I think part of this stems from the nuttiness that is government contracting and the massive organizational sprawl inherent in our current governmental structure.
Looking at some of the details it seems some agencies are somewhat better than others, it would be interesting to see the whole report and see which agencies do better and which really suck (NASA seems to have done quite poorly).
Given that the security needs for the EPA may quite different than those for the DoD, not to mention countless other agencies, it's easy to understand how standards and enforcement could quickly fragment. A lot of these agencies will hire contractors to do the work, they'll hire different contractors, who are themselves drawn from a limited pool of authorized contractors and soon enough you have Healthcare.gov version 1 again.
Additionally, if FB or Google have a breach, there's a clear line of responsibility that ends up at the CEO. While in theory that's true in government, in practice you have both the executive branch and congress that muck about in the operations of an agency, so although you may get security person X to resign, it's far less easy to get at the people who are actually responsible (Which congressperson? How do you vote them out of a gerrymandered district? Should the president fire his cabinet secretary? How does he get a new one past congress)
Probably procurement processes weed out all but the most patient of candidates, along with their pay schedule. But their process can take months before final approval, so by then the candidate is gone.
They need to streamline the hiring process and offer competitive pay.
It's not just about patience, there are a lot of guidelines and hurdles to jump through to be eligible for certain contracts. Some of this is for good reason, there have been plenty of cases of contractors bilking the government out of millions with little or no accountability. But it makes the process too complicated for real competition to occur, so perversely although the government turns to the private sector for more competitive prices and cutting edge solutions, it ends up with inferior products.
Also, it's not as though the contractors themselves offer poor compensation. A lot of them actually offer at least market rate, and in some cases higher pay. It's not so easy to figure out how much something is going to cost over the lifetime of a contract. This, combined with the general opacity and bureaucratic hurdles of government contracting makes it so makes it so the government doesn't get the best deal over the lifetime of the contract despite picking what may look to be a good idea at the onset. Of course this is all ignoring political considerations and lobbying issues.
The US Government is the largest corporation in the world, I think the US Defense Department is alone the largest corporation in the world. And none of it is subject to the free market (in many ways for good reason). It's very difficult to do things efficiently at that scale, and its even harder to do it with external political influences of all sorts.
There's organizational pressure to cut costs in the government, but nothing like the market's bonuses to excite people into excelling.
With the only serious motivator being to cut costs, most agencies will contract their project into the ground.
Add on to that the fact it's nearly impossible to hire because most tech people's heads are packed with dystopian scifi nonsense, and you have a perfect storm.
Comments
I think part of this stems from the nuttiness that is government contracting and the massive organizational sprawl inherent in our current governmental structure.
Looking at some of the details it seems some agencies are somewhat better than others, it would be interesting to see the whole report and see which agencies do better and which really suck (NASA seems to have done quite poorly).
Given that the security needs for the EPA may quite different than those for the DoD, not to mention countless other agencies, it's easy to understand how standards and enforcement could quickly fragment. A lot of these agencies will hire contractors to do the work, they'll hire different contractors, who are themselves drawn from a limited pool of authorized contractors and soon enough you have Healthcare.gov version 1 again.
Additionally, if FB or Google have a breach, there's a clear line of responsibility that ends up at the CEO. While in theory that's true in government, in practice you have both the executive branch and congress that muck about in the operations of an agency, so although you may get security person X to resign, it's far less easy to get at the people who are actually responsible (Which congressperson? How do you vote them out of a gerrymandered district? Should the president fire his cabinet secretary? How does he get a new one past congress)
Probably procurement processes weed out all but the most patient of candidates, along with their pay schedule. But their process can take months before final approval, so by then the candidate is gone.
They need to streamline the hiring process and offer competitive pay.
It's not just about patience, there are a lot of guidelines and hurdles to jump through to be eligible for certain contracts. Some of this is for good reason, there have been plenty of cases of contractors bilking the government out of millions with little or no accountability. But it makes the process too complicated for real competition to occur, so perversely although the government turns to the private sector for more competitive prices and cutting edge solutions, it ends up with inferior products.
Also, it's not as though the contractors themselves offer poor compensation. A lot of them actually offer at least market rate, and in some cases higher pay. It's not so easy to figure out how much something is going to cost over the lifetime of a contract. This, combined with the general opacity and bureaucratic hurdles of government contracting makes it so makes it so the government doesn't get the best deal over the lifetime of the contract despite picking what may look to be a good idea at the onset. Of course this is all ignoring political considerations and lobbying issues.
The US Government is the largest corporation in the world, I think the US Defense Department is alone the largest corporation in the world. And none of it is subject to the free market (in many ways for good reason). It's very difficult to do things efficiently at that scale, and its even harder to do it with external political influences of all sorts.
There's organizational pressure to cut costs in the government, but nothing like the market's bonuses to excite people into excelling.
With the only serious motivator being to cut costs, most agencies will contract their project into the ground.
Add on to that the fact it's nearly impossible to hire because most tech people's heads are packed with dystopian scifi nonsense, and you have a perfect storm.