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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."
When the first words uttered were
They will NOT be training their own replacements!
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
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.
The good news is it will save $1 trillion over 10 years. The bad news is that it will cost $1 trillion over 2 years.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
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 ....
"Who knew IT was so complicated??!"
Why is this such a hard concept?
The USA has no obligation to people who do not live within her jurisdiction or who aren't citizens. There is sufficient talent inside her borders to do whatever we wish to do. It is a travesty that people are so short-sighted they would allow a functional invasion of foreigners.
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.
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.
According to Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and advisor [...]
Considering all the projects he's responsible for, what plans has he come up with?
I'm curious, as he's responsible for so much and yet I've heard so little that was actually attributed to him.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Was contracting for the government and heard the same thing under Obama administration.
love is just extroverted narcissism
> "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.
Translation: you can bring in low paid Russian immigrants to work on government systems. The more critical systems, the better. Our voting systems need some work, and before 2018.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
It funnels 1 trillion dollars into Trump holdings LLC
We always hear about Washington, D.C. but never about Washington, A.C.
#DeleteFacebook
Young people entering the marketplace and want the newest shiny things.
Older people have enough experience to actually understand the meaning of "if it works, don't fuck with it".
#DeleteFacebook
Regardless of my feelings about Trump's lack of competence, he is undeniably a master at self promotion and posturing. Tech companies were never going to say no to hundreds of billions in new government IT contracts. But why waste an opportunity to make it seem like he masterfully negotiated the deal? He certainly knew most of his campaign promises would be disastrous, but they spoke to his base (and often independents) and gave him room to maneuver in the undiscerning public eye.
Trump never wanted to be responsible for destroying our economy with protectionist practices; it would make him look bad. Trump's performance as president has arguably shown his lack of competence at actually executing on his agenda, but his competence at self promoting himself even in the absence of accomplishments is unquestionable.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I got a call about an opening in a government agency doing a job not far off from what I do in the private sector. However, I'd need to move to DC (not necessarily a deal breaker), but there's a hiring freeze on, budget cuts, government shutdowns and let's just say the people being appointed to run some parts of the government aren't exactly shining examples of competence to run their agencies. I work at a well run company with a decent salary and benefits. Why am I going to leave that to step into chaos, incompetence and possibly having my job eliminated by budget cuts, or skipping paychecks because of political bullshit? DC isn't a cheap area to live in and the traffic is horrible, but it still has a lot of other upside going for it in terms of what I like to do in a metro area.
Readers here may recall that Trump's budget director Mick Mulvaney published a budget that had a $2 Trillion dollar math error.
Republicans (think Paul Ryan) often (always?) produce budgets that contain all sorts of tax cuts for upper brackets and then a "magic asterisk" that gives no detail but says the shortfall will be made up by a) economic growth stimulated by the tax cuts and b) cost savings from cutting government waste.
So my take is the bad optics of all this finally bubbled up to Trump (I guess Fox News couldn't filter it out totally) and he gave the command to his minions to find trillions of dollars of "government waste and inefficiency" to save the budget. So they came up with this.
It doesn't have to make sense. All he wants to do is get headlines out there that proclaim Trump Saves Us Trillions and for most of his base and way too much of the swing voters that is all they will see. It is ideal for this media purpose. If the topic gets the slightest bit technical he can count on the talking airheads to gloss it over and he'd up with "opposing views on this story" in the worst case.
What that means: enough voters will think have this view: Trump and Republicans produced a budget that will save our economy and Democrats are Fighting It. . They don't have to be right. They just have to throw up enough chaff to confuse the voter and Republicans win the mid-terms again.
legacy (adj) - A pejorative term used in the computer industry meaning "it works."
http://www.langston.com/Fun_People/2000/2000AHG.html
Yeah, Apple, Amazon, and Alphabet.. And that's just the A's
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
A few thoughts on this: 1. Supporting out-dated hardware, software and infrastructure, gets progressively more expensive as time goes on. If you space a tear out and replace project over say five years as an operating cost instead of an all up front capital cost, it should be doable and save some money in the long run. 2. The more out-dated hardware, software and infrastructure are past end-of-life, the less secure those networks and systems are. Can we stop with the ridiculous federal data breaches everyone?! My security clearance info is out there in the wind so I kind of take that a little personally. 3. Updating infrastructure doesn't have to result in lay-offs or outsourcing (a Yuuuge security risk IMHO). Enough with the FUD. 4. All Federal infrastructure upgrade projects don't have to become total fiasco's, "IF" they have the proper leadership, oversight, scope and funding. You can't tell me that there aren't enough experienced companies, with good success records that could take on this kind of project. 5. Put off infrastructure projects long enough, for whatever reason and eventually, really bad shit happens. Anyway, that's my $2 worth as an IT person.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Eh, if it works *well* don't change it. If there are alterations that could considerably help, then it's sometimes worth changing. I'm more of a fan of the phrase:
"Don't change something purely for the of change." That eleminates waste on new shiny things but leaves way for healthy growth/change.
Trump lies constantly
Sessions met with Russian ambassador. Reality, he was at a gala with hundreds of people and Sessions didn't even know ambassador was present.
DNC demanded he resign because of that meeting that didn't happen.
Flynn broke the law. Sketchy details on what he did. Reality is Flynn filled out wrong form when declaring he was paid by Turkey, not that he hid or failed to declare, just wrong form.
DNC demanded he be jailed.
Russia and Trump colluded to fake election. Reality, not a shred of evidence from ANYONE.
DNC demanded he resign or be impeached.
Russia threw the election. Reality, DNC servers hacked and they paid a private company to say Russia did it. DNC refused to let FBI examine servers. Private company will not testify under oath that Russia did it anymore. FBI now has ZERO evidence of Russia even interfering.
Comey leaked information, which is questionable at best, as a disgruntled employee in order to get a special council appointed for something he knows no evidence exists for.
And Trump is the one who lies constantly?
Oh boy, the left has YET to say anything truthful since Trump has been elected. Ossof was also going to win BIG in Georgia last night too, but I guess that was Trump lying again. Its apparent to most of the country that Trump isn't the compulsive liar here. Its the DNC party who had been telling you Trump is days away from impeachment for literally months now and there is still zero chance of it happening.
I think you are calling the wrong person a liar.
The usual idiots with political axes to grind can keep on droning on about things they don't know anything about. I see lots of that above.
Everything Trump said is true in regards Federal IT. Everything Kushner said is also true.
The federal government's IT issue revolves around the huge body shop LSI contractors - GD/NG/BAH/CACI etc. These companies and their subcontractors do a lot of the development and O&M type work associated with federal programs. Key things to remember about these firms:
1) They won't modernize anything without being paid (again).
2) They take prior government guidance and twist it into justification for their incompetence
3) They maximize labor over automation
4) They keep knowledge institutionalized within their company to the maximum extent possible to maintain their incumbent status
These companies and their business practices are a huge reason why Federal IT sucks. They get away with it due to Congressional cover. When pressured, or at risk of losing a contract, their lobby in Congress is activated by notifying the lawmakers that jobs will be lost in their districts. The noise level and scrutiny of the Executive agency is usually sufficient to shut that attempt down. Minor GS-level functionaries melt away when Congressional staffers start getting on their case.
Trump could help with the problem but it's like the Dutch boy trying to use his fingers to fill in holes in the dike. You run out of fingers after a while.
There are other problems like institutional incompetence amongst GS personnel, but those are probably more amenable to solution than the one I describe.
Bottom line: The whole system is broken and sucks.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Lack of parts, lack of security updates and patches. Inherently less secure and a big fat hacking target. Lack of capacity to keep up with modern demand, etc. All tech has an end of life. It may still function perfectly fine for what it was originally intended but that's like expecting today's cellular networks to still support a 1980s bag phone. Eventually the tech just can't get out of its own way and becomes a huge money suck.
Enshrined in a museum, yes. Operational for official use, no.
I buy that he might know how to save money constructing a wall, but I'm not certain this knowledge translates well into the technology domain. Government I.T. jobs are notorious for going over budget.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
The bar is set rather low, however. After the most tech-savvy President ever effed-up his own promise to revamp the government, if Trump achieves something — anything — he'll still have done better than the predecessor. Not that you'd know about any such success — unless you are paying really close attention — from the established reporters.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Cynical.
Trump might be on to something. There are crazy amounts of funds being burned in even the average IT department because nobody wants to clean ship, like throwing the outdated shit out, sign off on the costs to replace it with something better.
That is because managers these days think in quaterly earnings, and such a project takes several quarters, if not several years. It's like driving your own car because you don't want to spend money on a new car - after some point, you are actually losing money because the increasing costs of repairs, bad fuel efficiency etc. add up to more than what a change of cars would cost you. But if you don't have the money to buy a new car, you are stuck in that cycle, even if you realize it.
Modernising IT costs money. Over a carefully chosen period of time, you can very certainly show that the program costs more money than it saves - but will that still hold over a longer period of time?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
EOM
Damping absorbs vibrations. Dampening is caused by moisture.
And yeah, it would be the congress who would be cutting the cheque. POTUS does not control the purse strings.
Damping absorbs vibrations. Dampening is caused by moisture.
As a civilian user of government IT systems, I can tell you that they are byzantine and often use severely outdated technology. I listened to some of the technology leaders' comments yesterday and I noticed that Apple and Alphabet seems very upbeat about it all but IBM seemed to poo-poo the idea. I have an idea why. Take, for example, the State Department's system for getting ITAR export licenses. These fools are STILL using Lotus as a document submission system. It only runs on Windows and it must be submitted using Internet Explorer. IBM owns Lotus. They're still living in the dark ages, Watson technology not withstanding. They clearly have a lucrative contract with State and don't want to see their gravy train derailed. Then there's the inscrutable WAWF system. The password rules are so restrictive that it would likely be easy to hack because of the severely limited ways to create a password.
Bottom line is that the private sector operates in vastly superior ways. The government (not just federal) needs to adopt these methods AND they need to eliminate the low-bidder rule. By categorically rejecting the lowest bid would take away the habit of low-balling it now and charge through the nose for changes that permeates government contracting.
Nice to see Trump continuing the IT initiatives started under Obama. I'm working on one of them. One the biggest challenges that we had was management looking at six different reporting systems and drawing different conclusions about the same data. It took a few years to consolidate the reporting systems into a single reporting system. Our security compliance went from 70% to 95%, and 99% is the new expectation moving forward.
...to justify $2T in tax cuts to his 1% buddies
The only ones that matter: his voting base.
Even that is a solvable problem, but the costs gradually escalate over the years.
Because a new administration has new friends that need government contracts, too.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Because "big change" and "bold thinking" never lead to projects going over budget.
But hey, there's no headlines in saying "We're encouraging our agencies to consider consolidating services over the next five years."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
It works, nobody remembers quite *how* it works, and it is critical that it never go down. Then the only viable path forward is to do a complete top-to-bottom replacement, but nobody can agree on the specs for the new system.
Government systems should be refactored to make government services better. Full stop. Saving money might be a useful side effect, but it might not, but cost-savings should not be the goal. Cost-saving projects run the risk of not actually saving anything while also screwing up things which already (kind of) worked.
As a for-instance, when a bank merges with another bank, they'll often claim some crazy cost-savings from merging backend operations. But it would be stupid to run a bank with multiple sets of backend operations, you'd lose more from lost opportunity due to confusion that you'll gain from literal cost savings from merging things. But nobody wants to hear the story of "There's a huge risk in combining disparate operations systems", instead trotting out cost savings makes everyone happy.
This is ignoring the problem that the government doesn't get to choose its field of operations. A tech company to some extent chooses its field based on whether it will be able to do things efficiently, and then if it takes over the world it can just ignore the detritus. But the US government must integrate, say, service records of veterans across decades, call it ~100 years. They have to take potentially sketchy records from the world wars and integrate them in a useful way into a system which is also taking in 1000x as much data about people currently operating in Syria. There's no possibility of saying "Could we just go regenerate this data to add the missing tags?" It's actually somewhat likely that in some cases you're better off with federated systems rather than a single system of integrated data.
Basically, it's a hard problem. You can almost certainly design a system to handle things better, but any redesign will have huge capital costs. A very likely outcome is that you'll have a new system which doesn't quite handle everything the old system did, and now you have two systems with different groups dependent enough on each that you can't shut either down, so things are actually less efficient.
Absolutely for it!
Remember what property clouds have: A little bit of wind and poof, all is gone.
I think more companies should entrust the data they collect about us to the cloud...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
He'll twitter them into submission, as usual.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If you think about it for 5 seconds, you know that the 10 dollar shirt is cheaper. Way cheaper.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You could elect Jesus Christ and Mohamed as Pres/VP and they still wouldn't have enough political power and clout to untangle the bureaucratic rat's nest that is the US government.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Not all that cynical, really. The history of IT is filled with stories about massive Government and Military IT upgrades that either don't pan out or run severely over budget and end up cancelled or drastically scaled down. For instance, air traffic control modernization has been a big issue since the Carter administration: https://www.forbes.com/sites/m... Then there's the IRS modernization: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/... And various military software overhauls: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12... https://arstechnica.com/inform...
So he said "You can get the people you want" and immediately everyone imagines what he means. He hasn't DONE anything and he prides himself on closing deals by basically saying whatever it takes. So I've learned with Trump look to actions, not invented interpretations of his random comments.
I'd suggest that there are lots of those "people" tech leaders need right here in the good old "US" of "A". Sure, maybe he will revert the H1B situation to the same or even worse (from the perspective of an older US tech worker) but he hasn't taken any steps to do that yet. But if you are imagining outcomes how about imagine something good. He discovers unicorns that poop gold.
I mean seriously. I've seen predictions of him bringing in Russians in the responses implying they'd be put to work on our voting systems!. Where is there any indication of that? What Trump has proven to be is a very effective way to get people to spew their inner dark imaginations. It is a great time in history to own popcorn stocks and sit back and watch it all unfold. What he has proven is that the world is all far less fragile than everyone seems to think.
This from the asshole that threatens to shoot people who say things he doesn't like. Then when they make fun of him for making such stupid statements he threatens to sue them for... for him threatening to shoot them and them not taking it seriously.
Are you the asshat who threatened to report me to the Governor of California? Are you the asshat who threatened to report me to the IRS for making too much money from my side business?
Get off of /. if all you are going to do is constantly threaten other people and then pretend you are the victim. The only person threatening to shoot other people here is you. Just because you find that acceptable behavior doesn't mean ANYONE else does or has done the same to you.
Some asshat thought it was cute to link my name and website with a picture of two men having sex with each other on an image website. I filed a complaint with the FBI last night.
All government does is spend. They never save. I'm sure they still have buggy whip inspectors because nobody ever gets laid off, no matter how useless.
Nothing will happen because congress won't do anything Trump wants. If it were approved, they would spend $1 trillion and get no savings at all. How many decades have they been trying to upgrade the air traffic control systems from the 60s?
As a Federal employee, the department I work for can't even run e-mail and VPN reliably, yet they mandate use of those services. At this point just about any real direction would be an improvement.
Funny how it only takes a generation and people think that the new normal has been eternal...
Gov waste and corruption are OK as long as it is lower than the profit margin of private management... Even then, private isn't always better... look at ISPs...
Trump would delegate it to a few corrupt billionaires who'd pocket any savings and commit fraud (like many did to get that rich....--> ) Trump would believe whatever FOX told him while the Gov would lose massive amounts of money while claiming savings... Maybe they'd play some accounting games but they don't seem to bother much anymore. Now everybody just flat out LIES and calls truth fake news. (25% of the nation is retarded and they vote.)
Look at NYC which spent billions to fail to redo a system just to save a little money on employee time cards etc. Have you been involved in gov contract projects? They are a moving target that is pushed by political winds-- it is no surprise private contractors have so much trouble. The bidding contractors generally only have 1 skill: how to get contracts (and bribe for them.) Their other talent is not going to jail; wait a few losses out and then get contracts AGAIN.
Obama had a few IT people trying to fix just a little bit and they didn't have a good time of it. You have to fight entrenched powerful PRIVATE forces -- a lot of what people think is government has already been privatized out -- government does better when they in-house; their contracting work always seems to be a disaster with far LESS accountability.
Pursuit of perfection... like the pursuit of Utopia is actually EVIL.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Your behavior is UNACCEPTABLE in society, and you can't seem to understand that.
What you failed to understand is that five user accounts got deleted by Slashdot management, two dozen DMCA takedown notices were sent to image websites, and a criminal complaint got filed with the FBI. Why? Because of UNACCEPTABLE behavior on Slashdot that isn't tolerated in society.
That's what I was thinking. MS probably convinced T that if the Fed Gov't simply used only MS products, everything would be compatible and integrated with everything, and magic wizard dialog boxes and IDE Intellisense would auto-magically do most of the work.
MS-Wall is compatible with MS-Border-Guard and compatible with MS-Extreme-Vetting and MS-Mex-will-pay-for-it. Just sign the check and plug'em in!
Table-ized A.I.
That my number one gripe with the "social justice" type and the government its self. They worry more about people that need help on the other side of the planet than in their own back yard. Pathetic.
I say, sir, are you aware that the man you are fighting is made of straw, and that it is of your own invention? A fierce scallywag he is, for sure, but maybe you could dial down the virtue signaling a bit? Kthx
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
It's unacceptable to sign up satire accounts? Society finds satire unacceptable?
Abuse is not acceptable. Copyright infringement is not acceptable. Revenge pornography is not acceptable.
Honest question - what sort of crime do you imagine that this is? What statute, exactly, would give the FBI jurisdiction?
Copyright infringement and revenge porn.
[...] it might even make you SUPER mad...
I'm not mad. As a content creator, I have to protect my copyrights or risk losing them.
[...] but how does the FBI get involved?
FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center
https://www.ic3.gov/
[...] there are no pictures of you engaging in sex.
Never mind that the dick pic featured two men who had a passing resemblance to me, and that posting my name and URL would cause someone to reasonably conclude that one of the men in the picture was me.
So are you claiming that one of the guys in the image is you?
I'm claiming that a reasonable person could conclude that one of the men in the dick pic could be me, as they each bare a passing resemblance to my photo on my author website. Furthermore, the person who has been reposting my photo without authorization (copyright infringement) recently had four user accounts deleted and has the motive to take revenge on me by implying that I'm a homosexual in a dick pic. Hence, revenge porn.
So I'm not sure why you think the FBI has jurisdiction here.
A determination that the FBI needs to make.
Can you provide a link?
I can provide several since Slashdot has become a profitble theme on my blog.
https://www.kickingthebitbucket.com/2017/03/21/have-i-threatened-to-shoot-you-today/
https://www.kickingthebitbucket.com/tag/slashdot/
You have no standing to make a claim on behalf of someone else's copyright.
I did argued that the dick pic violated the image website's TOS as revenge porn. The dick pic is no more. I did create a screenshot for the FBI.
So you submitted gay porn to the FBI and tried to claim it was revenge porn?
Not yet. I'm still waiting for a response to my complaint. Meanwhile I'm assembling the documentation, emails and contact info from the last three months.
Hey, whatever happened to C.D. Reimer & Associates LLC?
An expensive mistake. I spent two years arguing with the FTB on how expensive it was supposed to be.
All the documentation I have here has only your signature on it. Who were these associates?
Private investors.
70$ for registering. I was wondering were you scrounged that up.
The franchise tax is $800+ per year — off the top.
Is your apartment number still the same?
Read the subject line and think twice (if you can).
You incur expenses that you don't need, then scramble desperately just to break even ??
Nope. I dissolved the LLC because I've decided to walk away from the business for a while (three years, actually). It didn't help that the FTB took my tax payment, didn't update records, and tried to collect money that I've already paid. I didn't want my cash flow going the state during the time I wasn't involved with the business.
"if it works, don't fuck with it".
If only I had known this earlier, I would not have to follow this boring sexual harassment seminar. At least the person giving the presentation has nice tits, so there's that.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Is it working in a satisfactory way? Can it be changed efficiently with changing requirements? Can it be run less expensively? (The used car I bought in 1976 got half the mileage of the similar car I bought in 2008, as an example.) Is it adequately secure and reliable?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
We don't seem to be able to do very large software projects reliably. The ACA website was unusually successful for a project that size.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes