Americas New CIO Wants To Disrupt Government and Make It a Startup 287
An anonymous reader writes "America's new CIO Steven VanRoekel wants to revamp the federal government and make it as agile as a startup. But first he has to get rid of bugs like the Department of Agriculture's 21 different e-mail systems. From the article: '“Too often, we have built closed, monolithic projects that are outdated or no longer needed by the time they launch,” he said. As an example, he mentioned the Defense Department’s human resources management system. Dubbed the “Defense Integrated Military Human Resource System,” the project was meant to take seven years to develop. Instead, it took 10, cost $850 million and had to be scrapped after 10 years of development in 2010 because it ended up being useless.'"
New buzzword alert (Score:5, Insightful)
Good luck with the politics (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of things in the Federal government seem wasteful until you realize the politics behind how they came to be that way. "Why do you have this facility way out here, when it would be cheaper to move it closer?" often doesn't elicit a "Because we're wasteful and stupid" response so much as a "Because we need the support of powerful Senator X and so we built it in his state" response. NASA is notorious for that sort of thing. Almost all of their contracts go to very politically connected contractors with powerful Congressional backing.
That “Defense Integrated Military Human Resource System” was a Northrop Grumman [wikipedia.org] project. If the name Northrop Grumman doesn't mean anything to you, you don't know jackshit about federal politics, or how things REALLY work. Northrop Grumman owns Congress.Tthey have facilities in virtually every state.
Government is not a business. (Score:5, Insightful)
Often we see people who failed in business try to get into politics. It's time to stop this -- government is not a business.
Let's find people who understand government to run ours.
Only "wasteful" to other constituencies. (Score:4, Insightful)
If the constituents of Senator X benefit from his demanding that it be built in his district before he'll vote for it ... then he's doing a good job for his constituents.
This is only "waste" when people outside of his constituency look at it. And only then because it does not directly benefit them.
Which is why people are pissed at "Congress" but the re-election rate for Representatives and Senators is so high.
Get rid of the "bad" people in Congress who are grabbing pork for themselves and their districts ... but keep our "good" Congress Critters who are looking out for the best interests of our district.
He's the government's CIO, not the country's (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Even worse in TFA. (Score:5, Insightful)
He never said they need daily interactions with the government. He said he wants to change the process so that the interactions one does need can be done online in a few minutes instead of needing to haul off to some government office, stand in line for an hour and ultimately make a day of it. And people don't have to want it, government is that involved in their daily lives. That is well beyond his control.
Quite frankly even your cherry-picked quotes are far more valuable than the rest of your post. There is literally not a thing you quoted that is a bad idea or shouldn't be done, you just wanted to try to earn some Slashdot Clever Points by screaming "BUZZWORD! BUZZWORD!" as often as you can, making most of them up as you go and repeating them over and over so it sounds like it's more dense than it is. (Hint: If "open standards" is a buzzword in government to you, you're fucking doing it wrong -- it is EXACTLY what should be happening with our tax dollars.)
Re:Even worse in TFA. (Score:3, Insightful)
(Hint: If "open standards" is a buzzword in government to you, you're fucking doing it wrong -- it is EXACTLY what should be happening with our tax dollars.)
Protip: if a brainless parrot is saying "open standards", and you believe that actually means something, YOU are doing it wrong.
Acta, non verba.
Re:Government is not a business. (Score:4, Insightful)
Not a bug, that's by design -- the free market works great for an economy, and terrible for a government. If you don't believe me, take a trip to Mexico and see how the free market police handle peacekeeping.
Re:New buzzword alert (Score:5, Insightful)
The government doesn't give a shit about you.
If they didn't care at all then things could be much worse.
Do governments prevent natural disasters? No.
Sure they do, to some extent. They build dykes, enforce building codes for earthquakes, have fire departments. Can they prevent every single disaster? Of course not, but lots are.
Can government stop revolutions? Look at the middle east.
Sure, go ahead and look. It's a mixed bag. Remember the Iranian revolution in 2009? Crushed. Egypt, for all its gains, still has a military junta in charge. The Libyan revolution only succeeded because of NATO intervention. Syria and Yemen haven't toppled yet. Look at history. There have been countless rebellions put down.
But it can't give you what you don't already have.
You mean things like roads, bridges, highways, power, sewer, and the Internet?