To the moon...or Mars
Emi mentioned in class Dennis Johnson’s comment in Congress Online: Bridging the Gap Between Citizens and Their Representatives that the web sites of larger government agencies are often inferior to those of smaller agencies.
I mentioned this to my husband the software engineer for a defense contractor, and he just laughed. I think it would be more appropriate to cry.
Imagine you’d like to buy a spaceship. You don’t know a ton about spaceships, but everyone else has one, so you better get one, too. Your spouse usually handles hiring contractors, so out he goes into the wide world and hires the guy who will do it the cheapest. We’ll call this company Cheapest.
Someone from Cheapest is assigned to oversee the building of your spaceship. He’ll be the Manager. Someone else is assigned with building your spaceship. We’ll call him Builder.
Builder needs specs. He needs to know what you want your spaceship to do. Is it flying to the moon, Mars or deep outer space? How many people will be on the spaceship? Is there a certain ship you’d like your spaceship to be?
It seems simple enough. Except you will never talk to Bob. Builder will talk to Manager who will talk to your spouse who may or may not remember to ask you what you’d like. And then relay that message back to Builder.
All the while Builder has X number of dollars to build your spaceship, a tight schedule to follow although he’s not sure what he’s supposed to be doing and no requirements and so he’s guessing what you might like your spaceship to be like. But he doesn’t really know. And he’s feeling pretty frustrated.
But Manager doesn’t care because he gets to bill you and your spouse for every hour of frustration.
From talking to my husband, I conjecture this is how many large government agency web sites are built. If someone has some insight into what actually happens, please let me know.
I mentioned this to my husband the software engineer for a defense contractor, and he just laughed. I think it would be more appropriate to cry.
Imagine you’d like to buy a spaceship. You don’t know a ton about spaceships, but everyone else has one, so you better get one, too. Your spouse usually handles hiring contractors, so out he goes into the wide world and hires the guy who will do it the cheapest. We’ll call this company Cheapest.
Someone from Cheapest is assigned to oversee the building of your spaceship. He’ll be the Manager. Someone else is assigned with building your spaceship. We’ll call him Builder.
Builder needs specs. He needs to know what you want your spaceship to do. Is it flying to the moon, Mars or deep outer space? How many people will be on the spaceship? Is there a certain ship you’d like your spaceship to be?
It seems simple enough. Except you will never talk to Bob. Builder will talk to Manager who will talk to your spouse who may or may not remember to ask you what you’d like. And then relay that message back to Builder.
All the while Builder has X number of dollars to build your spaceship, a tight schedule to follow although he’s not sure what he’s supposed to be doing and no requirements and so he’s guessing what you might like your spaceship to be like. But he doesn’t really know. And he’s feeling pretty frustrated.
But Manager doesn’t care because he gets to bill you and your spouse for every hour of frustration.
From talking to my husband, I conjecture this is how many large government agency web sites are built. If someone has some insight into what actually happens, please let me know.
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