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Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

All the technology in the world won't make those veterans' benefit claims go through any faster. The problem there isn't the technology (it's not all that hard of a problem) but getting it into the right place, past all the gatekeepers who want to keep it out.

It's not that nobody is building the technology because they're concentrating on other things, but rather nobody is building it because they know it won't sell, because it would have to go sixteen thousand layers of red tape and many tours through Congress before anything got done.

I think there's probably a lot of scope for solving problems with fairly simple apps, but this example seems like a terrible one.

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From what I understand of Veteran's Affairs, the technology has been built, and it does sell. The only problem is that the government's being fleeced for all its got by the vendors in question.

VA's got no end of computer systems, where its staff hand-enter information in one system, print out its report, only to scan it, fax it across the country, where someone else will hand-enter it into... A different system.

Engineers, consultants, and Serious Business Contracts were involved in the construction of this abomination - and while they were all in compliance of the standards that the government expects from its vendors, none of them delivered a good product.

Do they not even use EDI to communicate between the systems?

"On February 5, 2013, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Veterans Affairs announced that instead of building a single integrated electronic health record (iEHR), both DOD and VA will concentrate on integrating VA and DOD health data by focusing on interoperability and using existing technological solutions. This announcement was a departure from the previous commitments that both Departments had made to design and build a new single iEHR, rather than upgrading their current electronic health records and trying to develop interoperability solutions."

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42970.pdf

Gee, that doesn't sound expensive at all.

You're right, you're right. The VA thing is a bad example. Enterprise software is expensive because big companies make themselves expensive to sell to. And the government is the biggest company of all. I'm sure they spend seven to eight figures on the cruddiest of CRUD apps from companies like Oracle.

On the other hand, something like a basic CRUD app could really help out a charity or non-profit that serves disadvantaged populations, and that could be built in Rails or Django for just a few days of developer time.

Not so sure abotu the charity market. one example back in 2000 I worked on a cheap and cheerful Paperless direct debit so that any Charity could quickly and easily set up a system to take donations.

The trouble was each flipping charity/bank wanted a bespoke version some of the changes required by the banks where absoluty nit picking.

The product had some good press for the Minister but could we get charity's/banks to hold their nose and just use one form! NO

Wonder if any VC in old street/silicon roundabout want to try again I still have few contacts form my days at Poptel

Maybe that's the problem to solve then: navigating (or, dare I say it, disrupting) government procurement.

That reminds me of DonorsChoose, which connects elementary teachers with people looking to donate. It's unfortunate that many states don't properly fund things like school supplies, but it's a great service nonetheless.

A procurement reform program was Philadelphia's submission to the "Mayors Challenge" this year (http://mayorschallenge.bloomberg.org/index.cfm?objectid=184A...). It lost out to Providence, RI's proposal (I have argued elsewhere that Providence's proposal, while noble, is probably a boondoggle: http://wellformedness.com/blog/on-the-providence-word-gap-in...)

Plus the people who do the paper apps processing probably don't want to have their jobs eliminated and have an interest in refusing new (if computers can be considered "new") technology. Even if it means letting vets die due to the needlessly extended waiting process.

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