Besides https://18f.gsa.gov/ are there any other agencies, NGO's, or other organizations working on modernizing the government? And is there a path for private citizens who work in the tech sector to become more involved?
Seems unfair for the government to have to "compete" with private companies to offer services using decades old technology. Or in the case of the IRS, it seems wasteful and inefficient.
The IRS is working on modernizing the system. The first attempt was abandoned in 2009 and the latest project is years behind schedule. This is at least partly because the budget keeps getting cut. https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2018/04/irs-60-year...
The IRS already nearly developed a system to automatically translate their mainframe assembler logic into Java and check its correctness, but the main developer was hired on some special kind of program (to bypass the government salary structure) which could not be renewed before the project was completed.
> Now, IRS is on the verge of solving this problem. The solution was engineered by a group of about eight people. And not under a multi-hundred-million-dollar systems integration contract. A leader of the group was Jian Wang, a Chinese emigre who is now a naturalized citizen. Wang told me his solution isn’t a silver bullet but rather a carefully worked-out methodology. It has three components so potentially powerful the IRS has filed patent applications for them.
> I say “was” because he’s left the agency, and the status of the project is dark.
> Wang was working under streamlined critical pay authority the agency has had since its landmark 1998 restructuring. It gave the IRS 40 slots under which it could pay temporary, full-time employees higher than GS rates. Former Commissioner John Koskinen pointed out Congress did not re-up this authority in 2013, despite his entreaties to former Congressman Jason Chaffetz’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
> “The last one ran out this past summer,” Koskinen said. The departures included Wang. He says he applied to become a GS-15 or Senior Executive Service member so he could see through the assembler-to-Java project. But his approval didn’t come through until a week before his employment authority expired. By then he’d accepted another job. Wang says he had a house to pay for, kids to educate. Koskinen confirms the agency wanted to convert Wang. But the process of approval from Treasury headquarters and the Office of Personnel Management simply took too long.
Note: this is a repost of a comment I made previously at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16859012. This system has come up in the news a lot recently, but the articles are usually frustratingly vague the effort to replace it, which seems really interesting. There are so many critical mainframe programs running in business and government, and it's not an easy job to replace them. For instance, my employer has been working at it for 20 years.
Somtimes people people spend so much effort trying to save a penny that they end up spending a dollar. Like we are so worried about people abusing welfare that we pile on crazy amounts of administration.. ends up costing more.
Maybe I'm too young to have a good perspective here, but in my limited time on earth, it seems more and more that the US is "pushing off" things, to what end I don't know.
What does my country think will happen if it continues to strip education budgets? Don't we know enough from our experience with Mississippi? Haven't the teacher strikes taught us our lesson? Why did America reject the concept of universal education, do we not believe that engineers and doctors generate enough profit for our country? Are we not understanding that other countries will fill the brain gap?
Why is infrastructure being so universally neglected? Why is public transit being reviled? What happens when the oil runs out? Do we just not care? Why does nobody in government seem to give a shit?
Why is funding being stripped more and more from critical organizations like the IRS? Are we just pushing it to see how far we can go? "Well, it hasn't completely annihilated the coffers of the USGOV yet, I guess we can keep pulling money out of it." Is that the justification?
I hate to be so fatalistic but it also seems like the people with power have already given up and are strip-mining what they can before the whole thing falls around everyone's head. I mean, I guess we survived the dotcom bust and the housing crisis... but people smarter than me have been writing that we're heading straight towards not only another housing crisis, but an even worse student loan crisis.
Older people, what's your perspective? Is the castle crashing around our ears or is this just another cycle?
Costs. Construction projects in the U.S. are unbelievably expensive. The 2nd avenue subway is a perfect example. They dug 1.5 miles of tunnel and built 3 stations for $4.5 billion. A fairly comparable project is the Berlin U5 extension. It also has 3 stops and about 1.5 miles of tunnel. It's being done for about $700 million. Lots of people would love to have new transit lines, new computer systems, etc, but the old ones were built when costs were affordable, and often can't be replaced for anything close to their original cost.
Not american but we have similar problems in canada where the politicians of ontario don't seem to be able to have an adult conversation with the electorate about things like taxes and spending.
> it seems more and more that the US is "pushing off" things, to what end I don't know.
I suspect there are many reasons I'm unaware of, but two things come to mind.
First, the IRS is chronically underfunded because their budget is approved by Congress, and Congressman get funding / donations / bribes by people that don't want the IRS going after them for their shenanigans.
Second, there is (understandably) controversial book by Bruce Gibney called "A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America"
"They habitually cut their own taxes and borrow money without any concern for future burdens."
The general mindset seems to be to kick the can down the road, on all things, including the environment. This group became the dominant political power in the mid 90s, and still holds great power.
Taxes are theft. One of the ways that Americans who agree with this philosophy have been fighting the government (and fighting you people who think they should all pay for your roads and schools) is to attack and delay all efforts to fund the IRS.
The more under-funded the IRS is, the less effective it is at stealing our money.
You might think that taxes aren't theft. And if the people in our government were not crooks, you might be right. But they are crooks. And when crooks take your money from you and spend it on cocaine and hookers, that's theft.
As a somewhat humorous aside, the logo for the IRS is a ghostly figure about to press down on the detonator button from one of those cartoon TNT-detonators (which is shaped like a workhorse, symbolizing a work in progress). Seriously look at it. Accidental? Don't bet on it. (Here's a link to the logo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Revenue_Service#/medi...)
Maybe the government should pass a guaranteed jobs bill, and offer it also to out of work/transitioning/freelance devs to rewrite some of their out-dated systems/code.
It can take 3-10 months to find a job, if you lose a software job, imagine if the next day you just auto-start working on government projects maybe at a 20% reduction of your normal salary until you find a real job to replace the one you lost..
11 comments
[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 32.8 ms ] threadSeems unfair for the government to have to "compete" with private companies to offer services using decades old technology. Or in the case of the IRS, it seems wasteful and inefficient.
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16377329 (The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java)
https://federalnewsradio.com/tom-temin-commentary/2018/01/ir...:
> Now, IRS is on the verge of solving this problem. The solution was engineered by a group of about eight people. And not under a multi-hundred-million-dollar systems integration contract. A leader of the group was Jian Wang, a Chinese emigre who is now a naturalized citizen. Wang told me his solution isn’t a silver bullet but rather a carefully worked-out methodology. It has three components so potentially powerful the IRS has filed patent applications for them.
> I say “was” because he’s left the agency, and the status of the project is dark.
> Wang was working under streamlined critical pay authority the agency has had since its landmark 1998 restructuring. It gave the IRS 40 slots under which it could pay temporary, full-time employees higher than GS rates. Former Commissioner John Koskinen pointed out Congress did not re-up this authority in 2013, despite his entreaties to former Congressman Jason Chaffetz’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
> “The last one ran out this past summer,” Koskinen said. The departures included Wang. He says he applied to become a GS-15 or Senior Executive Service member so he could see through the assembler-to-Java project. But his approval didn’t come through until a week before his employment authority expired. By then he’d accepted another job. Wang says he had a house to pay for, kids to educate. Koskinen confirms the agency wanted to convert Wang. But the process of approval from Treasury headquarters and the Office of Personnel Management simply took too long.
Note: this is a repost of a comment I made previously at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16859012. This system has come up in the news a lot recently, but the articles are usually frustratingly vague the effort to replace it, which seems really interesting. There are so many critical mainframe programs running in business and government, and it's not an easy job to replace them. For instance, my employer has been working at it for 20 years.
What does my country think will happen if it continues to strip education budgets? Don't we know enough from our experience with Mississippi? Haven't the teacher strikes taught us our lesson? Why did America reject the concept of universal education, do we not believe that engineers and doctors generate enough profit for our country? Are we not understanding that other countries will fill the brain gap?
Why is infrastructure being so universally neglected? Why is public transit being reviled? What happens when the oil runs out? Do we just not care? Why does nobody in government seem to give a shit?
Why is funding being stripped more and more from critical organizations like the IRS? Are we just pushing it to see how far we can go? "Well, it hasn't completely annihilated the coffers of the USGOV yet, I guess we can keep pulling money out of it." Is that the justification?
I hate to be so fatalistic but it also seems like the people with power have already given up and are strip-mining what they can before the whole thing falls around everyone's head. I mean, I guess we survived the dotcom bust and the housing crisis... but people smarter than me have been writing that we're heading straight towards not only another housing crisis, but an even worse student loan crisis.
Older people, what's your perspective? Is the castle crashing around our ears or is this just another cycle?
I suspect there are many reasons I'm unaware of, but two things come to mind.
First, the IRS is chronically underfunded because their budget is approved by Congress, and Congressman get funding / donations / bribes by people that don't want the IRS going after them for their shenanigans.
Second, there is (understandably) controversial book by Bruce Gibney called "A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America"
https://www.amazon.com/Generation-Sociopaths-Boomers-Betraye...
with a recent interview here
https://www.vox.com/2017/12/20/16772670/baby-boomers-millenn...
"They habitually cut their own taxes and borrow money without any concern for future burdens."
The general mindset seems to be to kick the can down the road, on all things, including the environment. This group became the dominant political power in the mid 90s, and still holds great power.
The more under-funded the IRS is, the less effective it is at stealing our money.
You might think that taxes aren't theft. And if the people in our government were not crooks, you might be right. But they are crooks. And when crooks take your money from you and spend it on cocaine and hookers, that's theft.
As a somewhat humorous aside, the logo for the IRS is a ghostly figure about to press down on the detonator button from one of those cartoon TNT-detonators (which is shaped like a workhorse, symbolizing a work in progress). Seriously look at it. Accidental? Don't bet on it. (Here's a link to the logo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Revenue_Service#/medi...)
It can take 3-10 months to find a job, if you lose a software job, imagine if the next day you just auto-start working on government projects maybe at a 20% reduction of your normal salary until you find a real job to replace the one you lost..