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Americas New CIO Wants To Disrupt Government and Make It a Startup
An anonymous reader writes "America's new CIO Steven VanRoekel wants to revamp the federal government and make it as agile as a startup. But first he has to get rid of bugs like the Department of Agriculture's 21 different e-mail systems. From the article: '“Too often, we have built closed, monolithic projects that are outdated or no longer needed by the time they launch,” he said. As an example, he mentioned the Defense Department’s human resources management system. Dubbed the “Defense Integrated Military Human Resource System,” the project was meant to take seven years to develop. Instead, it took 10, cost $850 million and had to be scrapped after 10 years of development in 2010 because it ended up being useless.'"
Everyone today wants to be "disruptive". What will end up happening is this CIO will end up creating yet another useless system that is over budget and no one wants. But for 10 times the cost, because it's "disruptive".
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
A lot of things in the Federal government seem wasteful until you realize the politics behind how they came to be that way. "Why do you have this facility way out here, when it would be cheaper to move it closer?" often doesn't elicit a "Because we're wasteful and stupid" response so much as a "Because we need the support of powerful Senator X and so we built it in his state" response. NASA is notorious for that sort of thing. Almost all of their contracts go to very politically connected contractors with powerful Congressional backing.
That “Defense Integrated Military Human Resource System” was a Northrop Grumman project. If the name Northrop Grumman doesn't mean anything to you, you don't know jackshit about federal politics, or how things REALLY work. Northrop Grumman owns Congress.Tthey have facilities in virtually every state.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Often we see people who failed in business try to get into politics. It's time to stop this -- government is not a business.
Let's find people who understand government to run ours.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
If the constituents of Senator X benefit from his demanding that it be built in his district before he'll vote for it ... then he's doing a good job for his constituents.
This is only "waste" when people outside of his constituency look at it. And only then because it does not directly benefit them.
Which is why people are pissed at "Congress" but the re-election rate for Representatives and Senators is so high.
Get rid of the "bad" people in Congress who are grabbing pork for themselves and their districts ... but keep our "good" Congress Critters who are looking out for the best interests of our district.
The headline for this item plays into something that's very dangerous in the long term. This guy isn't "America's new CIO." He is the CIO for a bloated, inefficient bureaucracy that runs the GOVERNMENT of this country. He has no power or influence over the country itself. People frequently indulge in the fiction that we elect a president to "run the country" -- and that leads to people having insane expectations and an insane willingness to turn power over to one man. Calling this guy the country's CIO is a small manifestation of the same mistake.
He never said they need daily interactions with the government. He said he wants to change the process so that the interactions one does need can be done online in a few minutes instead of needing to haul off to some government office, stand in line for an hour and ultimately make a day of it. And people don't have to want it, government is that involved in their daily lives. That is well beyond his control.
Quite frankly even your cherry-picked quotes are far more valuable than the rest of your post. There is literally not a thing you quoted that is a bad idea or shouldn't be done, you just wanted to try to earn some Slashdot Clever Points by screaming "BUZZWORD! BUZZWORD!" as often as you can, making most of them up as you go and repeating them over and over so it sounds like it's more dense than it is. (Hint: If "open standards" is a buzzword in government to you, you're fucking doing it wrong -- it is EXACTLY what should be happening with our tax dollars.)
(Hint: If "open standards" is a buzzword in government to you, you're fucking doing it wrong -- it is EXACTLY what should be happening with our tax dollars.)
Protip: if a brainless parrot is saying "open standards", and you believe that actually means something, YOU are doing it wrong.
Acta, non verba.
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