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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 From the article: '“Too often, we have built closed, monolithic projects that are outdated or no longer needed by the time they launch,” he said.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."