Create a Federal Department of Technology

Economy
1

Currently, states waste a lot of money buying junk & barely-functional software from private companies

These private companies end up being part of corporate capture (it’s in their best interest to have governments buy their products), thus creating a nasty cycle of lobbyists who try to push out competition

As most states need the same functionality/software, it could be done centrally - states could then choose whether they want to pay a private company, or use the publicly available software maintained & operated by this department - all open-sourced

State & city governments would effectively be clients of this department

This department would also help advising the federal government on technology, as it would be a pool of experts

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2

Maybe we can tweak it a bit? (a lot!)

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3

Yeah I guess what I was suggesting would subsume that :rofl:

I.e. have actual software engineers who are actually coding & are technically strong giving guidance

The more important part was producing the software - the knowledge pool that comes with that I figure could be used for policy guidance, but would not be the main goal of this department

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