Department of Government Efficiency. DOGE.

NDVirginia19

NDVirginia19

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ulukinatme said:
HTML is super hard, guys!
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There is so much that is wrong with government contracting that leads to this absolute dogshit customer service with tech products. I think things are generally getting better with contracting mechanisms to address this. As an example of this, the evaluation software we use for personnel in the Navy is from 1998. We recently switched to a “eNavFit” software a couple of years ago but it was so dogshit and bugged that we decided it was just easier and cheaper to go back to the 1998 software (that is still dogshit but slightly less so) rather than deal with the time to fix the new system.

As an aside, I recently had to upload a new picture for my record, and the system was so fucked that the only way I was able to actually upload a simple fucking JPEG was to revert Microsoft edge back to internet explorer
 
Irish#1

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The actual process is less than 70 minutes. Probably 5 minutes for Ulukinatme. There's probably some testing and approval process balances in there to make sure it works before putting into production.
 
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NDVirginia19 said:
There is so much that is wrong with government contracting that leads to this absolute dogshit customer service with tech products. I think things are generally getting better with contracting mechanisms to address this. As an example of this, the evaluation software we use for personnel in the Navy is from 1998. We recently switched to a “eNavFit” software a couple of years ago but it was so dogshit and bugged that we decided it was just easier and cheaper to go back to the 1998 software (that is still dogshit but slightly less so) rather than deal with the time to fix the new system.

As an aside, I recently had to upload a new picture for my record, and the system was so fucked that the only way I was able to actually upload a simple fucking JPEG was to revert Microsoft edge back to internet explorer
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We experience similar issues with the hospital I work out. We still have some random windows XP computers we use because it's somehow easier to use those and the software on them then migrate to a newer system. Reasons are both financial and because people just refuse to learn the required new systems. Same when Internet explorer, there's some applications I'm forced to maintain that require it and the reasons we keep it are all dog shit in my opinion
 
Irish#1

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NDVirginia19 said:
There is so much that is wrong with government contracting that leads to this absolute dogshit customer service with tech products. I think things are generally getting better with contracting mechanisms to address this. As an example of this, the evaluation software we use for personnel in the Navy is from 1998. We recently switched to a “eNavFit” software a couple of years ago but it was so dogshit and bugged that we decided it was just easier and cheaper to go back to the 1998 software (that is still dogshit but slightly less so) rather than deal with the time to fix the new system.

As an aside, I recently had to upload a new picture for my record, and the system was so fucked that the only way I was able to actually upload a simple fucking JPEG was to revert Microsoft edge back to internet explorer
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Compatibility is a major pain in IT, especially with Microsoft. The updates they push every second Tuesday of each month always seems to cause problems.
 
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ColoradoIrish

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Irish#1 said:
Compatibility is a major pain in IT, especially with Microsoft. The updates they push every second Tuesday of each month always seems to cause problems.
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Unless you work on the IT side, like we both do. I think the vast majority of people don't truly understand how difficult Microsoft and other application devs make things to maintain*

Swipe texting on the phone sucks and I forgot to proofread. My bad guys lol
 
NDVirginia19

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Irish#1 said:
Compatibility is a major pain in IT, especially with Microsoft. The updates they push every second Tuesday of each month always seems to cause problems.
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Honestly I think the best thing that the DOD and other government departments could do is hire their own core of software developers as GS Civilians rather than either contracting out web development (which is what we've done in the past) or hiring contractors to work for the department (which is what we're starting to do more of now). The web app development contractors I have worked with are great, but the nature of contractual work complicates the process for consistent development and the ownership of the ip itself is always messy.
 
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ColoradoIrish

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NDVirginia19 said:
Honestly I think the best thing that the DOD and other government departments could do is hire their own core of software developers as GS Civilians rather than either contracting out web development (which is what we've done in the past) or hiring contractors to work for the department (which is what we're starting to do more of now). The web app development contractors I have worked with are great, but the nature of contractual work complicates the process for consistent development and the ownership of the ip itself is always messy.
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I'll never understand paying big bucks for contractors instead of putting someone on salary for those types of jobs. It also keeps the knowledge of application admin in house and makes maintaining systems way easier and cheaper
 
NDVirginia19

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ColoradoIrish said:
I'll never understand paying big bucks for contractors instead of putting someone on salary for those types of jobs. It also keeps the knowledge of application admin in house and makes maintaining systems way easier and cheaper
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I get it some of the time. There are things where it makes sense, when you have a really niche technically complex subject matter that is an emerging field or only transient need, it makes sense. A lot of the AI development going on in the government right now is being done by contracts. The private sector has a great deal of internal resources and expertise built up over the past decade or two that would be cost ineffective for the DOD to stand up in a timely matter -- a lot of things in this nature do eventually get transitioned over to GS managed programs though. Another one would be some aircraft or ship maintenance, especially for highly complex and/or small fleet sizes. A typical aircraft may only be in active service for two decades, and the time it takes to stand up a school house and develop internal knowledge of how to do that maintenance doesn't make as much sense, especially because the military maintainers are going to be transiently employed at a squadron/duty station as a nature of their work.
 
BuaConstrictor

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ColoradoIrish said:
I'll never understand paying big bucks for contractors instead of putting someone on salary for those types of jobs.
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As someone that worked implementation of this kind of shit years ago and had those conversations... From a 30,000ft view they just don't see the value of the salary for someone to sit around post implementation to maintain the systems. They don't think there is enough "work" on a day to day basis to justify it. They view the contract work as saving them money. I think it's idiotic because the amount of man hours you lose/waste when shit goes wrong would, IMO, more than make up for it...but I didn't really push that because it allowed my company to keep getting work.

Pretty common though and not limited to the government. Extremely common in the manufacturing space as well.
 
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ColoradoIrish

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NDVirginia19 said:
I get it some of the time. There are things where it makes sense, when you have a really niche technically complex subject matter that is an emerging field or only transient need, it makes sense. A lot of the AI development going on in the government right now is being done by contracts. The private sector has a great deal of internal resources and expertise built up over the past decade or two that would be cost ineffective for the DOD to stand up in a timely matter -- a lot of things in this nature do eventually get transitioned over to GS managed programs though. Another one would be some aircraft or ship maintenance, especially for highly complex and/or small fleet sizes. A typical aircraft may only be in active service for two decades, and the time it takes to stand up a school house and develop internal knowledge of how to do that maintenance doesn't make as much sense, especially because the military maintainers are going to be transiently employed at a squadron/duty station as a nature of their work.
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Agreed on those situations. I guess I was speaking more from personal experience in my field and not specifically to those types of situations. And more so regarding systems and applications that are in long term use
 
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ColoradoIrish

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BuaConstrictor said:
As someone that worked implementation of this kind of shit years ago and had those conversations... From a 30,000ft view they just don't see the value of the salary for someone to sit around post implementation to maintain the systems. They don't think there is enough "work" on a day to day basis to justify it. They view the contract work as saving them money. I think it's idiotic because the amount of man hours you lose/waste when shit goes wrong would, IMO, more than make up for it...but I didn't really push that because it allowed my company to keep getting work.

Pretty common though and not limited to the government. Extremely common in the manufacturing space as well.
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Yup that's the biggest issue is a lot of places feel like it's wasted money
 
Irish#1

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NDVirginia19 said:
I get it some of the time. There are things where it makes sense, when you have a really niche technically complex subject matter that is an emerging field or only transient need, it makes sense. A lot of the AI development going on in the government right now is being done by contracts. The private sector has a great deal of internal resources and expertise built up over the past decade or two that would be cost ineffective for the DOD to stand up in a timely matter -- a lot of things in this nature do eventually get transitioned over to GS managed programs though. Another one would be some aircraft or ship maintenance, especially for highly complex and/or small fleet sizes. A typical aircraft may only be in active service for two decades, and the time it takes to stand up a school house and develop internal knowledge of how to do that maintenance doesn't make as much sense, especially because the military maintainers are going to be transiently employed at a squadron/duty station as a nature of their work.
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ColoradoIrish said:
Agreed on those situations. I guess I was speaking more from personal experience in my field and not specifically to those types of situations. And more so regarding systems and applications that are in long term use
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Good points. As far as Intellectual Property, it really isn't that tough or shouldn't be. You just need to be specific in your contract on who owns what? For instance, I may want to own the source code, so I spell that out in the contract. If it's something that isn't classified or secret, I may make a deal with the contractor that allows him to use the source code in turn for giving me a reduced rate on my project or a commission on any projects where he uses the source code.

I spelled out Intellectual Property because when I see "IP", I immediately think Internet Protocol. lol
 
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ColoradoIrish

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Irish#1 said:
Good points. As far as Intellectual Property, it really isn't that tough or shouldn't be. You just need to be specific in your contract on who owns what? For instance, I may want to own the source code, so I spell that out in the contract. If it's something that isn't classified or secret, I may make a deal with the contractor that allows him to use the source code in turn for giving me a reduced rate on my project or a commission on any projects where he uses the source code.

I spelled out Intellectual Property because when I see "IP", I immediately think Internet Protocol. lol
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I see IP I think the same. Then I cuss out DNS under my breath. It's always DNS fault 😂
 
ulukinatme

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Irish#1 said:
The actual process is less than 70 minutes. Probably 5 minutes for Ulukinatme. There's probably some testing and approval process balances in there to make sure it works before putting into production.
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I mean, I'm a little rusty...give me the same 70 minutes those other guys had at least :laugh: I don't need 2 months or whatever the other guys quoted.
 
Irish#1

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ColoradoIrish said:
I'll wait to reserve judgement until a reputable place refutes this. Not a single actual journalist or news agency has reported this. And no offense but your track record of posting things you found on Twitter isn't very good
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Well, it’s from Musk so I doubt you’ll see the media report on it.
 
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ColoradoIrish

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Irish#1 said:
Well, it’s from Musk so I doubt you’ll see the media report on it.
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Musk retweeted it from "conservative journalist" if the whistleblower was lying and the whole thing was fake we should find eventually.
 
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