
Why the Government Isn't a Bigger Version of a Startup - rmason
https://steveblank.com/2019/11/12/why-the-government-is-isnt-a-bigger-version-of-a-startup/
======
Spooky23
I've worked in government, late startup and corporate roles. There isn't
anything fundamentally broken about government. The difference is operate vs.
build.

Government is usually optimized around operational activity, and it usually
does so very well from the perspective of how the organization is designed.
Things get weird because priorities are driven by external mandate. DMV issues
licenses, taxes are collected, social services are delivered. The downside of
scaled operations is that changes are difficult and expensive. The exception
is when there is growth -- the government is good at borrowing money and good
at building stuff.

Large corporations aren't that much different. If anything, the average
medium/large corporation has fewer controls and is less competent at a given
task that a .gov organization would be, but delivers each marginal task at a
lower cost and less red tape. (aka compliance requirements)

Startups are different. They are built to build and tend to do the minimum
viable activity and are usually a big mess operationally.

~~~
chongli
I think where people get frustrated about government is that they expect it to
respond to changes in society and technology. They see inertia and think
inefficiency.

I think that’s missing the point entirely. What governments offer is
stability. “Inertia” is a feature. If governments swung around rapidly the way
tech trends change then it would cause tremendous damage to people’s lives and
to the economy as a whole.

~~~
wvenable
Governments, especially in some areas, are also often starved. They're trying
to do work without the sufficient resources to do their work effectively.
Companies in that state usually end up in a death spiral and fail.

Often this ineffectiveness is misconstrued as incompetence and used as
evidence to further decrease the resources available.

~~~
tabtab
Indeed! Voters want great gov't services but also hate paying taxes. These are
often contradictory. Sometimes you get what you pay for and can't vote for a
magic lunch. People complain about how slow the DMV is, but if you ask them if
they want their car registration fees increased to reduce waits, most will say
"no".

~~~
JDiculous
That's because our government (referring to the USA) is extraordinarily
inefficient with taxpayer money.

My tax rate in NYC was something like 36% (not counting student loan payments
and healthcare premiums), but where was this money going? We're paying
practically the same tax rate as countries with universal healthcare,
free/affordable universities, and strong safety nets, but we have none of the
above. In my 5 years in NYC I saw the subway get progressively worse every
year, while the homeless population exploded. I felt like that money might as
well be getting flushed down the toilet.

If I could more tangibly see where that money is going, then I'd probably feel
differently. I think taxpayers should have some agency in choosing where their
taxpayer money goes. Andrew Yang proposed something like this, and I love the
idea:

> "Each American should be able to direct 1% of their taxes to a specific
> project. During Revenue Day, these projects will be highlighted, showing
> what, exactly, America’s money was able to accomplish during the previous
> year. Initial profiles of the next year’s projects will also be announced so
> people can get excited for them." [1]

I wouldn't mind paying taxes in the U.S. if I felt like they were being
productively used. It's hard to feel that way.

[1] [https://www.yang2020.com/policies/making-taxes-
fun/](https://www.yang2020.com/policies/making-taxes-fun/)

~~~
baggy_trough
It would be far better for the average citizen if the tax receipts were burnt
in a giant dumpster rather than further the malignant tumor of a state that we
are afflicted with.

~~~
DrScientist
Perhaps - but are the reasons for the US government dysfunction - because:

1\. it has too much government 'civil service' ?

2\. or too much private and corporate emasculation of effective government?

ie the very sentiments you echo are directly supporting the agenda of 2 and
not 1.

~~~
baggy_trough
I view it as the inevitable growth of a self perpetuating bureaucracy over
decades in the absence of any significant constraining force.

------
ISL
As a physicist who is looking for a job, the primary things preventing me from
working on defense projects are twofold:

1\. Defense systems are, in general, useful for offense. Unless I can know
that the primary utility of an innovation is for good, I cannot work on it.
Our only control in the matter is our choice of which innovations to make. I
was heartbroken the day I saw a citation of my work in a military application,
as it was never the intent of the work.

I'll do nuclear non-proliferation work all day, but won't touch a system that
can kill another human unless we are at war. Humans are really, _really_ good
at killing one another -- we don't need to get better at that.

2\. Defense projects are classified, and classification is the antithesis of
science.

~~~
CharlesColeman
> I'll do nuclear non-proliferation work all day, but won't touch a system
> that can kill another human unless we are at war. Humans are really, really
> good at killing one another -- we don't need to get better at that.

I don't think you can stop humans from getting better at killing each other.
So the real question is: who should have the best killing systems? If the
answer is "not the US," then who will it be?

~~~
ISL
It is essential that we find a way to stop humans from getting better at
killing one another. If killing-technology advances to the point that one
person can kill seven billion, we will have a major problem on our hands.

What is necessary is to have sufficient distributed killing-capacity to
prevent any one actor from gaining outsized power over everyone else. If
people collectively agree that WMD are bad, and are willing to go to
conventional war to stop everyone else from developing WMD, there may be a
WMD-free equilibrium.

~~~
CharlesColeman
> If killing-technology advances to the point that one person can kill seven
> billion, we will have a major problem on our hands.

Don't we already have the technology for that? I see no _technical_ reason
that prevents totally automating the execution of launch commands for existing
nuclear arsenals (i.e. building literal, not figurative, nuclear button).

The issue is that academics in other countries do not have qualms like yours,
which could eventually give those countries a destabilizing competitive
advantage. From the OP:

> America’s adversaries understand this. China is tightly integrating its
> defense establishment with startups, companies, and academia in “military-
> civilian fusion.” Russia, Iran, and North Korea have also fused those
> activities.

So the question is: will it be an improvement over the current status quo if
one or more of those countries gains military edge over the US? Will things be
better if, say, the US lacks the military technology to repulse a conventional
invasion of Taiwan by the PRC, because Chinese scientists developed better
stealth coatings or better missile seekers, while the American ones said "I'd
rather not"?

~~~
ISL
> Don't we already have the technology for that?

Some would argue that we have a major problem on our hands ;).

Regarding, "I'd rather not", the point is well-taken. I'm probabilistically
alive because my grandfather, who had orders to ship out the time of Japan's
surrender, did not participate in an invasion of Japan. I live in a country
whose political system endures in part because of the dedicated active service
of more than a million citizens and in part because of the sacrifice of
hundreds of thousands of lives to the cause.

When I say, "I'd rather not." I hope to lead by example. The weapons we have
are sufficient to cause the end of days, which seems like enough. I don't mind
if the tools I build have some military use -- making a better bandage keeps
anyone who happens to be leaking blood alive. I do mind if the primary purpose
of my work has lethality in mind.

I'm a precision-measurement experimental physicist, and the thing we do is
optimize. I believe it would be corrosive to my soul if the goal of my daily
optimization is the death of another person -- a person with a mother, a
father, friends, loved ones, and perhaps children. So long as the world is at
peace (and one can readily argue that it is not, or that battles are won
before they are fought), I will not make weapons. If I have to make weapons,
they will be good ones.

"Once upon a time, in the very earliest days of interplanetary exploration, as
unarmed human vessel was set upon by a warship from the planet Kzin-home of
the fiercest warriors in Known Space. This was a fatal mistake for the Kzinti,
of course; they learned the hard way that the reason humanity had decided to
study war no more was that humans were so very, very, good at it." \-- from
the jacket of the anthology 'Man-Kzin Wars'.

Or, to draw an idea from the cultural history of China:

"Weapons are instruments of fear; they are not a wise man's tools.

He uses them only when he has no choice.

Peace and quiet are dear to his heart.

And victory no cause for rejoicing.

If you rejoice in victory, then you delight in killing;

If you delight in killing, you cannot fulfill yourself."

Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - chapter 31
([https://www.wussu.com/laotzu/laotzu31.html](https://www.wussu.com/laotzu/laotzu31.html))

~~~
dndln
Current events such as the US-China trade war, rising inequality between the
haves and have-nots, the upcoming financial crisis, the increasing military
strength of China (with "military-civil fusion") and its emergence as a
superpower, decreasing respect for the rule of law from politicians, and the
polarisation between the left and nationalist right parties strongly parallel
the buildup in the 1930s preceding World War II.

You say it would be corrosive to your soul to optimise death of currently
living human beings. However, if those humans were trying to wipe out your
mother, father, friends, loved ones, children and perhaps the rest of the
world, by optimising their death you would be optimising the chance of the
human race to survive. From that perspective, you would not delight in
killing, but delight in preserving the peace and quiet which could only be
achieved by cutting out the cancerous tumor which threatens the whole body of
humanity.

Then again, who's the cancerous tumor here - the West or the East?

~~~
olau
Perhaps it would help if we stopped dubbing other people as cancerous tumors?

I was reading about the decisions behind the nuclear bombings of Japanese
cities near the end of WWII.

I wonder how it felt being a physicist that contributed to the Manhattan
Project after those droppings.

By the way, the Wikipedia pages are in interesting study in how to downplay
certain... aspects.

------
jonawesomegreen
> The government isn’t a bigger version of a startup and can’t act like a
> startup does. Innovation activities in government agencies most often result
> in innovation theater. While these activities shape and build culture, they
> don’t win wars, and rarely deliver shippable or deployable products.

> The very definition of a contractor implies a contract. And a government
> contract starts with fixed requirements that only change with contract
> modifications. That makes sense when the problem and solution are known. But
> when they are unknown the traditional methods of contracting fail.

This I think is the biggest failure in public private partnerships. These
arrangements were supposed to save the taxpayer money by allowing nimble
contractors to come in and do the heavy lifting on projects.

However what it really did is:

1) Create an adversarial relationship between between the government and the
contracting entity, which is very much filled with even more red tape then it
was were trying to replace.

2) Hollow out the talent in the government, causing more reliance on the
private sector.

I'm not convinced these relationships can exist in a healthy way. If there
isn't a lot of red tape and strict contracts then it's likely the government
will get robbed blind and that leads to stricter contracts and more red tape:
a virtuous cycle of red tape and lack of progress.

I think less emphases needs to be put on these partnerships and more on
developing talent within the government that can innovate from within. This
creates the possibility of empowered leaders within government departments
that can run projects like agile mini-startups.

~~~
olau
> If there isn't a lot of red tape and strict contracts then it's likely the
> government will get robbed blind

I'm mostly in agreement, but regarding this point:

What needs to happen here instead of the strict contracts is that government
nurtures good contractors. It's actually not terribly different from nurturing
good employees. You need to look for people who do their jobs responsibly,
efficiently and properly.

If they don't, you try to help them correct course, and if they can't, you let
them go.

The strict contracts are precisely the problem - they lock everything down,
lull you into false security and prevent you from discovering and cutting bad
actors quickly. No cure, no pay never pans out, and meanwhile you're bleeding
from the opportunity costs.

Of course, in order to make this work, you need people with clue on the inside
so they can distinguish good work from bad work. I do think you can attract
people like this, if you don't prevent them from doing their work by letting
the lawyers run the show.

~~~
dragonwriter
> What needs to happen here instead of the strict contracts is that government
> nurtures good contractors. It's actually not terribly different from
> nurturing good employees

Strict contracts and the associated strict contracting rules do not exist to
prevent the government from getting robbed by evil contractors that government
officials are otherwise powerless to constrain, but to prevent the government
from being robbed by corrupt government officers, including those at the
highest level.

Likewise, strict government employment rules, which exist to prevent those
with hiring authority ( _especially_ the elected chief executive) from
instituting a spoils system with the government payroll.

Your ideas do not seem to address the threat model that the rules they would
replace are concerned with.

------
mturmon
This is a weird article. The author has plenty of background and standing to
comment on the topic.

But he's leaving out that many of the problems the government seeks to address
are bigger than what a "startup" (his word) would ever address. A better
comparison might be between governments and very large-scale enterprises --
not startups. A lot of his words have to do with software, when typically the
problems governments address have to do with (in increasing order of
difficulty) hardware, big infrastructure, or society, or other societies. The
startup/government comparison is not parallel for other reasons too -- and
it's exhausting to enumerate!

~~~
ianai
It’s a weird topic but the claim to run a government like a business is
rampant and needs to be corrected.

~~~
godelski
I mean it almost makes sense if the purpose of the company is to make it's
employees richer, happier, and overall have a better life. And if you consider
that ROIs that take decades or a century are still profitable. But I'm not
sure of any company that operates this way because how can your product be
employee well being?

------
FooHentai
I've worked in both the public and private sector, albeit not in the USA.

The simplest and biggest difference between public and private sector
organisations is their motive: Private sector makes money. Public sector
avoids being front page of the news. The behavior of each organisation often
maps directly to these motives (albeit also, sometimes, perversely).

Secondary to that you have the fact that startups (and other private-sector
organisations) fail and disappear all the time. Public-sector organisation's
are enduring. If your defense force screws up and waste 100 billion dollars,
there will still be a defense force the next day. This explains differing
priorities around enduring, consistent activity and focus where in the private
sector you might see full-blown pivots.

I like some of the stuff in the article's table but some of it is presented as
a bit more immutable than is the case in reality. For example, fixed
requirements on government projects versus agile/testing/story/feedback based
delivery? Not true as a rule, lots of that kind of thing happening in the
public sector. But fair as a broad generalization.

------
ChrisMarshallNY
This is a great article.

I've worked for defense contractors, but most of my time has been spent at a
very conservative, results-driven, constantly-in-ship-mode commercial
corporation.

It has taught me to make software that _actually_ works; not software that
_looks like it_ works.

I don't give pitches; I give demos. I quickly learned to never try selling a
pig in a poke. It had better work.

The problem with that, is that it takes more work and time to get to that
phase, and, possibly, more risk.

It taught me to carefully evaluate projects, and plan for the long term.

I'm often painted as a "naysayer" because of this.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. I plan to succeed. That means shooing
the unicorns and pixies out to pasture, and concentrating on the raw
materials, and how we will get from here, to there. That often requires
resource husbandry, and compromises.

I also NEVER assume that the MVP will be a "one-off." It WILL be the seed of
the product for the long term, so it can't be rushed, and it must be of the
highest quality that can be reasonably achieved. I generally optimize for
quality over features for early-stage releases; knowing that we probably will
never be given the chance to "go back and fix it later."

In that respect, the corporation was very much like the defense department.
There's a story about Hyman Rickover, and how he'd deal with tech salesmen,
coming to his office with sample kit. I'm not sure if it's true, but it is
fun:

He is said to have taken the kit, walked over to his second-story Pentagon
window, and dropped the device out onto the ground below.

"If it still works, I'll consider it." He is reputed to have said.

------
sailfast
> So, the question is: What’s next? How do leaders in government think about
> and organize innovation in a way that makes a difference?

The answer here for me is to create a culture of experimentation and
hypothesis testing whose results can be rapidly incorporated into the
operations of the agency. Allow for testing off the critical path. Allow for
smaller-scale experimentation to prove a concept that has an on-ramp into your
day-to-day operations

This works for technology approaches, this works for regulatory approaches -
it even works for opt-in citizen services IF you create the framework that
supports it. (Director signs paper saying citizens can opt-in to test
practices and those that do have X rights in the normal process, get the
language cleared by legal, and you've got something that can last for a bunch
of use cases)

Reduce the burden to get something started at a low level when your staff know
it's a better way. Continue to reach out to line employees to ask what they
would like to try out / attempt to make the organization better.

So much of government stagnation is the sheer burden of getting any sort of
experiment approved / blessed, so you miss out on what's already in the
building, let alone what can be gotten from outside. Maybe what I'm describing
is "lean enterprise" type stuff.

As for Why Government Isn't a Startup and the original premise. Well... why
isn't IBM a bigger version of a startup? Imagine dealing with all of the cruft
ever written by congress since the formation of the country as your basis for
operation. :)

------
archgoon
"But the 2013 Snowden revelations damaged that tenuous relationship yet again.
In hindsight the damage wasn’t the result of what the United States was doing,
but over the Pentagon’s inability and unwillingness to own up to why it was
doing it: After the intelligence failure of 9/11, security agencies
overcompensated by widespread, warrantless datamining as well as electronic
and telephonic surveillance, including on U.S. persons.

Without a clear explanation of why this had been done, startups,..."

I don't think that lack of understanding of the reasons for surveillance is
the problem. It is quite common for people to understand the desire to fight
terrorism and prevent another 9/11, and still understand that the NSA's
methods are ripe for abuse. Lying to Congress about the nature of the program
(the _what_ , not the _why_ ) doesn't inspire confidence that abuse won't
happen.

I find the idea that the reasons for surveillance was simply not explained
very well to be ahistorical. Perhaps that's just the bubble I've been in
though.

------
SQueeeeeL
I don't really understand the argument, most startups explicitly have a
goal/off ramp. The government is the exact opposite in terms of goals...

------
natmaka
Bureaucracy is a major reason. See Pournelle's iron law of bureaucracy ("in
any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who
work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for
the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and
sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representatives who work to protect any
teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron law states that in all cases,
the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and
will always write the rules under which the organization functions."). A
government tend to be less and less efficient, whereas a startup has to be
more and more to survive.

Technocracy is another one. The Dilbert principle/Putt's law/corollary
("Technology is dominated by two types of people, those who understand what
they do not manage and those who manage what they do not
understand"/competence inversion) is everywhere at play, however startups are
too young and not big enough to really suffer from it.

Raw power, coupled to inertia, is also a reason. As J. Ousterhout pointed it
out "The most important component of evolution is death. it's easier to create
a new organism than to change an existing one. Most organisms are highly
resistant to change, but when they die it becomes possible for new and
improved organisms to take their place" (
[https://web.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-
bin/sayings.php](https://web.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/sayings.php) ). A
government is very powerful and has huge inertia, it won't easily evolve or
die.

------
empath75
I was on an agile team for a government project and one of the other people on
a team made the observation that agile is about people over process and
government is about process over people and I don’t think people would prefer
government to work the other way.

------
tabtab
Startups are generally taking risks by design. When you are allowed and
expected to take risks, your behavior is different than those being risk
averse. Most gov't services are infrastructure to a degree. You don't want
people gambling with infrastructure.

------
solatic
If public-sector work actually cared about reducing risks, then SRE would be
_huge_ in the public sector. SRE is literally about making rational decisions
about engineering reliability in the context of risk-tolerance levels (i.e.
availability/error and financial budgets). But it's not.

The kind of risk-avoidance that pervades the public sector (really, all
sufficiently large organizations) is actually one of _political_ risk
avoidance. It's perfectly OK for systems to fail for reasons that were
forewarned, because management's ass is covered. If something is working, then
don't fix it, because all change is political risk.

This happens because ultimately, at the end of the day, public sector
organizations are led by politicians. The "deep state" is not genuinely
independent from politics - the attitudes of leadership trickle down the
chain. No matter which policies are currently favored by the politician
serving at the head, the _process_ of advancing your interests is largely
identical.

------
classified
> Startups can do anything. They can break the law and apologize later (as
> Uber, Airbnb, and Tesla did), but a government official taking the same type
> of risks can go to jail.

That doesn't seem right at all. Shouldn't we all be equal before the law? Or
has it become the norm that the foundations of democracy are being vanished
one after another?

------
throwaway936482
Because most start ups fail and when government's fail really really bad
things happen? Because government's have an utterly different set of
priorities than startups which are founded with the aim of making their
founders as much money as possible? Because move fast and break things works
of you're building Facebook but not if you're providing end of life care?

------
stretchwithme
Why would anyone think that?

A startup can't coerce people to become its customers. A startup has to
convince individuals to part with their money voluntarily.

------
gatestone
I am wondering more like why can't the government be a bigger version of IETF,
with the deliberate democracy ideals of Habermas:
[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=363840](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=363840)

------
ngcc_hk
One more. Whilst you want success but do you want some government Lue HONG
kong and chinese government successful. Hence what government is more
important than success for government.

We can have a lot of startup and we hope we will so some can fail !!! May be
we want some government to fail as well but not most of them.

------
classified
> the damage wasn’t the result of what the United States was doing, but over
> the Pentagon’s inability and unwillingness to own up to why it was doing it

What? Is violating the Constitution on a massive scale just a casual pastime
like pepper-spraying a protester?

------
jasonhansel
And yet the government gave us the moon landing and the Internet--two massive
technological feats that could never have been accomplished by private
companies.

------
classified
> ...rally the nation against a common threat.

Only that the common threat is now the nation's own citizens if the targets of
surveillance are any indication.

------
auggierose
A simple but crucial distinction between government and startup / company: a
startup / company can select the people it consists of.

------
jeffml84
The author of this article needs a lesson in what facts are.

------
ngcc_hk
Government 101

It is not just one lens. There are many governments. Unitary, system, process
and politics. There is not just one consistent same government even for
communist. And there are many startup.

Further they serve different process, client, budget among all these group.

Solution may be smaller core, affiliated ... but not to abandon the core.

------
adamnemecek
So much of the government (and other things, insurance, driver's license, any
sort of interaction between two parties) would be solved with some
programmable UUID.

Essentially, I want a thing where I issue a new UUID (communication channel)
for every party I'm interacting with, I can revoke these, redirect these,
renew these at my convenience.

So much of clerical work is literally double checking forms. I want to fill
out one for, the other parties can then request my info.

~~~
firasd
This sounds a bit like the Aadhaar system here in India (I can open a bank
account without filling out any new forms, just using a finger print reader)..
I would say be careful what you wish for; this lays the grounds for a
surveillance state.

~~~
thephyber
> this lays the grounds for a surveillance state

We already have a surveillance state in the USA without the convenience of
good digital authentication with tokenized opt-in data-access authentications,
as described by GP.

I'd rather have the benefits of a more mature authentication system. We in the
USA pass around 3-4 strings (Social Security ID, Full Name, Date of Birth,
Mother's Maiden Name, sometimes Street Address and/or Zip Code) and that is
used as a proxy for Authorization (not even authentication).

It's ridiculously easy to get defrauded of your entire life savings (or more)
in the US because knowledge of those strings (and sometimes a few more) is
enough to someone to get access to a loan, mortgage, a cell phone (possibly
porting/transferring from your existing SIM/line) in my name.

