[niels_olson]

Disclosure: I'm active duty Navy and these are my own opinions.

In 22 years, I have never been so hopeful for meaningful improvement in my work life as I am now. Having met a few folks I am all too familiar with DTS and the JFTR (the 1400 pages in the article(1)). I think that's a great choice to start with: like Google going after the mundane problems of every person's life. This will make a difference. I am on travel now and was on the phone and DTS (simultaneously) for an hour today. And for anyone who tries to apologize for the 1400 pages, please don't. I have cut instructions from 238 pages to less than 30. I would argue the major problem is not that people are trying to solve every edge case. The major problem is that people are only in a job for a short period of time, come in, and while they may try to solve the edge cases they encounter, they often do that by trying to simplify things by inserting a new abstraction and taking ownership of that abstraction. So the layers of abstraction accrete like sediment. And as long as there's no direct logic conflicts, they can promote away from the problem.

I will gladly buy any USDS, 18F, or DDS hacker in San Diego a beer. Keep up the good work.

(1) It's actually 1602 pages: https://www.defensetravel.dod.mil/Docs/perdiem/JTR.pdf