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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 From the article: '“Too often, we have built closed, monolithic projects that are outdated or no longer needed by the time they launch,” he said.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."
That is what CIOs do.
They play golf with the other CxOs and spout shit they do not understand.
Let's say I go to Procter&Gamble, and offer them an HR system. I say to them, it will cost $30 million and 3 years. Then after 3 years, I try to bill them $40 million and say it will take another 2 years to deliver.
I'm pretty sure that's when either:
1) PG sues me for breach of contract, and refuses to pay anything
You've obviously never managed a large implementation - cost overruns always happen. Vendors oversell the capabilities of the project and companies underestimate their needs. It's not until the project gets underway that the business realizes that the HR plan they spec'ed out at the beginning won't work anymore because it can't accommodate the needs of their new Asian division. So, the project drags on and the vendor keeps billing (justified by the change orders that the company initiated).
It's not all the fault of the software vendor, it's just that large, complex software deployments are large and complex and it's impossible to spec everything out at the beginning... and even if you could, the needs of the business can change in the 3 years it takes to implement the project.
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.)
I can't wait for the new TSA app that lets you upload pictures of your junk.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
TADA! You sir have nailed it on the head.
I recently had to deal with one of these CIO idiots.. he went off on a building lighting system that it was not LEEDS complaint. and kept spouting terms that keyd me instantly that the idiot went out and search the internet for buzzwords but did not learn what they meant.
I calmly pointed out in the meeting that he was the one that cut the project budget to remove 90% of the occupancy sensors and removed all dimming loads and replaced them with switched loads to further cut costs. He stood up saying we were incompetent because the executive suites were not turning off automatically at night.
I calmly pointed out that to save money someone instructed the engineer to remove those suites from the lighting system and instead requested they use normal light switches.... and if he could look at the signature at the bottom that is the person that is responsible for the system not working the way he wanted it to.
He grabbed the change order from me and looked.... It was his signature.
This is typical from my experience, not the exception.