

The Tiny Team Taking on a Massive Reform of Government IT - steven
https://medium.com/backchannel/the-tiny-team-taking-on-a-massive-reform-of-government-it-b5f87b85e2dc

======
TheMagicHorsey
I have a friend who worked at a similar "elite" program in the government
called the Presidential Fellows. These are a bunch of highly qualified MBAs,
Programmers, and other such overachievers from the private sector who had
overwhelming faith in the governments ability (and responsibility) to get
things done.

My friend went to DC with a lot of optimism.

Halfway or more through the program, I met my friend at a wedding. My friend's
take on the problems with government IT was that it wasn't resolvable by such
a small team, because the problems were cultural, deep-grained, and protected
by turf-guardians who had a lot to lose with reform.

Without the President spending significant political capital, nothing will
ever get done.

The most egregious instance of wastage that could not be resolved involved an
instance where a certain government department was receiving emails for
archiving. Was printing out the emails. Was sending those printouts to another
department by snail mail. That department was then scanning in the emails and
archiving the digital images to computer storage.

The stupidity of this process was manifest to everyone without mental
disability, and yet nobody could change the process due to the various
contractors and their patrons, and the various government employees employed
in the process.

Later, talking to other government IT workers (not Presidential Fellows) I
came to the conclusion that Govt. human capital is not of the highest quality,
and Govt. is perhaps the worst place to work unless you have a thick skin that
helps you to resist demoralization at every turn.

~~~
drumdance
This is why I've always shied away from working with governments. In a
previous life I was with a small, successful startup that wanted to sell to
the Federal government. After researching it, we learned that getting on the
approved vendor list would be a massive effort (relative to our available
resources), so we ultimately decided not to tackle it.

I suspect the reason so many government web sites suck is that those
contractors "core competence" is navigating the byzantine purchasing process.
Being able to write good code is far down the list of qualifications.

~~~
brandonb
There's some work being done in this area now:
[https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/06/15/agile-bpa-is-
here/](https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/06/15/agile-bpa-is-here/)

------
tmarthal
It's so strange that Medium articles don't have dates on them. Is there a way
to tell when an article was published? Am I missing something?

The reason that I ask, is that I could've swore this article was posted last
month, but it was an actual different FastCompany article
([http://www.fastcompany.com/3046756/obama-and-his-
geeks](http://www.fastcompany.com/3046756/obama-and-his-geeks)).

~~~
dpritchett
They must want people to always feel like every Medium article is fresh.

Meanwhile in the page source:

    
    
      <meta property="article:published_time" content="2015-07-30T17:21:08.966Z">

------
brandonb
FYI, if anybody has questions, there are several YC alums who have joined the
government in some capacity (healthcare.gov, USDS, Nava, PIFs) and are on HN.

~~~
panamafrank
I've heard from people that work in government that the tools they use are
allowed to use are restricted by overly complex procurement rules. The result
is that non-technical teams are forced to use ancient software as anything
else (even if it's opensource) isn't kosher. How could this be reformed?

~~~
brandonb
I could believe that, but my personal experience is that we were able to
introduce pretty modern tools--AWS, Node, Backbone, Hipchat and Google apps
for communications. Getting these approved required going through a rather
complex security audit and dispelling a decent amount of FUD, but otherwise,
there's no real legal barrier to using modern open source software.

I think what was probably key is to find an internal champion within the
organization you're working with. If you can find a good partner on the
business side, you can often get things through the bureaucracy if you're
patient and diligent.

------
stephengillie
TLDR: This is another USDS submarine.

~~~
dpritchett
[0]:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

I wonder what their PR budget is like?

~~~
powera
Probably zero in terms of cash, but high in terms of knowing sympathetic
people in high places more-or-less everywhere in Silicon Valley.

