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On Monday the White House announced the creation of a team of digital experts tasked with upgrading the government's technology infrastructure and making its websites more consumer friendly.
The move is aimed at avoiding a repeat of the website debacle that marred the rollout of President Barack Obama's signature health care legislation last year. While the administration ultimately surpassed its enrollment targets, the opening weeks of sign-ups were riddled with website troubles that raised questions about the administration's competence.
The new digital team will be overseen by Mikey Dickerson, an engineer who took leave from Google in order to oversee fixes to the HealthCare.gov site.
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Obama Takes Step to Improve Government Technology
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Now KEN and BARBIE are PERMANENTLY ADDICTED to MIND-ALTERING DRUGS ...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Tuesday August 12 2014, @02:52PM
The article is vague on whether this team has any authority to do anything or not. If all they do is make recommendations, this is just a waste of time.
The way to tell whether people in Washington have any power or not is whether they have the authority to direct where money is spent. If the President gives this team the ability to spend money, and direct where it is spent, then this is a good thing. Otherwise, it's just a waste of time. They'll produce handbooks (oops, they already did - red flag!) and recommendations that the career bureaucrats will ignore like everything else, and the current administration will be gone soon and along with it this digital team.
And "bring government digital services in line with the private sector" sounds kind of strange, since both the private sector and government outsource software development to the same consultants. What's going to be different?
I was trying to think of a Star Wars analogy to help you understand this, and then I remembered that the Death Star design was outsourced to insects. Fast forward a few years, and two Death Stars were blown up back-to-back by low-tech, low-budget rebels, which is what you get when a government hires lowest-bidder consultants.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 12 2014, @03:09PM
I agree. We will probably see about as much action as the last 3 times they tried this in the past 6 years.
The only reason this team got anything done was the major embarrassment the healthcare site was.
Our officials have little interest in spending optimal amounts or doing the right thing. But making sure their budget this year is big enough not to hurt next year (even though they are not sure what they need next year). http://www.usdebtclock.org/ [usdebtclock.org] vs http://www.usdebtclock.org/2008.html [usdebtclock.org]
But I wish them luck. We need our gov working together with each other to help us. Not to create gigantic sprawling spending machines. Will not happen though. :(
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 13 2014, @07:38AM
if a team of experts is given authority to spend taxpayer money, where do you think it will be spent?
1) companies in which the experts hold stock
2) companies in which the experts are employed or have family/friends employed or own
3) companies that give them the most stuff on the side, have the most comfy private jets, and host them for the most junkets
4) companies that have the most political clout with politicians that hold sway over the team
5) all of the above
6) on an objectively investigated cost-effective solution that best serves the interest of the american people
(Score: -1) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 13 2014, @11:01AM
If the experts are any good, 1 and 2 are likely to be much better options than whatever is currently being done, even if they're not optimal, so it's still a net win. If furthermore the experts actually have any self-respect for what they do, 3, 4, and 5 are unlikely to happen to any significant degree.
Of course, this being the government, the "experts" are statistically unlikely to be any good in the first place, so the rest of the arguments are kind of moot.