Comment by jonawesomegreen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jonawesomegreen | Hacker News Reader

jonawesomegreen

> The government isn’t a bigger version of a startup and can’t act like a startup does. Innovation activities in government agencies most often result in innovation theater. While these activities shape and build culture, they don’t win wars, and rarely deliver shippable or deployable products.

> The very definition of a contractor implies a contract. And a government contract starts with fixed requirements that only change with contract modifications. That makes sense when the problem and solution are known. But when they are unknown the traditional methods of contracting fail.

This I think is the biggest failure in public private partnerships. These arrangements were supposed to save the taxpayer money by allowing nimble contractors to come in and do the heavy lifting on projects.

However what it really did is:

1) Create an adversarial relationship between between the government and the contracting entity, which is very much filled with even more red tape then it was were trying to replace.

2) Hollow out the talent in the government, causing more reliance on the private sector.

I'm not convinced these relationships can exist in a healthy way. If there isn't a lot of red tape and strict contracts then it's likely the government will get robbed blind and that leads to stricter contracts and more red tape: a virtuous cycle of red tape and lack of progress.

I think less emphases needs to be put on these partnerships and more on developing talent within the government that can innovate from within. This creates the possibility of empowered leaders within government departments that can run projects like agile mini-startups.

For what it's worth (to the initial quotes posted) there are plenty of options in the FAR and on existing contract vehicles to hire people with particular sets of skills to achieve a general goal / purpose of the organization "and other duties" that will allow you to contract flexible skills that you can direct as needed.

To your last point - I agree there is a lot of red tape. This needs to improve but it's also there for protection.

At a minimum, updating the GS scale / hiring authorities to ensure that the right expertise can be hired at competitive rates to effectively manage and guide contractual expertise is a MUST.

Right now, program officers may not even have the expertise / in-house resources to understand whether the work being done / reported is going to achieve their contract objective, and they might be relying on contractor project managers to translate. (Sometimes from the same company!) so checks are hard to come by and it's all very inefficient. To do this effectively you have to be able to hire folks that know, to create a culture around the effort at the agency so they can bring contractors on as true partners that understand the way the agency does business (norms, engineering standards, reporting, etc) - this goes a long way to ensuring objectives are met and real work is getting done.

> If there isn't a lot of red tape and strict contracts then it's likely the government will get robbed blind

I'm mostly in agreement, but regarding this point:

What needs to happen here instead of the strict contracts is that government nurtures good contractors. It's actually not terribly different from nurturing good employees. You need to look for people who do their jobs responsibly, efficiently and properly.

If they don't, you try to help them correct course, and if they can't, you let them go.

The strict contracts are precisely the problem - they lock everything down, lull you into false security and prevent you from discovering and cutting bad actors quickly. No cure, no pay never pans out, and meanwhile you're bleeding from the opportunity costs.

Of course, in order to make this work, you need people with clue on the inside so they can distinguish good work from bad work. I do think you can attract people like this, if you don't prevent them from doing their work by letting the lawyers run the show.

> What needs to happen here instead of the strict contracts is that government nurtures good contractors. It's actually not terribly different from nurturing good employees

Strict contracts and the associated strict contracting rules do not exist to prevent the government from getting robbed by evil contractors that government officials are otherwise powerless to constrain, but to prevent the government from being robbed by corrupt government officers, including those at the highest level.

Likewise, strict government employment rules, which exist to prevent those with hiring authority (especially the elected chief executive) from instituting a spoils system with the government payroll.

Your ideas do not seem to address the threat model that the rules they would replace are concerned with.

you hit the nail in the head. Innovation cannot be contracted, it needs to be nurtured from the inside. I think a better model for that would be a professional, long term version of Code for America.

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