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Comment by visualR | Hacker News Reader

Part of the problem is a lot of IT talent is more interested in building the latest social networking gizmo than solving Detroit IT problems.

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Most coders just happen to like coding. Selling IT services to a government might involve a little coding, but it's mostly about mastering the procurement process. Where do you even start with that?

I seem to recall we had a similar discussion in the wake of the disastrous healthcare.gov rollout. For example, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7855295

Yea, I work quite a bit with government contracts, and to be honest it's a lot of fun and it offers some very interesting projects and R&D opportunities. But I work for mid sized consulting group that has at least two layers of insulation between me and the customer. My boss is an absolute hero for dealing with the stuff he deals with to make sure I just get to code. There is no way in hell I'd try to get involved in that world if I had to deal directly with the whole procurement process myself.

Also I try to only take smaller projects (up to $100000 or so) since they tend to be handled by much more sane people all around.

I was heartened to discover this UK government-sponsored gem, a free online course explaining procurement (for beginners): http://www1.learndirect-business.com/business-courses/winnin...

There may be some pointers here applicable to the US scene. Nevertheless, it's good to see management finally realizing the cost benefits of smaller-scale operators.

In Medellin, Colombia, they have this fair about government transparency where the local governments shows to all participants all the different projects, how much was paid, who participated and specially relevant for your comment, they teach people and companies how to participate in the whole process.

And a subset of those problems are the insane RFPs and ridiculous red tape you go through when you design stuff for the government. Try it sometime. It's a blast.

If there was good money to be had there IT would find it's way in. If the money dried up, it'll take a long time to fix things like this.

I think a bigger issue is that it's (at least perceived to be) hard to deal with government for anything. Plus this is about physical infrastructure. I think many coder's fascination with train networks and the like would help fuel an interest in fixing Detroit IT, but those meatspace issues...

Wow that's generalising a lot, it's not like it's an IT sysadmin problem, it's a city problem.

You're in a bubble if you think that.

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