g...@gabegold.com (Gabe Goldberg) writes: > But I've profiled a couple gov agencies technology and I read > http://www.govtech.com/ -- which highlights mostly good news (many > interesting/innovative projects highlighted), though they also sure > cover disasters and project failures. And half the time they're > badmouthing legacy systems. I'm just noting that there's a spectrum of > competence and quality in gov, same as elsewhere.
AMEX was in competition with KKR for private equity take-over of RJR and KKR wins. KKR runs into trouble and hires away the president of AMEX to turn it around. IBM has gone into the red and was being reorganized into the 13 "baby bells" in preparation for breaking up the company. The board then hires away the former president of AMEX to reverse the breakup and resurrect the company ... using some of the same techniques used at RJR http://www.ibmemployee.com/RetirementHeist.shtml The former president of AMEX then leaves IBM to head up another large private equity company that will acquire a large beltway bandit that employes Snowden. There was enormous uptic in gov. outsourcing last decade, especially to private equity owned companies ... in intelligence, 70% of the budget and over half the people http://www.investingdaily.com/17693/spies-like-us/ private equity owned companies are under intense pressure to cut corners and do what ever is necessary to generate profits for their owners. In the case of outsourced security clearances, they were found to be filling out the paper work and not actually doing the background checks. Companies in private equity mill are sometimes compared to "house flipping", except rather than paying off the mortgage as part of the flip, the loan to buy the company stays on the company's books after the sale. Combination of factors contribute to over half of corporate defaults are companies that are in (or previously in) the private equity mill. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/business/economy/05simmons.html?_r=0 this has also contributed to the rapid spreading "success of failure" culture ... beltway bandits (especially private equity owned subsidiaries) get more revenue from a series of failures http://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matters/2007/04/the-success-of-failure/24107/ This all sounds cynical, because it is. Whether or not it's deliberate is another matter. But you don't have to believe that people consciously fail to recognize the windfall it brings. Even if they don't know why, there's a reason people keep making the same mistakes: Failure is one of the most successful things going. ... snip ... which also includes a long list of failed legacy system modernization efforts. Badmouthing legacy systems might just be obfuscation and misdirection regarding the real source of the problems. disclaimer: early in the century we gat a call asking us to respond to an unclassifed BAA (by IC-ARDA, since renamed IARPA) that was about to close and nobody else had responding to (basically said that the tools they have didn't do the job). We get response in and then have some meetings showing we could do what was needed and then it goes silent and hear nothing more. It wasn't until the above article that we realize that what was going on (although we wondered why the agency had allowed the BAA to be released in the first place, possibly some internal politics were still being played out). -- virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
