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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."
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.
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 ....
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.