Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Don’t try big government programs. The government doesn’t have the expertise.

There have been lots of problems with the new government health care site. What surprises me is that some people are surprised. How can you not build a web site that registers users and takes orders? Amazon and just about everyone in the world has already done this. This is not new technology.

Well,

this is a government program, and government programs have difficulty doing what everyone else in the world has already done.

This little statement crushes many people who are inexperienced in government, a.k.a., our current President. Throw out all the theory and all the commercial practice. Government is years and sometimes decades behind current practice in most fields. This is particularly true in information technology. I won’t tell horror stories as I will leave that up to other current and former government employees.

This is one reason why I cannot be in favor of big, new government programs is the government does not have the expertise to execute them. See, for example, my little blog post on spending a billion dollars.

The answer is small government programs that build over time. Time allows for expertise to grow in the government offices. This requires time and patience: two more items the government lacks.