
Tech Giants Face Off Against 18F - woodhull
http://www.govtech.com/civic/IT-Showdown-Tech-Giants-Face-Off-Against-18F.html
======
stephenhuey
A friend of mine in 18F was just telling me awesome stories of what they're
doing. I remember reading horror stories on Slashdot a dozen years ago of how
government IT contractors were paid so much and did all the work because full-
timers were supposedly incompetent and wishing there were some way this could
change. I'm very happy to see this administration making some proactive
changes to attract talented people. 18F is rapidly becoming a highly regarded
entity and I believe they give dignity to the term government service, as it
should be. I'd rather the contractors have to fight hard to earn my tax
dollars. Yes, the contractors have to jump through extra hurdles, but too many
take advantage of their position. Yes, it's hard on those who have jumped
through many hurdles to now have to contend with a changing landscape, but why
should government contracting remain a cushy gig when the rest of us in the
private sector have to rapidly adapt all the time? Not all contractors are
bad, but it's nice to know 18F is raising the bar for them.

~~~
pmorici
"I remember reading horror stories on Slashdot a dozen years ago of how
government IT contractors were paid so much and did all the work because full-
timers were supposedly incompetent and wishing there were some way this could
change."

I think this is an often repeated phrase that amounts to a political talking
point used by people who want the government to outsource more work to private
contractors than might otherwise be fiscally prudent.

~~~
stephenhuey
Yes, I definitely don't want to reinforce that and I do agree that narrative
is used to give work to more contractors than necessary (I was just using that
to paint a portrait of how people perceive contractors versus government
employees).

Someone in the Marines isn't paid a lot in cash for what they do, but they do
enjoy well-deserved honor and satisfaction in serving in a mission and other
intangibles. I know there's a big difference between military and other
government workers (members of the military put their lives on the line a lot
more), but I do think that just as a Marine enjoys dignity in their work, it
is possible to shift the perception of other government workers and give the
positions more dignity by raising recruiting standards, empowering the workers
to take on more responsibility and playing a stronger role in fulfilling the
mission.

~~~
maxxxxx
It's probably hard to be proud of your work when you know that at least half
of your bosses (congress and a lot of political appointees) passionately hate
that the fact that your job exists. I doubt that the quality of people the
military hires is much different from the quality but military people know
their service is appreciated.

------
Humjob
This is a great example of an entrenched incumbent/monopolist backlash against
an earnest attempt to cut costs and increase the efficiency of government.
This same story happens every day throughout the world in numerous ways, and
solving it so the 'good guys' win is in my opinion one of the of the most
important things a country can do to improve its institutions.

I've spoken to a number of developers who work in DC, and they pretty much
tell the same story: huge tech companies/consulting firms who want to lock in
a long-term contract use unnecessarily complex technologies and solutions (I'm
looking at you, Java EE) that create big legacy codebases which are very
difficult to switch away from, ensuring that the contractor has a job forever.
Furthermore, once they've got the government agency 'by the balls' (AKA, the
contractor has built a complex, poorly documented monster which only it can
understand), it can charge a ridiculous amount of money for maintenance and
new feature development.

~~~
sievebrain
Lots of successful websites use J2EE though. Picking on that seems kind of
unfair. It's not like giant codebases written in Ruby or JavaScript or PHP are
somehow easier to maintain or switch away from.

~~~
joeletizia
You're absolutely right. It's the people involved that make or break the
codebase, and transitively, the project itself.

------
myblake
It's hard to read this and not get the impression that firms used to lucrative
government contracts are simply not keen at new competition and are lobbying
to protect their privledged position. Despite the fact increased competition
benefits the government and tax payers.

~~~
andrewl
That's exactly how I read it, myblake. I would hope that somebody on the House
subcommittee said to the lobbyists something like "You, the lobbyist
representing ITAPS, I see in my notes that ITAPS members include, among
others, IBM, Deloitte, SAP, Xerox, and Microsoft. The 18F group has a staff of
185. If the companies you represent feel they can be out-performed by a staff
of 185 then why have we been giving them billions of dollars all these years?
Are they, in reality, completely incompetent?"

And regarding the conflict of interest issue, YC user zacharycohn, who says he
works for 18F, wrote "As a government organization, not a private company, we
can't respond to RFPs. No one is really sure where this claim that we help
write and then respond to rfps comes from, but it's not true."

I don't see where the conflict of interest would come anyway even if 18F _was_
bidding on contracts. If I ask a plumber for an estimate to fix my sink, and
then decide to do the job myself, I don't see anything unethical there. The
plumber might not _like_ that I'm capable of doing the work myself, but
there's nothing wrong with it. I could see a problem if the 18F staff stood to
receive massive raises or bonuses if they decided to reject a vendor's bid and
do the job themselves. But I don't think that's the way it works for
government employees. At least not government employees at that level. The
higher ups do make a good profit on campaign contributions or outright bribes.
And that's why the software industry lobbyists will be listened to.

------
jpgvm
I don't live in the US but this would annoy me greatly.

Having worked in big companies where consulting firms like IBM and Deloitte
have really screwed things up one thing has become abundantly clear to me.

Building yourself is always better. There are really no caveats to this. A
team hired by you is a team aligned with you. A firm servicing a consulting
contract will always milk the contract for whatever they can get, especially
when they often do really sly things like settle for a lower initial cost but
build in onerous clauses that drastically blow out costs for all sorts of
reasons.

If anything they should expand 18F/USDS and eliminate the buy-first policy in
favor of build-first. Only go to vendors when it's just not feasible to build
it with the resources available.

~~~
vivekd
I agree, it is better to have the government do their own websites rather than
go outside. The only thing is the allegations seem to be that 18F is helping
government agencies draft up procurement contracts and then bidding on the
same contracts it helped draft.

The article says that 18F is alleged to be:

> acting as both a procurement policymaker and as a tech competitor

This seems like a severe conflict of interest in which they would write
procurement contracts favoring themselves. I would be okay with it if they
just made 18F the site builder and didn't have them compete with private
companies on tender, but if the allegations are to be believed, that doesn't
seem to be the case, it seems like 18F is a federal agency bidding against
private contracts.

~~~
dalerus
Huge potential conflict here unless the 18F consulting team that drafts the
requirement is firewalled away from the bidding team.

I think once they clarify this, it would be all good.

~~~
andrewl
Dalerus, as Zacharycohn says, the 18F group doesn't respond to RFPs. But I
personally don't see that it would be a conflict of interest if they _were_
allowed to respond. I could see a conflict of interest if the 18F group was a
private company employed by the government and allowed to both draft
requirements and bid on contracts. I wouldn't want to see Microsoft drafting
requirements _and_ bidding on them. But 18F is _part_ of the government.

Consider this scenario: The 18F team works with the Secretary of the
Interior's office to draft requirements for a system needed by the Department
of the Interior. They gather the requirements and conclude "This isn't a huge
system. We can do this ourselves." Do the individuals working at 18F get
raises or massive bonuses for doing the work, or do they continue to receive
the same civil service graded salary they've always been receiving? It is
certainly in the 18F department's interest to have work and continue to exist,
but I don't see any huge payoff to the head of 18F the way there would be if a
large company got a contract.

Or, to sort of repeat a scenario I offered earlier in this conversation, my
wife wants our bathroom remodeled. I interview her and find out what she wants
and write it all down. I go over it with a few companies that do bathroom
remodeling. I receive their bids. I conclude that I'm capable of doing the
work myself more quickly and more cheaply. I award the "contract" to myself.
Where's the conflict of interest?

~~~
dalerus
I posted that before they responded. Good to hear they don't respond to RFPs.

The point of RFPs are to allow fair competition between vendors. Also to allow
the government agencies to compare bids apples to apples and score
accordingly. You're example is fine as long as you are providing the other
bidders with the same information. It breaks down if you have inside
information that other bidders don't have.

For example, most RFPs don't include budget info, but often a large portion of
the scoring is based around the budget. If 18F had worked to create the
criteria, knowing information that wasn't public to bidders, then won said
bid, that's where the conflict comes in.

But this is all for not, as 18F has clarified that they don't do this, which
is great. I'm all for better requirements, transparency, and lower government
spending.

I bid on a lot of RFPs and the process needs fixing for sure. Anything
tobreduce the amount of work I need to do to draft a bid is welcomed.
Goverment bids take an insane amount of man hours on our part.

Love the work 18F is doing in this space.

------
jedberg
There is a nuance here that many of you are missing. Up until 18F, the
government procurement process was so byzantine that navigating it was core
competency of a government contractors and one of their main competitive
advantages.

What the lobbyists are complaining about is that 18F doesn't have to go
through that process while everyone else does. OR more specifically, they
believe that 18F is skipping the process but they don't know because of lack
of transparency.

They want the playing field to be even -- either make 18F follow all the same
rules or allow them to skirt the same rules.

Part of the reason those government contracts are worth so much is because of
all the forms and paperwork you have to file just to get one.

So the issue isn't as black and white as all of us engineers want it to be.

Honestly, I'm all in favor of dropping all the regs for the contractors, but
the downside to that is that the regs were put into place to stop corruption
-- i.e all the contracts were just going to the (typically white rich male)
friends of the government agents. A lot of those government regulations are
there to make sure that women and minority owned businesses get some of those
contracts (although there is a ton of corruption around pass through entities
there, but that's a different issue).

~~~
neurotech1
I was under the impression that 18F follow processes as required for the
project budget. If 18F is working a $500k job, there is a lot less process and
paperwork than a $5m job.

If a "legacy" provider makes a particular project into a $5m job, and 18F see
it as a $500k job, then that aint 18F skipping processes.

There are ways legacy contractors can "skirt the rules" by doing a "demo" and
then completing the project while staying under the discretionary budget
limits.

~~~
jedberg
Yes that's true but what they are complaining about is that the process isn't
transparent enough for them to know that is happening.

Also related is the fact that the admins at 18f are paid for by the government
and so their cost isn't included in the project budget whereas the private
contract needs to pay for the staff that processes the paperwork within the
project budget.

------
cheriot
Gov contractors are pissed that the government can build some of its own
systems? HA!

The first job I had out of school was on a government contract. The gov
employee that was suppose to oversee the technical decisions made was even
less experienced than I was and worked about as hard as his salary suggested.
Needless to say, our instructions were often to meet the letter of the
contract whether it accomplished the intended goal or not. 18F's experience
has long been needed.

------
gkop
I recently helped meet an RFI to be considered for the pre-qualified vendor
pool for the California project mentioned in the article. At least one cool
thing that 18F inspired is that all of the vying vendors' prototypes
(developed as an unpaid trial task) are located and indexed on GitHub. You can
decide for yourself whether the big established players or the new, more
nimble outfits produce better prototype work:
[https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=chhs](https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=chhs).

~~~
dmix
Lets see: java, javascript, java, java, javascript, and PHP.

Yup, about what I'd expect from gov contractors.

------
nickpsecurity
Unreal. That was one of most one-sided pieces I've ever read of an attack on
innovation within government. 18F is doing great work. They're pretty
transparent, too, given they publish lots of their activities and reasoning.
Nobody taking bribes either that I'm aware of. Whereas, the "lobbyists" and
"representatives" in question are either delivering or taking bribes from big
companies to ensure they get contracts to continue sucking money out of
taxpayers for nothing. This organized, outdated corruption resisting something
that threatens it. Of course, the article doesn't report on _that_ angle which
is more important than anything policy-related.

Thing is, even the corruption aspect could be done better in a win-win way if
they tried. They can still rake in the big profits on government systems. Just
act as main contractors that interface with those government entities,
subcontract out work to groups 18F would encourage, get good results,
painlessly integrate it due to subcontractors' talent, and then deliver it to
government with 30-50% profit for doing nothing. Continue to pull profits due
to support/licensing. This has worked for defense contractors, including those
named, for decades with subcontractors just using outdated or conservative
methods. It could work on the newer approaches as well. They might as well go
all in on such a better form of corruption as them loosing contracts due to
efforts like 18F is only a matter of time. First mover advantage suggests they
lock-in a new strategy immediately.

Note: Not that I prefer corruption. I just know it's not going away in an
apathetic "democracy." So, I recommend stuff the corrupt parties might
actually adopt vs something that eliminates their profits and re-elections
respectively.

------
swingbridge
So basically putting some competent tech people in charge of government
technology has resulted in a cracking down on waste, fraud, abuse and general
stupidity. And this is a bad thing because...?

~~~
k__
What is good for society isn't necessarily good for an individual.

Here in Germany they often think about cracking down on private health care.
But one of the arguments against it is "There are people living from sellings
such insurances!"

------
Mekkanox
Just a quick note for folks interesting in joining 18F: it may be a much more
fun place to work as engineer in the government, but it's still the
government.

You start off with 2 weeks of paid leave accrued per year, and it'll be at
least 15 years (last time I checked) of employment before you're up to 4 weeks
per year. This pales in comparison to contracting shops in the DMV (DC,
Maryland, Virginia) area, where the smallest I've seen is 4 weeks for brand-
new employees. Over the years I've seen more and more switch to unlimited PTO.

More likely than not, you will inevitably have to deal with a "govvie" who
prides one's self on doing nothing all day and getting paid more than you for
it, simply because of seniority. This might sound like hyperbole, but after 6
years as a DoD contractor and getting fed up with all the bureacracy, I left
for the fully private sector and I haven't looked back since in 2 years. YMMV.

~~~
ubernostrum
_at least 15 years (last time I checked) of employment before you 're up to 4
weeks per year._

Except you can't get there, because you can't work at 18F for more than four
years. Or at least that was what I was told when I looked into it last year.

(I have nothing against 18F, by the way -- if it's something you're interested
in you should definitely look into working there, and some awesome people I
know are currently there)

------
devonkim
Let me get this straight. Government contractors are concerned about the lack
of transparency of 18F/USDS and also that they're developing capabilities that
the incumbents cannot possibly offer and are asking for more regulation? Funny
considering how byzantine and convoluted myself and others have found it to
start contracting for the government despite the best of our intentions that
would require incredible amounts of overhead compared to even an enterprise
software vendor relationship contract when you're a 2-person company (you
typically wind up sub-contracted under a massive prime contractor anyway, and
that removes a lot of your political weight immediately while favoring the big
one). Isn't one of the best things you can do for the federal government is to
be accommodating and flexible to their needs in their best interest as a
guiding principle? There's some pretty serious cognitive dissonance happening.

There's also a false dichotomy that people get the impression that government
contractors have traditionally gotten a cushy job - this is not the full
story. Smaller contractors constantly are folding or being forced to sell due
to how difficult the market is to negotiate now as a small company,
particularly for defense (I am shocked that the article only cites $80 Bn for
government contractors pretending that defense contractors don't exist - just
add up Lockheed and SAIC alone and you'd get far, far beyond that). One of the
top reasons for companies folding is simply loss of budget into exploratory
programs that can justify more "cutting edge" technology such as Hadoop-based
or Spark-based analytics stacks and HTML5 instead of ColdFusion based user
facing applications. After having worked for and alongside some great smaller
contractors that just couldn't hack it, I'm pretty much done with government
at this point though and would rather let the next generation of engineers
that are more hopeful and nowhere near as disenchanted as myself show up.

I think 18F / USDS limiting the service times is a Good Idea though because it
can limit the amount of negativity that can accumulate from just a few
engineers having poor experiences. Furthermore, this kind of "term limit" is a
great way to prevent entrenchment by any entity working with the government.
Unfortunately, many key initiatives are simply too important _not_ to get the
government entrenched and a long-term relationship to exist (granted, I'd also
argue that the government should simply own these outright instead of
attempting to half-ass privatize, which leads to political models closer to
Mussolini's ideas of fascism).

~~~
gumby
> Let me get this straight. Government contractors are concerned about the
> lack of transparency of 18F/US

No, I believe they are complaining about the transparency of 18F (e.g. blanket
purchasing requirements, allowing open source, etc).

1\. Make government more screwed up 2\. Complain that the government is
screwed up 3\. Get a sweet contact to privatize something 4\. Profit!

Assholes.

------
swingbridge
I once had to call the help desk for a US government system. They were
actually surprisingly responsive and helpful, on a weekend even. After
speaking a bit of technical jargon the person on the other end of the line
understood that I wasn't an idiot and did indeed have a real issue. I asked if
anyone else had such a problem with the system and the response was:

"Sir, this is a government IT system and it works about as well as you'd
expect a government IT system to work." We both laughed. I'm happy the people
at 18F are making progress in changing the validity of that stereotype.

------
nxzero
18F is still very small at 185 and the headcount includes the Presidential
Innovation Fellows program; at the end of 2014, the total headcount was 95.

Source: [https://fcw.com/articles/2014/10/27/18f-consulting-
group.asp...](https://fcw.com/articles/2014/10/27/18f-consulting-group.aspx)

------
dkarapetyan
This is great. This is how you know you're doing things right. All they have
to do now is avoid becoming the thing they're currently fixing. Every
institution at some point becomes a propagator of the problem it was meant to
solve but 18F seems to be a bunch of smart folks so maybe they can avoid that
fate.

------
afarrell
Folks who believe in 18F and want it to continue the work it is doing: please
please PLEASE actually write to your legislators and let them know that you
are their constituent, that you are a tech worker, and that you support it.
Unless you do, they will think that it is some niche issue that the general
public doesn't care about. When that happens, the only things legislators have
to base their decisions on are:

1) Their own (non-existent) expertise in software development and procurement.

2) Their advice of whatever experts they can find.

3) The outcome of this hearing by the House Oversight Comittee:
[https://oversight.house.gov/hearing/18f-and-u-s-digital-
serv...](https://oversight.house.gov/hearing/18f-and-u-s-digital-service-
oversight/) and follow-up hearings

And what #2 really means is lobbyists, paid for by these same contractors.
They will present themselves as the voice of the industry and unless a bunch
of actual software engineers speak up, legislators would have every reason to
believe them.

So please, find your congresscritter and let them know that you care about
this:
[http://openstates.org/find_your_legislator/](http://openstates.org/find_your_legislator/)

Especially do this if you live in the district of one of the members of the
house oversight committee: [https://oversight.house.gov/subcommittee/full-
committee/](https://oversight.house.gov/subcommittee/full-committee/)

\- Carolyn Maloney of NY-12, Brooklyn Heights, Williamsburg and the east side
of Manhattan

\- MARK DESAULNIER CA-11: Just west of Berkley

\- William Lacy Clay of MO-1, Greater St Louis

\- Stephen Lynch of MA-8, Boston and South Shore

\- Jim Cooper of TN-5, Nashville and some areas to the west

\- Gerald E. Connoly of VA-11, suburbs between Arlington and Manassas

\- Matt Cartwright of PA-17: Scranton, Schuylkill, and Munroe

\- Tammy Duckworth of IL-8: Northwest Chicago

\- Robin Kelly IL-2: South East Chicago

\- Brenda Lawrence MI-14: A weird gerrymander northish of Detroit but also the
lake coast

\- Ted Lieu CA-33: A wide swath of pacific coast near Venice Beach

\- Bonnie Watson Coleman NJ-12: Princeton, Trenton, and environs

\- Brendan F. Boyle PA-13: North and Northeast of Philadelphia.

\- Peter Welch for the entirety of Vermont

\- Michelle Lujan Grisham NM-1: Albuquerque and areas southeast of it.

\- Trey Gowdy SC-4: Spartanburg and Greenville area

\- Mark Meadows NC-11: Asheville and the blue ridge mountains

\- Jim Jordan OH-4: a weird gerrymander northwest of Columbus and south of
Cleveland

\- John Mica of FL-7, north of Orlando

\- Michael Turner of OH-10, north of Cincinnati

\- John Duncan TN-2: Jefferson city and area around it.

\- Tim Walberg MI-7: Rural area and suburbs south-west of Detroit.

\- Justin Amash MI-3: Grand Rapids and rural areas between it and Lansing.
(frame all arguments from a libertarian perspective)

\- Blake Farnthold TX-27: Corpus Cristi, Lockhart, and a bunch of gulf coast.

\- Cynthia Lummis, for the entirety of Wyoming

\- Thomas Massie KY-4: A weird gerrymander north of Lexington and south of
Cincinnati

\- Ron Desantis FL-6: Daytona Beach area

\- Mick Mulvaney SC-5: Rock Hill and rural area north of Columbia

\- Ken Buck CO-4: the eastern 3rd of the state

\- Mark Walker NC-6: Greensboro and rural areas north of Durham & Winston-
salem

\- Rod Blum IA-1: Cedar Rapids and the areas in the northeast of the state.

\- Jody Hice GA-10: Rural area between Atlanta and Augusta

\- Steve Russel OK-5: Oklahoma City, Seminole, and a bunch of rural area
around that.

\- Buddy Carter GA-1: The southeast corner of the state and atlantic coast

\- Glenn Grothman WI-6: rural area north of Madison and Milwaukee

\- William Hurd TX-23: El Paso and all the area between it and San Antonio

\- Gary J. Palmer AL-6: A weird gerrymander of the rural area surrounding
Birmingham

\- Paul Gosar AZ-4: Prescott and the western border of the state.

\- Scott Desharlais TN-4: The south-central part of the state. Areas Northeast
of Chattanooga.

\- Eleanor Holmes Norton: DC

\- Stacey E. Plaskett: US Virgin Islands

~~~
madgar
> \- Carolyn Maloney of NY-12, Brooklyn Heights, Williamsburg and the east
> side of Manhattan

Sorry but I live in Congresswoman Maloney's district and this is not an
accurate description of her district [0].

In Brooklyn, NY-12 includes Greenpoint and only a sliver of Williamsburg.
Brooklyn Heights and most of Williamsburg falls in NY-7 (Nydia Velazquez).

In Queens, which you left out entirely, NY-12 includes Long Island City,
Astoria (minus Ditmars/Steinway) and parts of Woodside.

In Manhattan, NY-12 extends to areas that are decidedly not "east side,"
namely Midtown and half of Chelsea. Oh, and it also includes Roosevelt Island,
but everybody forgets about Roosevelt Island.

Getting these things right is hard, especially with redistricting every 10
years, so I recommend linking to a congresscritter lookup page instead [1].
Certainly better than bungling the very first entry in a big list of
representatives and their districts.

[0] [https://maloney.house.gov/about/new-yorks-12th-
congressional...](https://maloney.house.gov/about/new-yorks-12th-
congressional-district) [1]
[http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/](http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/)

~~~
esbranson
> _Sorry but I live in Congresswoman Maloney 's district and this is not an
> accurate description of her district [0]._

Respectfully, does any government agency release congressional district maps
as Google Map overlays? Or are such things limited to congressmen who, e.g.,
represent the most affluent neighborhoods of New York? (I note there is only
one such person given in the list, which would make your recommendation
ineffective.)

~~~
madgar
My recommendation was a zip code to congressperson lookup tool. I linked to
one such tool hosted on house.gov. Did you find it unsatisfactory?

As to your weak attempt to make this about class, I'll point out West
Virginia's congressional district Google Maps overlay:
[http://www.sos.wv.gov/elections/Vote/Districts/Pages/Distric...](http://www.sos.wv.gov/elections/Vote/Districts/Pages/Districts_Congressional.aspx)

Or is West Virginia too rich for you? I can find more, I just google searched
that and found it in 30 seconds. It seems you don't have the time to do your
own research but you do have the time to make inflammatory comments.

~~~
esbranson
> _Did you find it unsatisfactory?_

It does not give descriptions or representations, given congressional
districts. It requires a completely disjoint input: postal districts. So
unless you recommend a counterpart district-to-ZIP lookup tool, I can't see
how it's useful for a description of districts _because you still need to know
which ZIP codes are within it to do so._ Strange that the webapp doesn't use
permalinks, or allow unique identifiers of districts as a search variable, no?
This makes it largely unuseful for this contextual district-to-(neighborhood-
level)map/description requirement.

> _As to your weak attempt to make this about class, I 'll point out West
> Virginia's congressional district Google Maps overlay_

Well, it was more of a statement about using anecdotal examples which are not
representative of congressional office websites. (It could be a statement
about class, but this was not my point.) It's obvious the offices are doing
these maps themselves because there exists no viable alternative, and it still
appears uncommon for the offices to do so. While my remarks may be
inflammatory, it is nonetheless evident that your suggestion to direct the
users to congressional office websites (or dozens of unaffiliated and state
and local websites), as well as a ZIP-to-district tool, would be ineffective
in this context.

~~~
madgar
The point wasn't to help OP generate a list of congressional district
descriptions, because that's useless in general and nobody wants that. Except
maybe you I guess.

The OP had a list of names of congresspersons in a committee (useful) and
wanted to help their audience determine if they were represented by members of
that committee (useful). Most politically active individuals know the name of
their congressperson or at least the name of their district, so they were
already satisfied by the original list. For those that don't know who their
congressperson is, they want to know who their congressperson is, not read a
list of geographical descriptions of congressional districts. Which is why I
recommended a tool to look up one's congressperson.

You seem to be focusing very heavily on a different problem that nobody cares
about, namely how to create precise descriptions of congressional districts
based on geographical landmarks. If you really want a tool that generates
precise descriptions of congressional districts, by all means go make one, but
I don't know who would want such a tool other than yourself.

------
xauronx
I work for a mid sized contracting company (think Deloitte but much smaller)
and 18F has been such a breath of fresh air. Working (well, dealing) with a
group of competent people who are setting modern goals in such an terribly
outdated environment is awesome.

18F is pushing my company to invest more in real technologies rather than
Salesforce for everything. This is going to have a ton of great effects on my
company and seemingly the industry in general.

------
st3v3r
"lobbyists from the IT Alliance for Public Sector (ITAPS) and the Software &
Information Industry Association (SIIA) alleged that 18F is hindering profits"

Why should I care about that? Why should anyone who's not those companies care
about it? If 18F is making it chalet for the government to do these things,
that's good for everyone else.

------
bogomipz
Can anyone explain to me what a "buy first" policy is? Is this the same as no-
bid contracts?

If history is any guide, the entrenched players will step up their lobbying
efforts and the current system will be preserved. In Washington money comes
first, party comes second and the people you are supposed to represent come
dead last.

~~~
zaphar
"buy first" means to have a policy of not doing it in-house unless there is no
other option. In other words, they want 18F to subcontract out the work unless
no one is able to meet their requirements. Whether this is a actually a good
policy for a government to have is not at all clear to me.

~~~
st3v3r
It's not. It removes the ability to look at a situation, and come up with the
best solution for it. Sometimes it's better to outsource, sometimes it's
better to do it yourself.

~~~
ubernostrum
Sure it's a terrible policy.

But that's never how it's presented. It's presented as "Why does _the
government_ need a software shop? Isn't this just yet more _government
overreach_ and _unfair meddling with the free market_?"

So, y'know, next time you see someone arguing along those lines, remember the
real argument they're making is "this has the potential to help people and
save taxpayer money, but it would cut off a fat government check to me or my
buddies, so I have to find a moral argument against it".

------
dccoolgai
This is the most definitive statement I have seen that 18f is working. I
wasn't sure before, but now I'm sure.

