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Home Front: Politix
White House budget director blames old computers for ineffective government
2010-01-15
A big reason why the government is inefficient and ineffective is because Washington has outdated technology, with federal workers having better computers at home than in the office.

This startling admission came Thursday from Peter Orszag, who manages the federal bureaucracy for President Barack Obama.

The public is getting a bad return on its tax dollars because government workers are operating with outdated technologies, Orszag said in a statement that kicked off a summit between Obama and dozens of corporate CEOs.
And Bush is at fault....somehow
Posted by:whitecollar redneck

#17  UH, uh, "SON OF ORACLE" [Guam Y2000-n-counting]???

IIRC GovGuam was famously trying to integrate ORACLE into its Govt. OperSys as far back as the Year 2000 plus-minus > AS OF EOY 2009, IT STILL NOT CLEAR IFF THEY EVER SUCCEEDED OR NOT!?

D *** NG IT, MORIARITY, "COMPUTER ZEN" = ITS EVERYWHERE, YET NOWHERE.
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2010-01-15 19:49  

#16  I nominate Frank G for "Snark of the Day"!
Posted by: Scooter McGruder   2010-01-15 19:27  

#15  seeing as Orszag is wearing a toupee made in 1911 by a blind weaver (judging by appearances). It's a little disingenuous to bitch
Posted by: Frank G   2010-01-15 18:31  

#14  Cost of implementation (training employees, renegotiating contracts w/ support companies) would be pretty significant.

In those cases where they aren't already running Linux, which a chunk of the govt already does at the server level.
Posted by: lotp   2010-01-15 14:23  

#13  So - put Linux on them. Without all those patches and service packs they will feel like new computers.
Posted by: 3dc   2010-01-15 10:37  

#12  You don't need huge amounts of computer power for Word, Excel or databases

Maybe not. But at a minimum you need servers and security infrastructure that don't take 4 minutes to do PKI authentication on an email during busy times of day.
Posted by: lotp   2010-01-15 10:31  

#11  this is expected. Remember the WH Gang came in and immediately wanted to replace all the PC's with Macs. (and no, I don't want to start a religious war here...).

A lot of workers have more powerful PC's at home then they have at the office.

And as usreal with people who don't have a clue - its not what's on the office desktop - which is often used more as a 'terminal' than a 'computer' in most Government offices - its the mainframes, massive databases, and server farms (all with redundancy, backups, disaster recovery plans, etc....) in the back room which are what count.

Besides a government worker isn't supposed to be playing resource-hogging video games or watching porn on government computers anyway aren't they?
Posted by: CrazyFool   2010-01-15 10:27  

#10  But can we get rid of our old, ineffective hardware that is running congress?
Posted by: DarthVader   2010-01-15 10:05  

#9  I'll bet they just grind to a halt in Dalaran trying to get from the flight path to the portals.
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain   2010-01-15 09:22  

#8  I doubt any rational programmer [or one who could remain rational] could develop software that could deal with the byzantine nature of Congressionally organized and empowered government. The real problem is that the government is trying to do too much in the false odyssey that one could control every aspect of human society or perfect that society. There are limits to both operating and sustaining human institutions. We've long ago passed the point of effective and efficient. Now its bailing wire and gum. More power, more power! /apologies to Tool Time Tim
Posted by: Procopius2k   2010-01-15 09:03  

#7  Mebe this is why we now must suffer with Barry. He entered the White House as the result of an.."antiquated systems problem."
Posted by: Besoeker   2010-01-15 08:14  

#6  The problem is the computers don't have any W on the keyboards.
Posted by: Glenmore   2010-01-15 08:06  

#5  Well Pete ol buddy, I hate to tell you it ain't the computers.
Posted by: JohnQC   2010-01-15 07:54  

#4  Puleaaaaaaase.

First of all, how old they are? We are no longer in the times where a new computer was about forty times more powerful than a new one. Now it is more like 2 or 3 unless you are doing sveral things at same time or using muli-threaded applications provided those threads are accessing the CPU at same time (instead of waiting for the disk or for you). Then and only can you multiply the 2 or 3 I gave by your number of cores (typically two, sometimes 4)

3) You don't need huge amounts of computer power for Word, Excel or databases. Far less than for games.

So this blaming of old computers for ineffective government looks like a pale excuse for incompetence coupled with an attempt to linen the pockets of a few friends.
Posted by: JFM   2010-01-15 06:25  

#3  Supervisors must have neglected to include a reasonable amount of funding for systems upgrades in their annual budgets. I doubt however, they forgot to include their annual bonuses.
Posted by: Besoeker   2010-01-15 04:06  

#2  So who decided not to buy new computers? Our country is running behind the curve because someone decided not to buy cheap computers? Heads oughtta roll, don't you think?
Posted by: gorb   2010-01-15 03:31  

#1  It's a poor workman who blames his tools.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418   2010-01-15 01:13  

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