US Government Content Processing: A Case Study by Stephen E Arnold.
From the post:
I know that the article “Sinkhole of Bureaucracy” is an example of a single case example. Nevertheless, the write up tickled my funny bone. With fancy technology, USA.gov, and the hyper modern content processing systems used in many Federal agencies, reality is stranger than science fiction.
This passage snagged my attention:
inside the caverns of an old Pennsylvania limestone mine, there are 600 employees of the Office of Personnel Management. Their task is nothing top-secret. It is to process the retirement papers of the government’s own workers. But that system has a spectacular flaw. It still must be done entirely by hand, and almost entirely on paper.
One of President Obama’s advisors is quote as describing the manual operation as “that crazy cave.”
….
Further in the post Stephen makes a good point when he suggests that in order to replace this operation you would first have to understand it.
But having said that, holding IT contractors accountable for failure would go a long way towards encouraging such understanding.
So far as I know, there have been no consequences for the IT contractors responsible for the health.gov meltdown.
Perhaps that is the first sign of IT management incompetence, no consequences for IT failures.
Yes?