At the D.C. TechMeetup groups you can always expect to have a public policy aspect to the tech offerings the problem is the majority of these fail. As someone who works in the government and is part of the start-up culture, I can tell you: these attempts are typically terrible at coming up with ways to blend tech and bureaucracy. I have no idea why. Well, not no idea. I think the main hurdles are as follows:
1. The people who make the best change in industries or start-ups are people who have been working in it a while.
2. Few people who have worked in government are the types to become high-growth entrepreneurs. They exist but in general the mindsets are reciprocals.
3. It takes a long time (in start-up time) to understand how a federal/state/local government does things. Anyone who wants to make a mark from the outside isn't going to identify a problem/solution efficiently. So anyone who has a real solution has likely been in government for 5-10 years and is established in a comfortable position - not likely to break out. Not only that they probably have schooling in something political science-y/history/etc.. versus math/CS/physics
4. As a general rule, it takes a long time (infinitely long in start-up time) to actually get a federal/state/local government to implement anything. Part of this is by design and the other part is incompetence or ignorance because they have...
5. Really really poor understanding of how to implement technology. For example $25,000 for a shitty 4 page web 1.0 government website because that is what was budgeted and Booz Allen took the contract because...
6. ...they promised to make the whole thing comply with the IT requirements (ie: IE7 is the most recent browser) and security requirements.
So yea. It's kind of hard to solve tech problems for the government. Even moreso, having whole programs handed over from the government to a bunch of 18-30 year old's who haven't made all the right friends and gone to the right schools.
1. The people who make the best change in industries or start-ups are people who have been working in it a while.
2. Few people who have worked in government are the types to become high-growth entrepreneurs. They exist but in general the mindsets are reciprocals.
3. It takes a long time (in start-up time) to understand how a federal/state/local government does things. Anyone who wants to make a mark from the outside isn't going to identify a problem/solution efficiently. So anyone who has a real solution has likely been in government for 5-10 years and is established in a comfortable position - not likely to break out. Not only that they probably have schooling in something political science-y/history/etc.. versus math/CS/physics
4. As a general rule, it takes a long time (infinitely long in start-up time) to actually get a federal/state/local government to implement anything. Part of this is by design and the other part is incompetence or ignorance because they have...
5. Really really poor understanding of how to implement technology. For example $25,000 for a shitty 4 page web 1.0 government website because that is what was budgeted and Booz Allen took the contract because...
6. ...they promised to make the whole thing comply with the IT requirements (ie: IE7 is the most recent browser) and security requirements.
So yea. It's kind of hard to solve tech problems for the government. Even moreso, having whole programs handed over from the government to a bunch of 18-30 year old's who haven't made all the right friends and gone to the right schools.