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Comment by vkou | Hacker News Reader

This sort of problem is not limited to government. Private companies waste money on all sorts of dead-end nonsense - all the time.

It's why IBM and Oracle are still in business.

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In all my years in tech, I have literally never heard a single person (that wasn't part of a flashy ad campaign) exclaim that IBM or Oracle offered their company a solution at a good rate, got it setup in time and that it works well and solved their problems.

I think I have read one anecdote: Apple stores and Oracle. I read somewhere that Steve Jobs was happy with the point of sales software and that there is some Oracle in it (and that Jobs and Ellison knew each other)

Only positive Oracle anecdote I know of.

They didn’t just know each other:

“Ellison's idea was to buy Apple and immediately make Jobs CEO.”

“Jobs proposed what Ellison called "a more circuitous route." He would persuade Apple to acquire Next, and then join Apple's board.”

“After Jobs was CEO of Apple again — interim CEO initially — Ellison joined Apple's board.”

https://www.recode.net/2016/5/13/11672932/larry-ellison-stev...

Of course they do, but it's a much bigger issue when it's done with taxpayer money. I don't really care what Apple or BP waste money on, but I hate seeing important services degraded/cut in order to keep spending on wasteful projects like this.

How do you suppose we fix this? I'm not being factious here.

I’d start with asking the questions: who was responsible for the contract and it’s implemntation, and what were their motives, incentives, qualifications and abilities. Then I would ask the same question, but what would the IDEAL motives, abilities, incentives and qualifications of that person be? Then try bridging those gaps....

be much more aggressive about sharing solutions between institutions or making them available as open source outright (see https://code.gov/#/).

How different can the needs from one DMV to another be?

Speaking from afar, but I've noticed that Americans tend to feel very strongly about state rights and independence, as well as the opportunity for someone to profit somewhere. Wouldn't that work against what you're saying?

I do think it makes complete sense though - reinventing the wheel in each state is crazy.

I wonder if any state agency has ever hired and built a solution internally, proven its effectiveness, and then somehow sold it to other states?

What you're saying is quite possibly true.

This is part of a bigger problem - it is just so hard to understand the internal structure, processes and needs of these organizations.

There must be some people on HN who have extensive government contracting experience and can shed a light on this?

Do you think this is a place where we could take notes from Estonia? X-Road[0] for example, they call their data exchange layer. I don't know exactly how it works, but it seems to specify some common protocol so various government (and private) services can all work together. I know their system is also very citizen focused, but perhaps something similar could reduce the costs of integrating the specific needs of specific state agencies with the overall set of services a state government provides/uses.

[0]https://www.ria.ee/en/x-road.html

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