Slashdot Mirror
U.S. Bars Lab From Testing E-Voting Machines
joshdick writes to point out a NYTimes story on the decertification of Ciber Inc. from testing electronic voting systems. It will come as a surprise to no-one here on Slashdot that experts say the deficiencies of the laboratory suggest that crucial features like the vote-counting software and security against hacking may not have been thoroughly tested on many machines now in use. From the article: "A laboratory that has tested most of the nation's electronic voting systems has been temporarily barred from approving new machines after federal officials found that it was not following its quality-control procedures and could not document that it was conducting all the required tests... The federal Election Assistance Commission made this decision last summer, but the problem was not disclosed then... Ciber... says it is fixing its problems and expects to gain certification soon."
"Every major corporation needs to provide health care to many of its employees -- and those employees view that as a major responsibility. Therefore the corporation is abdicating an important responsibility by outsourcing health care to third party 'nurses' and 'doctors'!"
Do you think that is a valid argument? If not, why not?
The government does a lot of things, and what it does tends to be incredibly expensive regardless of contractor involvement. As shocking as it may seem, there are a number of times that it makes more sense -- in both correctness and in up-front expense -- to outsource work than maintain that expertise in-house. Checking up on success or failure is a large part of why governments have so much bureaucracy.