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 From the article: '“Too often, we have built closed, monolithic projects that are outdated or no longer needed by the time they launch,” he said.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)
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Also, from what I can find 6 out of 10 start ups fail within 4 years.
I'm sorry, but what does happen if they fail? It's not like a private business where you declare bankruptcy and move on.
Although I would never want to see a business try to work like the government does, I also don't want to see it the other way around.
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You could have just written:
10 A BOOT STOMPING
20 A HUMAN FACE
30 GOTO 10
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?
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Even worse in TFA. (Score:2, Interesting)
From TFA:
So ... "disruptive" and "crowd source". Any others?
So the crowd sourced plan will be based on open standards to achieve maximum disruption.
Re:Even worse in TFA. (Score:5, Funny)
That is what CIOs do.
They play golf with the other CxOs and spout shit they do not understand.
Re:Even worse in TFA. (Score:5, Funny)
TADA! You sir have nailed it on the head.
I recently had to deal with one of these CIO idiots.. he went off on a building lighting system that it was not LEEDS complaint. and kept spouting terms that keyd me instantly that the idiot went out and search the internet for buzzwords but did not learn what they meant.
I calmly pointed out in the meeting that he was the one that cut the project budget to remove 90% of the occupancy sensors and removed all dimming loads and replaced them with switched loads to further cut costs. He stood up saying we were incompetent because the executive suites were not turning off automatically at night.
I calmly pointed out that to save money someone instructed the engineer to remove those suites from the lighting system and instead requested they use normal light switches.... and if he could look at the signature at the bottom that is the person that is responsible for the system not working the way he wanted it to.
He grabbed the change order from me and looked.... It was his signature.
This is typical from my experience, not the exception.
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Bingo! [dilbert.com]
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.)
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(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.
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"Yes, mobile apps that are crowd sourced should be built on open standards to achieve maximum disruptionability."
This made me LOL.
I think you just coined a new word.
Re:Even worse in TFA. (Score:4, Funny)
I can't wait for the new TSA app that lets you upload pictures of your junk.
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So...Rep. Anthony Weiner was just a beta tester? Talk about being harsh on noobs!
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Well if he can find the right synergies and bring out of the box thinking into play this could work.
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The guy gets to be loud, say he's going to do all these things, get started on the new systems and move on to a more lucrative job in the private sector. In his wake, another redundant system is deployed with no clear goal. Ten years from now we do the whole dance over again.
And will be bribed in 3..2..1 (Score:3)
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.
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Ah. So the waste and stupidity is intentional. I feel better now.
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Basically, politicians aren't accountable because they're spending other people's money. So they can afford to be wasteful.
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No, politicians are the ultimate in accountability because they need to do the will of the people in order to get re-elected every few years.
*snerk* Oops, couldn't quite keep a straight face while saying that...
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Yeah, accountable to the people who vote for them. Who, incidentally, all just got jobs in the nice new factory built in the middle of their nowhere electoral district.
What, you thought politicians were responsible to some greater purpose?
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Ok, then here is the simple and easy question: How you stop either of the 2 big parties from getting Ca 50% of the cotes?
Simple and easy answer: Have either of them do something that 50% of the voting public don't like.
But it appears that the voting US public don't actually dislike big-party politicians nearly as much as they pretend to, or they'd vote for minority parties - or do what the Tea Party did and create their own in-party wing. Thing is, when a minority does do what the Tea Party did and achieves power within a majority party, a lot of other mainstream voters complain loudly that the minority-view is evil, insane a
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.
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You hit the nail on the head.
The problem is, the congressmen do these things without thinking of where the money will come from, so taxes will need to be raised in some form or another in the future.
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Unfortunately, saying "NASA is notorious for that sort of thing" implies that they are somehow responsible for it. It would be more accurate to say that congress is notorious for doing this with the NASA budget. NASA's money is already spent before it even gets to them.
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To paraphrase Ronny Cox in Robocop: "The ED 2009 would have given us maintenance and parts contracts for years! Who CARES if it works?"
Department of Agriculture (Score:3)
Here's an idea, why don't we just shut down 20 of the 21 sections of the Department of Agriculture so they only have one email system?
We can keep food safety inspections, at least until an adequate private inspection regime is in place (like the one that inspects food and facilities for Kosher and Halal dietary requirements).
Re:Department of Agriculture (Score:4)
Yeah that's what we need. 30 competing private "inspection regimes" (29 owned by the food manufacturers) all with their own standards that will be incomprehensible to the average person. Perfect! I definitely think it makes sense to give control to the very respectable food industry that has never done anything shady.
What purpose do you tea party guys think the government serves if not to protect its citizens?
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What purpose do you tea party guys think the government serves if not to protect its citizens?
To oppress it's citizens (not saying I believe this myself, but I imagine a lot of tea party members think so).
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No, I'm not a tea party member, they only see the tip of the iceberg
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So I assume you never use anything provided/maintained by the government?
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What purpose do you tea party guys think the government serves if not to protect its fund-raisers?
I very rarely "FTFY" someone, but...FTFY.
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The problem is that current industrial agricultural practices virtually guarantee our food will be contaminated. Huge chicken processing plants split chickens in a water bath, effectively dipping everything chicken in a soup of chicken feces. Cows are fattened in massive pens, on grain, standing in their feces. The grain diet causes an explosion of e-coli leading to common beef contamination. Worse, these "Farms" are often located near other farms, so either by irrigation or simple transference, bacteria co
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We can keep food safety inspections, at least until an adequate private inspection regime is in place (like the one that inspects food and facilities for Kosher and Halal dietary requirements).
If someone has food that isn't kosher they are unlikely to ever know about it (well unless it turns out that their deity is real). If food poisoning occurs people can die. Not the same thing. Moreover, as a former Orthodox Jew with a lot of experinece with the way the kashrut inspection groups work, I can assure you that they are a good model of exactly what can go wrong with for-profit entities running inspections. They use almost anything as an excuse to simply raises the amount they are charging often in
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Here's an idea, why don't we just shut down 20 of the 21 sections of the Department of Agriculture so they only have one email system?
We can keep food safety inspections, at least until an adequate private inspection regime is in place (like the one that inspects food and facilities for Kosher and Halal dietary requirements).
The last time "food safety inspections", was privatized, the outcome was detailed in "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair. A rollicking read, but not something that I would like to return to.
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I think an argument could be made that this has already happened.
Hmmmm... (Score:3)
Hmmmm... Most start ups fail and end up collapsing completely within a few years!
Just thought it worth pointing out! ;)
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Good point.
USA a division of the Republic of China International
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So you're suggesting that if this guy's plan is successful the U.S. is likely to end up as a wholly-owned subsidiary of China.
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Hmmmm... Most start ups fail and end up collapsing completely within a few years!
But in the meantime, there are a ton of perks, including free beer on Fridays. If VanRoekel is going to do that, he has my vote.
The real solution is to stop being nice. (Score:3)
Stop letting timelines slip and costs rise. Bring some of the work in house instead of letting contractors rape you. I can get rid of those 21 email systems right quick. Build the new system, migrate folks to it. No user input, no predetermined time table, just a phone call telling them their mail has moved.
The Apple Way (Score:2)
This is the Apple way, and there is some merit to it. If you let people have whatever they want, you'll find you have a lot of incompatible requirements. If you give them something that works, they will find ways to do what they need to do, and in the end they'll spend less time futzing with the little known features they originally wanted. It will also significantly reduce the cost to support.
I scoffed at this way for many years, but now that my hair is a bit grayer I've learned that often the simple too
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You've got a good point except that the thing people in this situation end up getting is usually something that is neither simple nor good.
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Congratulations. You now have *22* competing email systems.
And when you try to pull that on Mister More-Important-Than-You, well, it's government, so you won't be fired. But you won't be migrating any more users, either.
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Nope, I killed the others, pulled the power cables out.
Then he has no mail, not my problem.
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No user input, no predetermined time table, just a phone call telling them their mail has moved.
Wow, I thought you were experienced... I was wrong. Have you ever provided IT services at all? Users are a riot away of making your job useless and painful. They'll start using an alternative system (e.g. paper) and defeat you. I saw that happen a few times.
Unless you have the full support from your users, or at least their bosses, you won't accomplish anything. And that means pretending they have some measure of control with user inputs and time tables. Nobody likes uncertainty or authoritarianism!
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Actually I have lots of experience. Users love it, if you are moving them from something that does not work to something that does. People do not want choice, they want things done for them.
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.
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I for one wish you good luck on your search. Don't forget to write!
Mod parent up. (Score:2)
Government is for handling the jobs that business is not efficient or effective enough to handle.
Business is good for running things that can turn a profit in a competitive environment.
Do not confuse the two.
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They're called "lobbyists" (Score:2)
Let's find people who understand government to run ours.
Those people are called "lobbyists" and they already run the government, because ours is a system where corporate executives and government policy makers cooperate for mutual advantage. And so long as there is a financially rewarding level of political power out there to wield, this will continue to be the arrangement.
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Where's the evidence for anything you say? It's just ideology. It's the opposite of a pragmatic "what works" approach for the sake of an ideological vendetta that irrationaly glorifies one particular way of organising things.
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.
Bugs like the 21 email systems in Ag? (Score:2)
So, what he proposes doing is taking 21 systems that currently work, and replacing them with something that, based on history, won't work?
Good rule of thumb - even if it looks inefficient, if it works, LEAVE IT ALONE!
After you've fixed everything that does NOT work, then you can start streamlining the things that work but aren't as efficient as you might like.
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Hey, guess what, NASA is in the process of doing something like this, and it appears to be working. In the last 12 months I've gone from having like 10 different passwords to only 3 or 4, and I love it. Everybody's email addresses went from @blah.derp.nasa.gov to just @nasa.gov. Sure, I have to call the consolidated help line in Mississippi for tech support half the time, but they are well-trained and at least I can actually get some work done instead of constantly resetting passwords and resending email
Oh boy (Score:2)
So... as agile as say a Google? Which Google? Google the brainstorm of a handful of guys or Google the mega corp with offices all over the world? The agile startup might have been more sexy but it only was capable of things in potentia. It had potential, that was realized as it grew. The snow flake that falls is not an avalanche. Neither can it become one. It can cause one but the moment the snowflake has started on the path to an avalanche it has seized to be a simple snowflake.
I can whip up a fairly compl
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So... as agile as say a Google? Which Google? Google the brainstorm of a handful of guys or Google the mega corp with offices all over the world?
Agile as an Apple, the world's biggest startup [cnn.com].
The most efficient form of law and order is to simply kill any offender for any offence.
The law of Moses didn't use imprisonment. It used the death penalty for the most serious offenses and fines and restitution for less serious ones: the value of an eye for an eye, the value of a tooth for a tooth, etc.
obxkcd (Score:2)
Standards. [xkcd.com]
And assuming he wants to make it "like a startup" that means small unbureaucratic groups, shoestring budget, and likely to fail. Good luck.
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Well, you have to admit that it's better than large, bureaucratic groups, a 13-figure budget and almost certain to fail.
Sounds great (Score:2)
Too big to succeed (Score:2)
Government IT projects usually end up too big to succeed. The other issue is that computers make processes too efficient, and government departments never eliminate jobs.
Too many stovepipes of varying quality (Score:2)
I studied such as system in the IRS in school, and have worked with some DoD systems live. One problem is too many stovepipes, often dozens. All the data and business processes have to be integrated into the main system without an interruption of service.
To make it harder, the business processes are often convoluted and the data isn't normalized or even clean. I have seen, literally, layman-made (as in "some dude in the office knew Access and put this together") Access databases holding important informatio
He's the government's CIO, not the country's (Score:3, Insightful)
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Here, here. If I hear one more time it's Obama's job to 'fix the economy' (or Bush's for that matter, I don't care) I think I'll puke.
Guess I'll be puking a lot.
Consolidation vs. Independence (Score:3)
This is the see-saw private industry has been on for 50 years. Do you make each unit independent and agile with its own all-powerful General Manager? Do you consolidate similar support organizations (IT, finance) to HQ thereby giving up uniqueness in favor of standardization? Having spent a lot of time with Mgmt Consultants, I can assure you the current kick is towards consolidation. In 10 years, the consultants will be telling us each organization needs the customization which is only capable by rolling out 20 agile, independent installations. I imagine that this CIO is spending a lot of time with IBM guys with dollar signs in their eyes and pushing their make-work agenda.
What's hilarious is that everyone pretty much understands you give up agility by consolidating back-office functions. The tradeoff is hopefully more cost savings and perhaps better quality/standardization. Saying it will be MORE agile is pretty much a bald-faced lie.
Half way there all ready (Score:2)
Most startups spend more then they take in and then finish by going bankrupt. Maybe the federal government is already a startup.
But but... (Score:2)
Most startups fail.
CIO speak (Score:2)
He needs to synergize the efficiencies of the current group dynamic to maximize ROI within a mobile framework
of outsourced in-scope cloud computing over the coming disruptive quarterly strategic marketing blitz.
21 email systems isn't so uncommon (Score:2)
I've seen this sort of problem before in bigger organizations before - many branch offices run like their own companies, have their own data center (a bunch of servers in a cube).
Granted its a bigger problem in public institutions mainly because good technicians who know how to setup top level IT services like centralized email services and the authentication/directory systems tied to them are working at places that pay better.
Having worked for the State of Oregon - its quite common here, but getting better
90% of startup-ness is people. (Score:2)
Try this on for size... (Score:2)
How about this for an idea, Create a Raft of Open Source Projects ultimately representing 99.99% of the operating software upon which the government will run. Implement it for each of the Governments many departments resources. Have them all sit on an Open Source Information Framework which efficiently allows the vast government bureaucracy to interact and interrelate with ease and simplicity. Have that resource designed to easily provide transparency, accessibility and communication with the Citizens of th
VCs take over, sell out, retire to private island? (Score:3)
Americas New CIO Wants To Disrupt Government and Make It a Startup
In other words he wants the VCs to take over and run the place into the ground, cook the books, sell out, and finally retire to a private island.
Rare to see such honesty from a man in government. Sounds paleo-conservative since thats how the govt has been run all my life...
Better Title (Score:3)
America's New CIO is a Buzzword-Slinging Douche
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And having working at a startup, do you know what is the next step? You are correct, outsourcing to China.
Come on, not all go to China.
You forgot India.
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I want to see him... (Score:3)
I want to see him synergize the potentials of win-win scenarios to maximize ROI on buzzword ideation... just like a real CIO. Obligatory Dilbert [dilbert.com], and excuse me while I vomit for a little while.
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He doesn't belong in the government because he isn't willing to work with what he has. Wants to just throw everything out and start over. Sorry, we've invested billions and trillions of dollars into what we have. And, contrary to most declarations by people with an axe to grind or an idea to sell, it generally works. Anyone going in there to work needs to start where we are and improve it and do so in a fiscally responsible fashion. I realize that this means this guy won't be able to dish out lucrative cont
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Re:Gov doesn't know how to manage contracts (Score:5, Informative)
Let's say I go to Procter&Gamble, and offer them an HR system. I say to them, it will cost $30 million and 3 years. Then after 3 years, I try to bill them $40 million and say it will take another 2 years to deliver.
I'm pretty sure that's when either:
1) PG sues me for breach of contract, and refuses to pay anything
You've obviously never managed a large implementation - cost overruns always happen. Vendors oversell the capabilities of the project and companies underestimate their needs. It's not until the project gets underway that the business realizes that the HR plan they spec'ed out at the beginning won't work anymore because it can't accommodate the needs of their new Asian division. So, the project drags on and the vendor keeps billing (justified by the change orders that the company initiated).
It's not all the fault of the software vendor, it's just that large, complex software deployments are large and complex and it's impossible to spec everything out at the beginning... and even if you could, the needs of the business can change in the 3 years it takes to implement the project.
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I'm not sure if I'd call having twenty-one different email systems a bug, but it is definitely inefficient. A bug is something that is an error in a program, not an error in the implementation of a program.
I wouldn't necessarily call it inefficient either. Perhaps they have survivability in mind, and these email system numbers were counted as well. One down side of having everything the same platform is it will only take one bug/outage/patch fail to crush the whole system instead of only one part of it.
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Having 21 systems could well harm survivability by needlessly increasing complexity. A far smaller number would make more sense. If survivability was a goal then I reckon they screwed up. I'm guessing though it's more likely due to a lack of management across the department. I se the same thing happening in the corporate world when a department decides to reinvent the wheel.
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Having a history is inefficient. Startups are gloriously efficient because they are unencumbered by legacy. Legacy is what they strive to achieve, if they survive long enough to get there.
I think what we really need is a kind of ombudsman who sounds off whenever a project or corporate linkage spreads its tentacles into "too big to fail" territory. The lesson from the private sector is to make failure quick and merciful. The tactics of awarding these big government contracts often contains a sly dose o
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It may be less efficient than it could be, but as it's not all in one place, it doesn't mean that everyone's email breaks because their centralization efforts didn't include redundancy, so a hurricane takes out all e-mail for every person, no matter where they're located.
I'd personally be happy if someone could get this *@#!# exchange server that the agency I work for to put appropriate timestamps on messages. If someone down the hall e-mails me, it should use *his* timezone or *my* timezone ... not the on
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You probably just described one of the big reasons USDA has 21 e-mail systems: In a big organization, it's often cheaper and easier to run a parallel system to the "official" system that is broken or useless (as "official" systems tend to be) than to actually use it. Eventually, some of these ad hoc systems might become more "official" because everyone uses them and eliminating them would cause great harm.
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Indeed. Someone got $850 million in 10 years. Sounds like a good definition of success to me.