[egorfine]

Very much this. I have worked with UN (ILO and WHO) in Geneva and signing a tiny (< $30k) software development contract required two years of extraterrestrial bureaucracy with an ultimate failure in the end.

All parties involved really wanted that software contract to be implemented and that software was in fact done developing and already in production by the time. We just couldn't.

So I can sort of feel Bill's pain. It looks ridiculous from the outside and even more ridiculous from the inside.

[webmaven]

> Very much this. I have worked with UN (ILO and WHO) in Geneva and signing a tiny (< $30k) software development contract required two years of extraterrestrial bureaucracy with an ultimate failure in the end.

Pretty sure you meant extraterritorial, but if you really meant extraterrestrial, that would be VERY cool.

[egorfine]

Extraterrestrial. As in, unprecedented on Earth. Seriously, their bureaucracy is incredible, and I speak this from a former soviet republic.

[webmaven]

Ah. That's not how I interpreted 'extraterrestrial bureaucracy', which at an extreme suggests a mid-level functionary on the ISS, or at least workflows that involve forms sent in triplicate out to a Mars orbiter and back. ;-)