Authorities software program growth is a curious enterprise.
After I was a scholar 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 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 big and performed on a “price plus” foundation. That’s, an organization estimates how a lot the undertaking will price, and submits a bid primarily based on that price plus a revenue margin. The thought is that competing firms will work to get their growth prices down and reduce their income to develop into the bottom bidder.
Now, the bottom bid doesn’t all the time win, however typically it does. So the inducement is robust 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 until they construct shortly, minimize 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 undertaking 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 the whole lot working.
Nicely, who’s finest suited to “repair” the undertaking? Naturally, the corporate that constructed it! So they’re fairly often awarded an extra contract to “right” the issues of the primary effort, and so it goes.
Thus, software program growth organizations can win hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in authorities contracts for writing dangerous 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 dangerous work, not glorious work.
Within the protection of those contractors, authorities techniques are sometimes big and complicated and have necessities paperwork 1000’s of pages lengthy.
So after I heard that Elon Musk and his DOGE crew 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 many years of growth 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 complete factor (not with a 15-foot pole) however I’ll fearlessly assert this: The DOGE crew 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 data is embedded within the code and simply runs—sending out checks, processing purposes, and usually holding 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 suppose they might take an present working system that appears like a 200-car prepare wreck stuffed with kitchen home equipment and switch it right into a Japanese bullet prepare. However the trade has identified for many years that rewriting a system from scratch isn’t the correct answer. Asking a crew to rewrite what is likely to be the one most advanced and essential system in the complete 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 prepare 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 while you run a 200-car prepare stuffed with kitchen home equipment off the rails.
