Authorities software program improvement is a curious enterprise.
After I was a pupil on the Naval Postgraduate College, I wrote a paper known as “There’s a Lot of Cash to be Made Writing Unhealthy Software program for the Federal Authorities.”
The overall thought is that the incentives to write down good software program aren’t practically as robust as these nudging you to write down it poorly. First, the initiatives are normally big and carried out 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 thought is that competing firms will work to get their improvement prices down and reduce their earnings to turn into the bottom bidder.
Now, the bottom bid doesn’t at all times win, however typically 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 understand that they gained’t probably be worthwhile within the endeavor except they construct shortly, lower corners, and usually do the minimal work required to satisfy the specification, usually 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 carried out isn’t excellent. So the federal government sighs to itself and places out one other bid to get every part working.
Properly, who’s finest 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 improvement organizations can win thousands and thousands of {dollars} in authorities contracts for writing unhealthy software program and by no means delivering good, working code.
It’s far more complicated than that, and the federal government does get techniques working. However the underlying incentives usually are not designed to provide environment friendly and efficient outcomes. The revenue motive drives unhealthy work, not wonderful work.
Within the protection of those contractors, authorities techniques are sometimes big and sophisticated and have necessities paperwork 1000’s of pages lengthy.
So once I heard that Elon Musk and his DOGE staff are going to rewrite the COBOL-based system that runs Social Safety in a number of months, I simply shook my head and gave a wry chuckle. Certain they’re.
The largest pile
Let’s begin with the notion of rewriting a working system. Certain, it’s most likely a big 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 the entire data of a long time of improvement and necessities of the system, and rewriting it to include all of that inscrutable, unknowable company data is, to place it delicately—fairly insane.
I gained’t contact the political facet of this entire factor (not with a 15-foot pole) however I’ll fearlessly assert this: The DOGE staff members don’t have even the slightest thought what the necessities are for the US Social Safety software program system. They don’t have the slightest thought what they don’t know. A lot of that data is embedded within the code and simply runs—sending out checks, processing purposes, and usually holding issues operating. How anybody goes to learn all of that COBOL code, perceive it, and translate it right into a Python utility (or no matter) is past me.
Look, I get it. I’ve by no means met a software program developer who didn’t suppose they might take an current 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 business has identified for many years that rewriting a system from scratch is rarely the correct resolution. Asking a staff to rewrite what could be the one most complicated and essential system in your entire nation appears the very definition of fraught with peril.
So no, they gained’t rewrite Social Safety in a number of months. They’ll spend a number of months studying why the final 40 years occurred the way in which 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 search out out what occurs if you run a 200-car practice filled with kitchen home equipment off the rails.
