Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

Obama Takes Step to Improve Government Technology

posted by azrael on Tuesday August 12 2014, @02:27PM   Printer-friendly
from the even-bigger-government dept.

AnonTechie writes:

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. 

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Obama Takes Step to Improve Government Technology | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 19 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 12 2014, @05:24PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 12 2014, @05:24PM (#80521)

    Just out of curiosity, where do you think employees come from?

    Let's say that you, the Government, want to hire someone with 15 years of experience... You have one of a few options:

    1 - Hire from within Government ("Do you think that appointing another bureaucrat to fix the other bureaucrats will work?")
    2 - Hire from academia ("Those who can't do, teach. This person knows nothing about the way the Real World (tm) works.")
    3 - Hire from industry ("...and the revolving door of Government is complete, allowing industrial people to run the country.")

    I don't suppose a thought similar to "Someone from one of the largest web-based software groups in the nation will likely contribute positively towards the Governments' new web-based initiative" would be appropriate...

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +5  
       Insightful=4, Interesting=1, Total=5
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Total Score:   5  

  • (Score: 1) by JNCF on Saturday August 16 2014, @12:58AM

    by JNCF (4317) on Saturday August 16 2014, @12:58AM (#81942) Journal

    Man, I'm just being jaded and snarky. I don't have any reasonable answers to your question of where to hire from, because it's built upon the premise that we're working within in this fucked up dystopia run by a federal government and a bunch of corporate symbiotes. I have some ideas about how to fix that, but nobody wants to hear them. So I'm going to continue being jaded and snarky, and criticizing the system that exists.

    Also, it's fair to note the the Google guy wasn't hired to regulate his own industry, unlike some other riders of the revolving door. [wikipedia.org] That doesn't mean I like it, there are other problems surrounding the issue, but it's certainly not the clearest case of abuse out there.