Authorities software program growth is a curious enterprise.
Once I was a pupil on the Naval Postgraduate Faculty, I wrote a paper referred to as “There’s a Lot of Cash to be Made Writing Unhealthy Software program for the Federal Authorities.”
The overall concept is that the incentives to write down good software program aren’t practically as sturdy as these nudging you to write down it poorly. First, the initiatives are normally large and performed on a “value plus” foundation. That’s, an organization estimates how a lot the mission will value, and submits a bid primarily based on that value plus a revenue margin. The concept is that competing firms will work to get their growth prices down and reduce their income to change into the bottom bidder.
Now, the bottom bid doesn’t at all times win, however usually it does. So the inducement is powerful to bid as little as one can dare.
Usually, then, the successful bidder will get to work, they usually quickly notice that they gained’t presumably be worthwhile within the endeavor except they construct rapidly, lower corners, and usually do the minimal work required to fulfill the specification, typically with sub-sub-optimal outcomes.
Ineptness rewarded
Guess what occurs subsequent? When the supply day arrives, everyone seems to be shocked when the mission isn’t completed and what’s performed isn’t excellent. So the federal government sighs to itself and places out one other bid to get every part working.
Nicely, who’s greatest suited to “repair” the mission? Naturally, the corporate that constructed it! So they’re fairly often awarded an extra contract to “appropriate” the issues of the primary effort, and so it goes.
Thus, software program growth organizations can win tens of millions of {dollars} in authorities contracts for writing unhealthy software program and by no means delivering good, working code.
It’s far more advanced than that, and the federal government does get techniques working. However the underlying incentives usually are not designed to supply environment friendly and efficient outcomes. The revenue motive drives unhealthy work, not wonderful work.
Within the protection of those contractors, authorities techniques are sometimes large and complicated and have necessities paperwork hundreds of pages lengthy.
So after I heard that Elon Musk and his DOGE staff are going to rewrite the COBOL-based system that runs Social Safety in just a few months, I simply shook my head and gave a wry chuckle. Positive they’re.
The most important pile
Let’s begin with the notion of rewriting a working system. Positive, it’s in all probability a large pile of mud, among the many hugest of piles of mud. However it’s, roughly, working. And the knowledge of taking a working system, which has embedded inside it all the information of many years of growth and necessities of the system, and rewriting it to comprise all of that inscrutable, unknowable company information is, to place it delicately—fairly insane.
I gained’t contact the political aspect of this complete factor (not with a 15-foot pole) however I’ll fearlessly assert this: The DOGE staff members don’t have even the slightest concept what the necessities are for the US Social Safety software program system. They don’t have the slightest concept what they don’t know. A lot of that information is embedded within the code and simply runs—sending out checks, processing functions, and usually retaining issues working. How anybody goes to learn all of that COBOL code, perceive it, and translate it right into a Python software (or no matter) is past me.
Look, I get it. I’ve by no means met a software program developer who didn’t assume they might take an present working system that appears like a 200-car practice wreck filled with kitchen home equipment and switch it right into a Japanese bullet practice. However the trade has recognized for many years that rewriting a system from scratch isn’t the suitable answer. Asking a staff to rewrite what could be the one most advanced and vital system in the complete nation appears the very definition of fraught with peril.
So no, they gained’t rewrite Social Safety in just a few months. They’ll spend just a few months studying why the final 40 years occurred the best way they did—in the event that they’re fortunate. And if this practice does begin rolling—and let me say very clearly that it ought to unquestionably stay within the station—we’re all going to seek out out what occurs if you run a 200-car practice filled with kitchen home equipment off the rails.
