Trump Promises a Federal Technology Overhaul To Save $1 Trillion (technologyreview.com)

New submitter threc shares a report from MIT Technology Review: The tech world descended on Washington, D.C. yesterday to attend a tech summit at the White House. According to MIT Technology Review associate editor Jamie Condliffe: "Trump suggested he might relax his stance on immigration as a way to get tech leaders to help his cause. 'You can get the people you want,' he told the assembled CEOs. That sweetener may be a response to a very vocal backlash in the tech world against the administration's recent travel bans. Trump may hope that his business-friendly stance will offer enough allure: if tech giants scratch his back, he may later deign to scratch theirs." The report continues: "'Our goal is to lead a sweeping transformation of the federal government's technology that will deliver dramatically better services for citizens,' said Trump at the start of his meeting with the CEOs, according to the Washington Post. 'We're embracing big change, bold thinking, and outsider perspectives.' The headline announcement from the event was Trump's promise to overhaul creaking government computing infrastructure. According to Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and advisor, there's much to be done: federal agencies have over 6,000 data centers that could be consolidated, for instance, while the 10 oldest networks in use by the government are all at least 39 years old. The upgrade, said Trump, could save the country $1 trillion over the next 10 years."

Comments

I have my doubts

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Doubts that it's going to save $1 trillion. Trump lies constantly and he won't stick to anything he says, so this could even be true in that he'll actually try but as soon as the plan hits any minor bumps he'll give up on it, move on to something else, and blame the Democrats for it. Right now the only "promise" he seems inclined to keep is to try to deport just about every illegal immigrant DHS can get its hands on.

Re:I have my doubts

[swb]

I don't care if Steve Jobs, William Hewitt, David Packard, Seymour Cray, Bill Joy, Linus Torvarlds, Ken Olsen, Ghandi, and Jesus Christ collaborated on this project it could save $1 trillion. These are fantasy numbers and a project this scale would have $10 trillion in hidden costs and risks.

Trumps association with it only adds 0.00001% extra uncertainty.

Re:I have my doubts

[houghi]

On the plus side, he reinstates H-1B visa's, so that is great, right?

I think what we should do is tie him to a dynamo and get energy from all his turning around on his points.

Re:I have my doubts

[XXongo]

Doubts that it's going to save $1 trillion.

The goal in all these things is that the concept is to spend money now in order to save money later.

The reality in all these things is that the "spend money now" part happens, but the "save money later" part never seems to materialize.

Re:I have my doubts

[Kierthos]

Also, didn't he basically just treat a "We'd like to do this thing?" as a "It's a done deal, I'm signing this now." for an air traffic control overhaul? (Or am I remembering the wrong thing?)

Regardless, Trump is all sizzle and no steak. He will say anything that makes him look good, and well, if his attention wanders later and no one ever gets around to doing anything, it doesn't matter, because Trump has already moved on to the next shiny thing.

Re: I have my doubts

[Anonymous Coward]

Is anyone surprised by the move to back off fixing H-1B abuse? I'm certainly not. I'm more surprised working technology professionals also bought into the con man's words.

Threats he pushed were simply to pressure other wealthy people to stroke his own ego and feel superior, a show of power. He's a sociopath plain and simple, he doesn't care about social/policy reform that helps your average american and never did. Everything Trump does is for Trump so stop pretending otherwise.

Re:I have my doubts

[AmiMoJo]

The issue is not that nothing is happening, it's that he is simply tearing up a lot of stuff without any real plan to replace it or understanding of why it is there in the first place.

The environmental stuff is the best example, but consider TPP. Trump thinks it's a bad deal and he can do better. Okay, but other countries don't want that. Japan is quite openly stalling and trying to wait out his presidency before proposing the US join TPP again, because they don't want a bilateral deal where Trump tries to bully them into making concessions. In a multilateral deal it's much harder to force single issues like tariffs on US beef in Japan.

Re:I have my doubts

[GLMDesigns]

That wasn't the point. The OP said nothing was being done and that Trump wasn't keeping his promises.

That was a list of things being done and promises kept.

Do you and I have disagreements with Trump? Yes. Probably. (I can't speak for you) But don't kid yourself. Things are getting done.

Um, I think you got that backwards

[aoeusnth]

Yes, if you got REALLY lucky, you might save money in the long term.

The history of government technology overhauls should indicate quite vividly that you not only spend tear-jerking amounts of money to upgrade your systems, you also spend a lot of time thereafter fixing it or throwing it all away and starting over again.

So I can't decide whether Mr. "The Cybers" man doesn't understand anything about technology, or he understands it so well that he is willing to lie to the American taxpayer about savings when what he actually means is to pump money into the (already wildly successful) technology sector. Either way, I wonder what his blue-collar supporters think about that ....

The human factor

[jeffc128ca]

I have no doubt that you could save hundreds of billions, possibly trillions over the years if smart agreeable people get together and figure it out. The problem is at some point you need to include others and then the trouble starts. Any organization over with more than 100 people run into this. The more people and departments the worse it gets. I am older now and I have seen smart ideas pass from their creators to the masses of underlings and watch it get mangled beyond belief. Your trillion dollar savings will be eaten up by those underlings a hundred fold.

Re:The human factor

[ranton]

In my only 15 years in the industry, what has usually determined success is whether the project sponsors have given authority to the project leads who are competent enough to make decisions that affect multiple departments, or to individual VPs/Directors/Managers in charge of each department. When high ranking management are treated as subject matter experts, but with minimal control over the project, things tend to go well. When high ranking management consistently gets their way and win repeated disagreements with project leads, things spiral out of control real quick.

Competency outside of a very narrow domain is very rare in this world, and I've never seen a company capable of filling its entire management team with people who not only know their domain well but also can think critically and outside of the box during times of transformation. If average managers (no matter how far up the org chart) get too much control over transformational projects you almost always get a mess.

Like TrumpOrg's systems?

[Anonymous Coward]

I seriously doubt someone who's own business organization was found last fall to be running Windows Server 2003 and Exchange 2007 has any bloody clue how to manage such a task.

Re:The problem is intractable

[Tom]

All of that is the reason why you don't subcontract if you don't have to. Ignore the consultants you recommend outsourcing, they are only there to make a killing on the outsourcing, then propose insourcing to your successor and make another killing on basically reverting everything.

If you outsource and immediately make a contract with the outsourced company for the exact same services that it used to provide in-house, you didn't understand anything.

There are scenarios where outsourcing makes sense. Most of the actual outsourcings done are not in that set.

And if you are the federal government, your job is not to provide business to a small number of IT companies. Your job is to serve the people of your country in the best possible way, and having your own IT that doesn't answer to any other business goals is one important part of that mission.

Re:All just posturing

[mykepredko]

Correction, Mr. Trump thinks the government works the way *his* corporation works.

No investors, no board, no experts.

Even Steve Jobs had more realistic expectations on what was possible.