Because the data was taking such a roundabout route, it wasn’t arriving quickly enough for the ground stations to make the calculations needed. The ESB eventually delivered the data to yet another piece of software, at which point the whole process ran in reverse order to deliver it back to the original, simple protocol. Instead, the team had written a piece of software to receive the message from that protocol, read the data, and then recode it into a different format, so they could feed it into a very complex piece of software called an Enterprise Service Bus, or ESB. There is an industry standard way of doing this, a simple, reliable protocol that is built into almost every operating system in the world.īut this team wasn’t using this simple protocol on its own. This issue of data transmission to the ground stations and back again was one of a few problems that was holding them back. Weaver had been brought to Raytheon, the company the Air Force had hired to write the software for the next generation GPS satellites, because the Raytheon team was behind schedule and over budget. Digital Service, who was literally reaching for the ground: He was trying to get data from satellites in space to ground stations, so that the Global Positioning System would continue to work. You’ll need to see the problem of implementation of government policy through the eyes of Matthew Weaver of the U.S. To understand how things backfired, you’ll need to drop down from the bird’s eye view from which we normally see the bureaucracy all the way to the ground. The Clinger-Cohen Act was passed into law, but unfortunately some of what they got backfired. In the 90s, when Amazon started selling books online and Google was indexing all the world’s knowledge, Senator William Cohen and Representative William Clinger decided the Brooks Act approach wasn’t sufficient and tried to get the White House Office of Management and Budget to take responsibility for digital strategy. The Brooks Act of 1965, enacted when computing meant room-sized mainframes and automatic data processing, tried to ensure government would get the best prices for hardware and computing services by mandating that the General Services Administration do all the buying for agencies. ![]() Government tech policy backfiresĮlected officials have been trying to use law and policy to improve government technology for a lot longer than most people realize. We increase budgets, cut budgets, make new rules, and hold hearings, but the tools we use to fix our tools aren’t working either. The levers leaders use to fix tech are the same ones they use to steer the economy, improve government-funded healthcare, manage immigration, and even strengthen our national defense. But try to fix that through policy change and you’ll find it’s turtles all the way down. There’s a convenient punching bag for many of these failures: outdated government technology, and outdated approaches to tech by the bureaucracy. The courts feel it too: They can reverse an order that separated kids from their parents at the border, averting further harm, but Customs and Border Protection’s systems no longer know which kids belong to which parents, and most of these families will remain torn apart. Increase the unemployment benefits workers receive during the pandemic? You may end up with millions of angry constituents who’ve waited months for their checks, while tens or maybe hundreds of billions of dollars are lost to fraud. ![]() Reform Medicare to improve the quality of care patients receive? You may end up driving medical practices out of the program and decreasing the quality of care. ![]() When they can agree enough to get a bill passed or policy changed, their intention is to change speed or direction, but when they turn the wheel or try to speed up or slow down, it’s anyone’s guess what will actually happen. They’re frustrated because they’re supposed to be steering the ship of our country through changing times, but the tiller they have their hands on doesn’t seem all that well connected to the rudder. Yes, they’re working in a highly divisive environment which makes it hard to get anything done, or even to have a reasonable conversation across the aisle. Note: The first portion of this article is adapted from “ Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better.
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