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Is the Federal Government the Most Interesting Tech Startup For 2009?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the get-stuff-done-czar dept.

With all of the recent focus on technology and the promises to continue "getting stuff done" by the US government, Techdirt's Masnick suggests that they might just be the most interesting tech startup to watch this year. "But, of course, talk is cheap (especially in politics). And, while Chopra (and Vivek Kundra, the government's CIO) both actually have a nice track record of accomplishing these sorts of goals in their past jobs, the proof is in what's actually getting done. We'd already mentioned at least one success story with the IT dashboard at USASpending.gov, but can it continue? I have to admit, a second thing that impressed me about Chopra was that, even with such a success, he didn't focus on it. The fact that he got together such a site in such a short period of time is impressive enough, and while he mentioned it in his talks, most of them were much more focused not on what he'd already done, but on what he was going to do — and the plans all seemed quite achievable.

4 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. If they want a lasting legacy... by MikeRT · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They should work with Obama to get executive orders and statutes written to position the federal government's management to not only hire 1099s like the private sector can, but to have that become the norm. One of the biggest reasons why federal IT is so expensive is because the federal government's management culture is still not conducive to having managers hire, direct and take responsibility for contract workers directly. If they could insource the project management en masse, that would shave an incredible amount of tax payer's money off of the cost of contracting as it would reduce the overhead that they pay to the big integrators to manage the projects (as well as pay HR, etc.)

    1. Re:If they want a lasting legacy... by EsJay · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The very large DOJ org I work with has no union people in IT. Or in any support positions, except maybe the contracted cleaning crews.

    2. Re:If they want a lasting legacy... by DragonWriter · · Score: 5, Interesting

      They should work with Obama to get executive orders and statutes written to position the federal government's management to not only hire 1099s like the private sector can, but to have that become the norm. One of the biggest reasons why federal IT is so expensive is because the federal government's management culture is still not conducive to having managers hire, direct and take responsibility for contract workers directly. If they could insource the project management en masse, that would shave an incredible amount of tax payer's money off of the cost of contracting as it would reduce the overhead that they pay to the big integrators to manage the projects (as well as pay HR, etc.)

      Instead of making it easier for the government to hire individual contractors that are supervised by regular government employees to reduce the waste from the government hiring integration contractors to manage development contractors, why not just have the government hire, as regular employees, the technical staff to meet its ongoing technical needs so you also in-source the work itself rather than just the management of the work.

  2. The Irony by dangitman · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Kundra is at worst a fraud and at best someone who is clueless.

    And you attempt to demonstrate this by linking to well-known clueless fraud, John C. Dvorak? Excuse me while my head explodes.

    --
    ... and then they built the supercollider.