Authorities software program growth is a curious enterprise.

Once I was a pupil on the Naval Postgraduate College, I wrote a paper referred to as “There’s a Lot of Cash to be Made Writing Dangerous Software program for the Federal Authorities.” 

The final concept is that the incentives to jot down good software program aren’t practically as sturdy as these nudging you to jot down it poorly. First, the initiatives are normally enormous and performed on a “value plus” foundation. That’s, an organization estimates how a lot the mission will value, and submits a bid primarily based on that value plus a revenue margin. The concept is that competing corporations will work to get their growth prices down and reduce their earnings to change into the bottom bidder. 

Now, the bottom bid doesn’t all the time win, however typically it does. So the motivation is robust to bid as little as one can dare. 

Sometimes, then, the successful bidder will get to work, they usually quickly understand that they gained’t presumably be worthwhile within the endeavor except they construct rapidly, lower corners, and customarily do the minimal work required to satisfy 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 mission isn’t completed and what’s performed isn’t superb. So the federal government sighs to itself and places out one other bid to get every little thing working. 

Properly, who’s finest suited to “repair” the mission? 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 unhealthy software program and by no means delivering good, working code. 

It’s far more advanced than that, and the federal government does get methods working. However the underlying incentives will not be designed to supply environment friendly and efficient outcomes. The revenue motive drives unhealthy work, not glorious work. 

Within the protection of those contractors, authorities methods are sometimes enormous and complicated and have necessities paperwork 1000’s of pages lengthy. 

So after I heard that Elon Musk and his DOGE workforce are going to rewrite the COBOL-based system that runs Social Safety in a few months, I simply shook my head and gave a wry chuckle. Positive they’re. 

The largest pile

Let’s begin with the notion of rewriting a working system. Positive, it’s most likely a huge 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 all the information of many years of growth and necessities of the system, and rewriting it to include all of that inscrutable, unknowable company information is, to place it delicately—fairly insane.

I gained’t contact the political aspect of this complete factor (not with a 15-foot pole) however I’ll fearlessly assert this: The DOGE workforce 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 information is embedded within the code and simply runs—sending out checks, processing functions, and customarily retaining issues operating. How anybody goes to learn all of that COBOL code, perceive it, and translate it right into a Python utility (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 may take an present working system that appears like a 200-car practice wreck stuffed with kitchen home equipment and switch it right into a Japanese bullet practice. However the industry has known for decades that rewriting a system from scratch isn’t the best answer. Asking a workforce to rewrite what could be the only most advanced and essential system in your complete nation appears the very definition of fraught with peril.

So no, they gained’t rewrite Social Safety in a couple of months. They’ll spend a couple 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 practice 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 if you run a 200-car practice stuffed with kitchen home equipment off the rails.