Status Updates From Recoding America: Why Gover...

I'm enjoying this overall and it has excellent notes about the way layers of requirements are added through new legislation, while existing requirements are not tidied, resulting in an overly complex mess.

The section on GPS had some weird assertions though, which makes me question the technical accuracy in other areas. Comparing UDP and XML+SOAP is a bit odd, and the complexity is overstated.

It is fitting that the scope of the book is spiralling out of control.

“Our elected leaders keep thinking in terms of money, regulations; and oversight because those are the levers they have most immediately at hand… These levels can be helpful, but they need to be directed at the problem underlying our delivery failures: the lack of skilled technologists within government who are empowered to make the necessary decisions.”

“You need to think about the technical implementation of a law when you write it… dialogue once again beats directives.”

“The more information you ask for, the more you reward administrative capacity, and the harder it is to help those who need it most:”

“You need to own the code, and you need to be able to change it to meet your needs. This doesn’t mean that you can’t use contractors at all - in government, you will almost certainly use them. It means that you must have the core competencies to support a living, ever-adapting system. Government knows how to acquire technology. What we need to acquire are capabilities.”

“Procurement regulations are meant to make the process as fair as possible. But the very existence of those intricate, voluminous rules means that large government contractors - who have the resources to master them - have an advantage over smaller firms, as well as over firms that don’t specialize in government clients.”

“Greater burden means less equity.”