[palata]

Not sure if you have a specific example in mind or speaking generally.

What I am saying is that generally, private companies abuse the government money when they can. Just like private companies enshittify their products to make more money. It's all about making money.

Why are governments getting bad software from companies? For the same reason users are getting bad software as well. The software industry produces money, not good software.

[u8080]

My point is that "private companies abuse the government money when they can" is well-known fact. Thus, government as a customer should make everything possible to buy software on competitive market basis. If govt chose easy way to blindly gave shitton of money to some company with vague acceptance criteria and got bad result in return - this is 100% govt fault.

[palata]

My point is that they are genuinely trying. I have been in contact with such people, and they are not idiots.

They have government money that they want to spend wisely. And experts from private companies convince them that they can solve their problems.

If the government employee was the expert, they would not have to contact the private companies in the first place. The private companies know that, and they abuse their dominant position by convincing (sometimes downright lying) to the government employees.

It is a very difficult position to be in. It's not about buying a car and being able to just test it. Many times the government funding goes for some kind of R&D. Which makes it easy for the experts to bullshit them and never produce anything useful.

Those who say that it's 100% the government fault should maybe try to go work there. They could truly help their country, if they could actually do better. But chances are that they can't.

[u8080]

I am sorry for good people genuinely trying. I understand that it is a hard problem to solve - but private companies chose their contractors and suppliers and as well facing similar issues. Somehow private companies are managing to evaluate results and found accountable persons while governments are known for being very undemanding customers.

"We have tried hard, but failed" is still failure despite any good will. Good will with courage and having skills with competence are very different things and often govt employees have neither because otherwise they will be more successful using this skillset in private companies.

[palata]

> but private companies

Two things:

* The government is often in the situation where they want to fund some effort, like R&D. Say China is way ahead of the US in drone technology, and the US wants to catch up because that's a risk (we see how drones are used in the military now). So someone will have money to spend on US companies who will do everything they can to get as much money as possible. How can the government employee know which company is abusing? First they are all abusing, and second they are all failing already (otherwise the government wouldn't be in this situation where they need to fund them). This is a very hard problem.

* When it is about buying e.g. an IT solution for the company, I have seen private companies fail just as much as governments. McKinsey and their friends do the same bullshit to everybody, be it government or private companies. Don't think that private companies don't waste money. It's just that when it is the government, it is transparent and we like to complain about the government.