1. How many software engineers are necessary for the federal government to build its own office software, or at the very least contribute to open-source projects such as LibreOffice? Depending on the size of the team, this may be a drop in the bucket compared to the federal government's multi-trillion dollar budget, even if the developers made Microsoft-level salaries. Let's make a very liberal estimate: suppose there were a team of 20 engineers dedicated to contributing to LibreOffice, and each engineer costs $400,000 in salary and overhead. The total is $8 million per year. When spread out over a population of 333 million, that's less than 2.5 cents per person. Now compare that $8 million per year to the cost of Microsoft Office licenses.
2. I consider myself a limited government proponent, but even if government were cut down to the bone, there is still a need for the government to maintain in-house software. Just imagine the internal software that the military and the IRS has, for example. The Library of Congress probably has very interesting software for helping manage its collection. It is conceivable for the federal government to build and maintain office software to aid its operations.
How many developers/PMs/etc. are working on Office software at Microsoft? With 20 you might be several orders of magnitude off. Why would a government project be leaner?
What is more, at least where I live there is not even a salary structure allowing to pay developers those figures, while managers several levels above them would earn less. Hierarchy is everything in government organizations.
I expected this question - the answer as it stands is hell no. And who can blame us for being skeptical.
But as a taxpayer, I’d be very open to those salaries IF government IT was overhauled and run like a competent and agile tech startup, unencumbered by politics and red tape - at least to bootstrap some initital momentum.
Longer term, we need something like a “Tech Corps”, akin to a branch of the military, where new recruits are trained in tech bootcamps, and then deployed to one of the thousands of government departments that require resources for their projects/processes. Ideally, these roles should be viewed as an honorable monastic vocation, not a bureaucratic or political career.
2. I consider myself a limited government proponent, but even if government were cut down to the bone, there is still a need for the government to maintain in-house software. Just imagine the internal software that the military and the IRS has, for example. The Library of Congress probably has very interesting software for helping manage its collection. It is conceivable for the federal government to build and maintain office software to aid its operations.