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Comment by arionhardison | Hacker News Reader

When this administration is gone I think we need to have a new class of systems that do not allow this type of incompetence.

I have been working on this https://opm.dev/programs - its obviously not something that can get funding or will be a huge popular thing but it has been incredibly fun and i have gotten to learn a lot about Gov., agents EVAL's etc..

Note: This is one of 5 portals, same codebase mostly but the others are more developed and a few have some programs that have a 90+ % success rate.

Note: Here https://big-sandy-usp.bop.doj.dev/program/66366-sick-call is a much more developed example program that has been completed 6 times by inmates at Big Sandy. Super proud of this since I was locked up w/ 2 of the guys and dont know the other 4.

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This sort of thing was only worse in the past and IMO this admin has actually made the largest inroads to resolving this issue which tbh lies primarily in procurement (RFO, FR20x, PA, mandates for automation, shift to COTS, etc). With any luck this will get recompeted

Project 20x looks pretty cool, we're in a similar space and there's probably a ~2y horizon to fix things before the bureaucracy falls to consultocracy. FWIW if you or anyone else building in gov need funding to get stuff off the ground there are plenty of DC-based VCs that are phenomenal, mission oriented and take big swings like this all the time.

I made a mistake, i assumed that this admin was the crux of the issue and I was wrong. I looked into what you said here and I want to thank you. Moving forward I will not make this mistake.

TY for taking a look, right now I am digitizing all of the federal gov programs and all of the state gov programs, I would really love to connect with anyone just to talk, learn, show them what i'm doing etc...

Again, I really appreciate you taking the time to take a look and comment. It really means a lot. Gov Tech is not "sexy" part of tech where people flock and love to engage.

President Clinton tried to improve government contracting through various legislation and executive orders. One of the first things President W Bush did when he got into office was to sign an executive order that effectively negated most of the changes, particularly the one regarding "black listing" contractors who have a history of ripping off the government. The administration's response: the "black listed" contractors have improved; they promise not to rip off the government anymore. Then the Iraq War started and government contractors made billions with basically no oversight. And we all know how that went.

It seems like there has been a real back and forth that really does not benefit anybody. My approach is probably not going to work but I have been able to see real results e.g.: Getting people housed, helping with medical cases etc.. and I think thats because I did it as a true total outsider. I really think the fix here has to come from a group of people that just want to see things get better for everyone and I am not sure if that is something that the "frontier labs" or FANG's really embrace.

Medicare, DHS, DOJ - these systems are not actually that complex; taking a first principals approach; they are really just complex multi party workflows that need to follow policy based on jurisdiction etc... All of the back and forth you describe above is a distraction that has stopped people from just doing the thing but I have found that it is possible to just do the thing. Especially since its all documented so well, you can use AI to translate legislation into specs fairly easily.

having worked in govt tech for 15+ years...incompetence is and always has been a huge thing...its not always the vendors that are at fault, many times there are poorly written contacts, or ineffective employees and managers that stop vendors from doing their jobs, I've seen it go all sorts of ways over and over. I wish there was one singular administration to blame..but its a systemic issue

The portals of all Romanian authorities are built under the same corruption.fueled incompetence. The national land register is already down for ONE MONTH without identifiable recoveries and backups because of a hacker attack, so the US is not that bad (yet).

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