The problem is not that whoever wrote the contract for the VA health care form chose the wrong browser in their requirements, and it’s not that the CIO Council chose the wrong architecture when it specified ESBs. The problem is that it specified those things at all. Government’s obsession with requirements—voluminous, detailed requirements that can take so long to compile the software is obsolete before it’s even bid out—stems from a delusion that it’s possible to make a work plan so specific that it requires no further decision-making.
