[danso]

If this is the software that's developed for millions of public users, imagine the software developed for in-house use, where the users are too few and too unsavvy to see how the software could be better (this is the case with most businesses, not just government)...this applies to basic information processing and to software interfaces for our sophisticated weapon systems.

And even the software for info systems can have dangerous consequences. Does anyone remember the underwear bomber, who almost brought down a plane and caused a nice surge of invasive security measures afterwards? His own father exposed him, but the State Dept's visa system failed to find the terrorist because someone misspelled his name when entering it into the system

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/01/08/terror.suspect.visa/i...

Think about it...the State Dept has been dealing with foreign terrorists well before 9/11, whose names are easily misspelled by Westerners...there's not even a consistent way to spell Osama bin Laden, depending on you interpret he phonetics. And yet no one thought that a fuzzy spellcheck would be useful, apparently. And a whole bunch of people almost died because of it (and the security apparatus greatly increased)

[artsrc]

Software for in-house use might be fine.

Bureaucracy reduces efficiency.

The more organizationally significant the software the worse risk there is.

Processes and procedures are the ways institutions manage risk.

So the more significant the software is the less efficient the production of it is.