "Don't make that public, it'll be bad because public stuff is bad" - Not fine. Also it implies the inverse, that private is always good, or at least better.
Good is good. Better is better. Private can be good, and is best for most things. Public can be good, and is best for some things.
It wasn't a "social network", by today's standards, but you could get a free account.
The "Internet" received a big boost with an government/academic initiative for high speed links between universities and perhaps some other, government locations. Initially, this was to be segregated out for use by academics and their designated projects and the like. But after a year or two, it was opened up to the general public.
There's a phrase, "Privatizing the profits and socializing the costs."
This connectivity had a lot of value to users. And private companies succeeded in inserting themselves and extracting it. Building upon the public investment that started the whole thing.
This is part of why you don't see public social networks. Similar to how ATT, Comcast, et al. fight tooth and nail to limit and shut down any public ISP initiatives. And they have the bigger pocketbooks, as well as legislators in pocket.
Why are there no public social networks? There are certainly other arguments, other pieces to that puzzle. But one primary one is, because there is money to be made.