
In Tech Buying, U.S. Still Stuck in Last Century - kjhughes
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/23/us/politics/in-tech-buying-us-still-stuck-in-last-century.html
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tbrownaw
_Longstanding laws intended to prevent corruption and conflict of interest_
[impose significant costs]

Just because they have costs to them doesn't make them bad. But maybe there
are more efficient ways to police corruption? Or maybe a small amount of
corruption is acceptable, if the cost of preventing it would be greater than
the amount lost?

 _The Standish Group, an information technology firm, deemed just 4.6 percent
of large-scale government contracting projects executed in the past decade to
be successful. More than half were “challenged,” and about 40 percent simply
“failed.”_

[https://www.google.com/search?q=percent+of+software+projects...](https://www.google.com/search?q=percent+of+software+projects+that+fail)

Reported numbers vary widely, but a 40% failure rate doesn't sound clearly
worse (or better) than private industry. The 4.6% success rate sounds rather
bad, but a quick look doesn't immediately show private industry numbers to
compare to.

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aidenn0
Laws that were meant to provide fair competition now act as a barrier to entry
for companies that don't cater specifically to the government. This leads to
fewer bids from the same companies. Those companies are happy to keep the
anti-corruption laws in place.

They also bias towards fewer, larger purchases, which is a recipe for failure
for something like logistics software.

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tosseraccount
Bureaucracy ( where success is measured in how confidentially a PowerPoint can
be presented and how well you can say "synergy" with a straight face ) can't
design and manage software creation.

This is not going to change because why would the bureaucrats give power to
the technocrats?

It's not like they're going bankrupt. Incompetent middle mangers, management
by crisis of the month, accountants and contractors running the systems would
mean bankruptcy in the business world. In government, it's more muddle to
manage and "a budget increase would fix the problem".

~~~
coldtea
> _Bureaucracy ( where success is measured in how confidentially a PowerPoint
> can be presented and how well you can say "synergy" with a straight face )
> can't design and manage software creation._

How's that different from the private sector?

Note, I'm not asking if they differ in other stuff -- I'm asking what they do
different regarding what you described above as a characteristic of government
bureaucracy.

> _Incompetent middle mangers, management by crisis of the month, accountants
> and contractors running the systems would mean bankruptcy in the business
> world._

Well, not in the financial sector and "too big to fail" corporations either.
Or how about Detroit and it's bailout?

~~~
Spooky23
The difference is the stakes to the employee. As a private-sector employee,
unless you're committing fraud, you maximum consequence is termination.

The government is different. Violating procurement rules is often a criminal
act. So the civil servants build walls of process to protect themselves.

