[brianlweiner]

I applied for the Baltimore City director of digital operations position. I interviewed with Frank Johnson and a variety of other city department heads.

I got the impression they were a group of people that broadly understood their problems and were finding it very difficult to steer the city towards good solutions.

Although Mr. Johnson was the City's Director of IT, realistically he had very nominal oversight over many of the city's actual IT departments - which were spread across a series of departments with their own employees, budgets, and resources. This was something he had been actively trying to improve but with limited progress.

I don't know what the best solution is - their hiring process is flawed and it's difficult to remove or replace problem employees. The budget is about 60% of what it probably needs to be and there's no path towards improving it.

[sailfast]

That sounds right. Good for you for going out for it. Hiring / firing in government is certainly not helping the situation, and budget fights are always a struggle.