What's interesting about all this isn't that this is a new idea by Warren – it's that the Government had an office like this but it was closed down by Republican leadership in the mid 90s.
I have a (truly genuine) question for Republican techies here (really, really not trying to point fingers or start a political argument) – when you see that Newt Gingrich closed the OTA office, what do you feel? Maybe he did the right thing, you'd like to learn more why? Or Newt Gingrich was wrong? Or what?
Not sure what the reasoning was at the time, but I can provide some personal thoughts on the idea - so don't take it as representative of everyone who is center-right like myself.
I don't trust a government entity to be "independent" or "non-partisan." The rule of thumb I use is "would I trust this government entity if my respective political party is only in control ~50% of the time?"
Some other folks in the threads already mentioned this, but as one example: the Obama campaign was pretty close to the Facebooks / Googles of the world - meaning that there could be a scenario that this OTA office was staffed fully with ex-Googlers or the like, almost like a lobbying firm would do. On one hand, they're fully qualified and (probably) very knowledgeable; on the other hand, I wouldn't trust that the office would provide a fair assessment into regulating those tech companies.
As a DC Area resident for 25+ years, I have met many federal government employees, some in professional settings, and many in casual settings.
They remind me of Journalists. Most journalists I've met are not centrists in their personal lives. But in their professional lives, they try (they're not perfect, they are human) to stay impartial, but some of your bias will definitely leak into things.
But most federal agencies are simply too large and bureaucratic for individuals to push their own political agendas. (Not talking about the leadership that's appointed by each administration, but career employees). And it's been my informal experience that their hands are too often (rightly) tied by the laws and regulations of the day, in exactly what they can do. So this idea of non-partisan people truly being partisan is often true at an individual level, but generally false at an agency level.
And they do take the non-partisan side of their jobs very seriously.
The UK has what are called "Non-ministerial government departments"[0]. These are government departments who aren't overseen directly by the government because they are deemed issues that live outside of the domain of the current governing party. This is in part to avoid the kind of "50% control" problems.
Does the US not have some kind of similar element?
I don't trust a government entity to be "independent" or "non-partisan."
This is unfortunate perspective, but I can understand why many would have this view.
As others have stated, for the overwhelming majority of the career Civilian and Military workforce, partisanship is a third rail topic at best.
I've been in government service as a military officer or civilian for about half of my working life and being vocally partisan is just not something that is institutionally tolerated, is actively frowned upon and in certain cases unlawful.
This idea that people who worked for a company can't be critical of it seems pretty unlikely to apply to Google, given all the internal political controversy they've gone through?
Maybe we should judge people for their own actions rather than who they once worked for?
I think it depends who you're getting from those companies. We've seen a lot of Googlers standing up and publicly denouncing the company's practices. I suspect a lot of people would be inclined to regulate the crap out of their old employers if they were sufficiently divested. But if you're getting people who want to basically rotate to the government for a couple years and rotate back to Big Tech, that's not going to go great for us.
I have some sympathy with this view. My main concern is that business will always try and fill the vacuum. Who would you rather is informing politicians on climate change, the oil companies or government scientists?
It seems highly unlikely that because a President is elected an entire agency is replaced with people of their political belief overnight, or even in 8 years.
> I don't trust a government entity to be "independent" or "non-partisan."
so do you worry about the post office not delivering your mail if it's of a political nature, the fire department not showing up to put out a fire at your political parties' headquarters, cops not showing up if you're known to be of "that party" ? do these people all act in a partisan fashion throughout their day jobs ?
I know “I don’t trust the government” is a very popular trope in the US, but I am a bit curious how the solution to this lack of trust is always diminsishing government power instead of say trying to figure out how to properly compartmentalize or divide it?
As somebody who grew up in the german language area (Central Europe) and dealt with Nazi history and extremism for half his life, I am quite sure that a too strong government without proper division of forces is equally dangerous to a weak government that can be taken over too easily by political movements like Germany was in the late 20s.
The whole history of how the Nazis came into power is really something people should study, because I am convinced similar things could easily happen today in multiple democratic nations.
Power is after all fluid and if you weaken your elected government just enough it will flow somewhere else. And if you are unlucky that somewhere else is even more out of the control of the citizen than a government would be.
>The Office of Technology Assessment's (1972-1995) purpose was to provide Congressional members and committees with objective and authoritative analysis of complex scientific and technical issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Technology_Assessmen...
Why does the government need another office to provide this commentary? The onus is on those seeking change to explain why its necessary not on those for the status quo.
Government 'independent' offices are not immune from political spin. Congressional committees are ultimately the ones tasked with making policy and they have authlrity to call whomever they want to testify. If the OTA wouldn't say what they wanted to hear, they'd just call someone else.
The United states does not suffer from a dearth of scientists. We should be able to get everything we need from the OTA via private commissions and private subpoenas.
Well even if you favor the status quo being informed is kind of neccessary for everyone doing their job directly for evaluating arguements properly. Trusting the source with a conflict of interest?
While it may be in the congressional authority to do their own research having a shared resource helps all do so and acts as a well of institutional knowledge which makes the system less dependent upon incumbent's assembled teams.
Plus one upside of bueracracies is that they are an anti-spoils system by being harder to sway in a "he who pays the piper sets the tune". If they are wrong then their own private researchers should be able to make a case refuting it.
Willfull ignorance is still unfortunately always possible but having one removes the cover and excuses from bad actors.
For the same reason "user consent" is inaccurate when used as an argument by big tech: big tech can't fully inform people because they have a conflict of interest. Moat of the time, it's not unethical or something, it's just a true, unavoidable, conflict of interest.
I'd be more interested in why Obama didn't re-form this office since it was so great, given the google/facebook anti-trust issues metastasized under his administration.
His administration benefited a ton from Facebook. You can look up his old campaign manager's tweets about Facebook telling them that they were on their side, and that if anyone else had scraped as much info as they did, they would have been blocked.
If you're thinking I'm going to disagree on that note, you're wrong.
But the Obama administration also created the US Digital Service and 18F (after the healthcare.gov debacle), which are doing stellar work and continue to do so in the federal gov under the Trump Administration.
Obama also did create the Office of Science and Technology Policy, so maybe this was the successor of what this office would've been. But they were more science focused.
But that doesn't address my question about this particular office.
The executive branch already has technological experts to lean on. Obama was never particularly interested in giving up leverage the executive branch had over Congress, especially when his party wasn't in control there for most of his presidency.
Barack Obama was so closely associated with Google, it isn't even remotely funny. The amount of interaction between Google and his administration is unprecedented; he could've been considered an employee.
Suffice to say, he wasn't going to introduce a way to give the government objective understanding of issues around Google's monopoly.
Newt's rallying cry was always to reduce the size of government. The only way to do so was lean on the private sector, as things still needed to be done.
While the hope is those private contractors will just follow the contract and not let any bias seep in, it's inevitable. For the time, and to his agenda, closing the OTA seems like the correct move (for him and the party). Not sure if it was the best move overall, but, it did follow the mood and spirit of the Republicans at that time.
I'm no Warren fan (center/right so there is no one I actually support in 2020 right now - and I don't expect there will be) but it seems to me to ensure the people regain control of our government we (the American populace) must place less reliance on the private sector for such specialized tasks. The private sector use should be more towards the mundane tasks of government. Such specialized areas like tech have to separated from the firms who would benefit from whatever actions and effects they make upon our government.
Not necessarily a republican techie but what if that office or other government offices satisfy a need but one that's bursty -- maybe we really only need them for six to nine months every seven or eight years?
I'm not saying that's the case here but it seems like an interesting challenge to somehow leave an agency intact but be able to spin up and down like that. People in general prefer a lot more consistency in their careers.
What I'd love to see is something like the National Academy of Sciences, where you have an organization that year-round advises Congress, and you are elected to it by your peers.
So like the NAS has a lot of Nobel Prize winners, etc... this new "Academy" would have IEEE/ACM recipients, others that have a much longer view, pretty much what a lot of "distinguished engineers" or "fellows" do at private companies.
The federal government has plenty of bursty offices. The census bureau hires like crazy each decade for temporary jobs. There are government advisory positions that academics take for a summer or just go to DC for a week every four months. These things are not impossible.
I like the idea putting expiration dates on most government entities like this (at least the ones not spelled out by the Constitution). I'd even go as far as putting expiration dates on many laws, regulations to force politicians to reconsider their necessity.
This is a good idea, but terms in the OTA should be time-limited so that professionals staffing it need to get jobs (or start companies) in the private sector again after 4-5 years. Tech moves quickly, and technical knowledge becomes stale in about that time period. The last thing we need is a government bureaucracy of career civil servants that mandates best practices that were current 40 years ago.
From my short stint in Government service (the Executive Branch), most employees are a bit too busy trying to do what they can with what they've got to really play the partisanship game. There is also a heavy inertia constituted by the fact that making the decision isn't your responsibility. Collating information is to make the decision well informed is.
When I learned the OTA existed and was dismantled a few years ago, I was extremely upset. I'd sign up to act as a fact finder/researcher for policy makers in an instant. Lobbyists cannot be trusted to have the safeguarding of the public's liberty at heart, whereas a Legislative Research Division has one goal. Collect and parse information to impartially feed the policy making process.
When I heard the justification for getting rid of it (I.e. always being at odds with lobbyists) I had to unplug for a couple days to try to figure out how my model of the world could be so inaccurate.
Reading the Wikipedia entry on it, the apparent charge to remove it was "unnecessary agency"[0] - that the scope of its responsibility was handled by other agencies, but doesn't elaborate what those other agencies are.
Does anyone know what agencies are being alluded to?
If you read more closely, the book Fat City: How Washington Wastes Your Taxes was the one which stated that it was an "unnecessary agency" and the Regan admin liked the book. Newt Gingrich was the one who spearheaded the closure of the OTA.
Throwaway for obvious reasons. This is not an appropriate role of government and I'm glad Gingrich closed it down.
The government is not "us" as former president Obama and many HN readers believe. It is a entity separate and apart from the people it claims to represent and therefore its size and role should be extremely limited. Any representation it claims to provide can be easily proven wrong under scrutiny, if only the educated elite would bother to do so.
I'm troubled by it, but I'm troubled by a lot of things both parties have done, happens to be I agree with most of the objectives of the republican party over the objectives and platform of the democrats. So until there is one party that does everything I like and nothing I don't like I'm gonna continue to vote my conscious on each ballot. I don't think I've ever voted a straight ticket before.
I'm not a "Republican Techie" (I would classify myself as "left"-leaning), and I am suspicious of this because of that.
For me, I look at analogous examples where we have tried to build technical expertise in the government. One such reference point is the US Patent Office. Although they don't have a "small" workforce in absolute terms, they are overwhelmed with the number and kind of filings they get. You basically need to remain an expert in the field in order to do that job well, but it is very hard to remain an expert in the field if you are working at the USPTO instead of the field. It is also difficult to keep people in this position where if they are particularly creative or knowledgable they could alternatively be doing exciting meaningful work in the field. The result is ultimately what many of us complain about: nonsense patents getting through, patent trolls pushing people around, and a new vested interest in exploiting the patent office. Importantly, this is not to say that an ideal patent office wouldn't be a meaningful job: I think many of us here wish that we had "the best" working there to prevent these sorts of lapses (and potentially allow "good patents" -- not meaning to get into a discussion as to the validity of software patents in general, just saying that the hypothetical version of the patent office diverges significantly from the one we actually have).
I have a hard time believing this organization wouldn't work similarly. Would they coincidentally have a an expert on lattice encryption when quantum computers become a realistic threat to current schemes? Would the general leanings of career-members of the OTA (who thus have a somewhat "frozen" view of technology from whenever they started) create the opportunity to form some sort of regulatory capture? I don't know. Ultimately the solution is "if we had a group that really cared about the public good, then...".
My point is that I'd like for something like the OTA to be good, but I think practically speaking it won't have the effects we think it will. I am much more in favor of trying to create an adversarial counter-balance (or ideally multiple adversarial counter-balances). If I could somehow snap my fingers and grant the equivalent budget that this OTA would have to the EFF for example, I'd take that immediately. This is because things like this become issues maybe in one election, but ultimately get drowned out for a much more popular issue later. The forming of some government agency to "fix this" makes people feel like it is thus "fixed", instead of realizing that it is a constant battle we need to be actively engaged in -- that's what makes me feel like supporting groups like the EFF is more important and potentially more effective than creating some organization that could easily just be disbanded just like it was in the 90s and completely undone.
I was a very young child in the 90s and I think this is the first I've heard of this incident so I don't have a strong opinion. I will say, in general, I don't like executive agencies and would not have a problem with most of them being abolished.
Because the government is, or becomes, terrible at everything. All it takes is one super republican or democrat or socialist in leadership to start padding the office with their own people. Add to that, a lot of government jobs are stable, regardless of how awful you are(DMV, anyone?). I just don't trust it to keep fresh, and not fill with aging folks who haven't paid attention in years.
I'd probably be more OK with the idea if there were mandatory term limits, like the USDS, and the vetting process had oversight from a committee of congress.
How did I feel? Step out of the box, and imagine for a second that business and profit are not inherently evil. This is what we are told, every day by people like Warren. I believe profit is a reward for providing something people want for a lower price - and absolutely necessary to be in business. Profit is a function of efficiency.
The question rests in the in the notion that Government, (not motivated by the ability to make something people want for a lower price) will be able to do a better job than the free market in making tech policy decisions. It seems silly that a small team of government hired employees would know better than tens of thousands of Google, Amazon or Facebook experts.
Libertarians could view this small group of government employees as corrupt. Using their personal politics and authoritarian power to pick winners and losers - rather than let the free people pick real winners and losers.
So it depends on your perspective. Do you personally believe the Government can do a better job than the people?
That certainly depends on the task and what 'better job' means.
For example, private enterprise can certainly make a lot of money providing health care but I'd be very disappointed if my country switched to privatized health care. I personally believe that the Government can do, and does, a better job than "the people" in providing me with health care.
Well, what you said is entirely true...from the perspective of someone using their imagination to form their world view.
In the world I can observe, business is neither inherently good or inherently evil. It tends to take on the morality or immorality of its owners and directors. I'll leave it to the reader to decide what kind of people tend to rise into those positions, and thus what kind of morality their businesses assume. Business is motivated by all kinds of incentives not necessarily related to "lower prices". Left unchecked, without guidance from the general public, those incentives will always converge on "profiting and growing" to the exclusion of everything else. I don't think this view requires imagination, but happy to be shown otherwise.
I don’t see that as a one or the other decision. I think of it as a continuum, where decision making on either side is grounded in knowledge of history. Should the government decide if Nike or Addidas make better shoes? No, let the market do that. But if one company makes cheaper and better shoes by offloading toxic waste into aquifers that feed large cities, the market is not good at weeding that out until the damage has been done. Enter regulations created in and of the public interest.
> profit is a reward for providing something people want for a lower price
How do monopolies work with this? If I am a car manufacturer and I buy up all the steel and steel mills, and then jack my prices up, I get more profit, and also am protected from competitors. If there are no power or resource disparities, I could see this working, but at the very least government is (to a much larger extent than the private sector) accountable to people.
> It seems silly that a small team of government hired employees would know better than tens of thousands of Google, Amazon or Facebook experts.
Those tens of thousands of Google/Amazon/Facebook experts are not going to provide the government with objective recommendations, they're going to provide the government with recommendations that favor them. The idea of the government office of experts is to help make decisions that are objectively in the best interests of the people, not the corporations that are going to be affected by those decisions.
I work for a government office that, fortunately, is not hated by Republicans because it supports the military. But in this office our job is to ensure that private companies are giving the government good value and not feeding us a bunch of crap. I see the kind of shoddy workmanship they try to sneak past us all the time.
Is the libertarian perspective really that the government should just de facto trust all private companies and not try to provide oversight?
> Do you personally believe the Government can do a better job than the people?
Tech based businesses didn't have half as much money/sway back then as they did now, so from a budgetary perspective i think it made sense at the time. Short sighted, but makes sense.
My concern, is the massive amounts of failed promises Warren has made in efforts to shut down things like Robocalls, and for her to be auditioning for her next job before she's completed her current one bothers me.
The reason why companies like Google care to do things like lobby is that those companies get the majority of their power from the government, so of course they want to petition the government for more of it. It doesn't make sense to get into an arms race in this way. Instead, let's eviscerate copyright and patent protections, and let's take a wack at the corporate veil too. That will chop companies like Google down to size and make their lobbying irrelevant and/or useless while simultaneously weakening their power to control the rest of us.
Newt Gingrich != the Republican party. I'm sure I can cherry-pick some Democratic politician to get the point across if I cared, but I don't because your post is trolling.
In the 90s, I taught retraining courses to government computer programmers (e.g former COBOL programmers) Let’s just say “they’re not sending us their best people” roughly describes my experience. That is, people who had previously held jobs writing code by the government didn’t even know what “parenthesis key” meant or where it was located which largely led me to believe that many of the people in my class were collecting paychecks but didn’t really know how to use computers.
Unless the government radically raises salaries and benefits for these positions to attract top talent, I’d be concerned with it being stacked with a bunch of people who don’t have much developer or engineering experience.
The issue is perhaps not salaries and benefits. Often a lot of effort is taken to try to fill a position internally. This would explain your anecdote -- after some staff churn people were promoted to a position they had no business occupying.
I say this as various friends at times worked for government agencies and sought promotion. They could have filled extant positions due to their experience, but they were denied before becoming a public servant due to lack of public service and then denied after for lack of seniority (even when asking to be considered as an external hire).
Coming from them, jobs often seemed to open up after a person had retired and were catered towards an individual.
USDS & 18F seem to have been huge steps in the right direction. A future administration that cares about getting this right should look to them as a model.
I mean, that was also the 90s - I’ll bet there are quite a few good programmers within government. Your point stands that salaries and the gov value proposition isn’t competitive - to me it’s almost like a charity job.
As a dev coming from private sector and now in government, your comment rings true to my experience so far.
It's true that there are many programmers in government who were promoted from within, learned on the job, and are limited on technical knowledge we would expect from a CS grad or a seasoned "software engineer" from industry. In many cases the code is written by contractors under the watch of a government employee who is responsible for delivering the system.
But I have found some aspects very rewarding: guiding new programmers who are eager to learn modern languages and techniques; introducing industry tools and practices to leadership who are excited to modernize/replace legacy systems.
Of course, for every ColdFusion developer who is humble and motivated update their toolbelt, there is one who resents all new technology and technologists. Not talking about the groans about going "agile", I mean people who say "react is silly, I can do all this with jquery! New devs don't know how to do it the 'real' way".
Overall, there is a powerful current within these organizations that is pushing toward new tech and better talent. But I don't know how leadership will manage to bring in new grads and private sector talent while still honoring its promise to promote those in non-technical jobs after years of service.
Fantastic, though the whole aspect of lobbyists (corporate shrills whose sole job is to peer-pressure government officials) just irks me, as I'm sure it does others.
Whilst companies should have a say, the general feeling of myself and again, I'm sure others - is that they monopolise the perspective of some officials. Then you have, `donations` and for want of another way of expressing that - it is just bribery and corruption with legal window-dressing.
This only leads to angst in the populus, who end up rising up and acting in ways that get heard, but equally demonised. For example - Anonymous raised many fair issues in their days, valid points. Albeit in a way that was to some extent - extreme, but when you drive people to the edge and the fall off, you can't blame them all the time.
Again, this is an excellent initiative and whilst Google may
not be the worst offender, they are no angel.
[EDIT - that grammar and spelling error you just spot after you hit send, even though you read it thru before hitting send]
Oh, yes! Government employment, with all of the overhead that entails, like drug testing etc? And the job is to explain to ULTRA clueless users things they need to know and don't want to learn. People complain about supporting doctors, who assume their focused competence extends to all human knowledge. Politicians assume often their charm and power can substitute for understanding.
If i felt the need to do civic duty, I think I'd rather join the Army than take that job. At least there's the chance of shooting someone who deserves it there.
(Perhaps I'm still a little PTSD from my time supporting users)
* Edit: Calmer now; I have to say it's a great idea that Congress (and whoever else in government) could have a resource to tap for specialized knowledge in technical fields they currently lack coverage of. I can't imagine they can make the job attractive enough for me
When I applied to the USDS a few years ago, the interview process left me with the impression that "explain[ing] to ULTRA clueless users things they need to know and don't want to learn" was the core of the job, since the interview seemed to be testing that in lieu of actual technical skills. Left me wanting to go anywhere is, 18F, or any similar government program.
Of course, I also have 14 years of dealing with the DOD in technical capacities, so that didn't help.
This would be a fragile suture over the gushing wound that is corporate lobbying. It's literally allowing wolves in the hen house.
If we're going to keep doing this whole Democratic Republic thing, along with the Constitution, we need to adhere to the spirit of the framework and not just the letter of it.
The federal government was set (what was at the time) far away from everyday life so that our representatives would not be swayed by salesmen and their snake oil.
So, if you want to make a difference Liz, do something about the root problem and help us defeat corporate lobbying.
That example is resourced under "plans" but doesn't offer one. It doesn't list steps or actions that can be taken to stop corporate lobbying, just a vaguely worded closing sentence about giving congress the "tools" to combat lobbying.
The business of lobbying has grown to over $3 billion per year according to OpenSecrets.org [1]. That doesn't include campaign contributions. It's impossible for so much money to make its way through individuals with their own self interests and result in a sustainable government beneficial to the people. Money will always win whenever it makes an appearance. We can't combat lobbying with tools, we have to prevent it.
So, it's a non-starter until she lays out actual actions to consider or commits to ending the practice.
The Constitution was designed 240 years ago, when travel along the Boston-DC route took days or weeks. Communications took as long as people could move. The uneducated masses weren't expected to play an active role in government. Gerrymandering was considered, but not a problem (certainly not to the ultra-optimized state it is today). Firearms didn't carry nearly the destructive power they do now. The Supreme Court wasn't so consistently divided along partisan lines.
Almost every facet of our country could use re-evaluation. Health care should be a right for the people. Basic living conditions should be provided for all. The country has the money, the space and the food.
We could be so much better than we are now - and we're pretty good now.
Your vague plan of just stop corporate lobbying immediately fails because the negative incentives for someone in congress vastly outweighs the positive.
RFPs work in every industry. Depending on the bill, Congress should request proposals or maintain a list of credentialed experts overseen by a watchdog agency outside of their control. Or they could be nominated by professional organizations and guilds.
Either way, no, Google, Shell, et al should not be allowed to spend X dollars sending former members of Congress or others to advocate for them, especially when experts in those fields, or scientists, contradict them.
Regardless, throwing our hands up and shrugging it off is absolutely the wrong course of action.
We have literally been there before, it's not a solution. An army of nerds hired into a government funded office has the effect of burying the issues out of the public eye. Over time, with a financially incentivized industry lobby vs a government office doing a thankless task (because it is out of the public eye), you create political imbalances (with the nice-for-some side-effect of employing a few people). The NRA (boo), EFF and Amnesty International have effective models, because their efforts remain in the public eye.
I think that if you really care about this issue, it's most effective if you donate to a special interest group like the EFF, and stay informed.
This feels to me as if the politicians have recognized that they need some technically competent people to even understand how to legislate in these matters.
However, if the top-level politicians, who remain technically inept, are the ones giving the orders, confusion will remain.
> However, if the top-level politicians, who remain technically inept, are the ones giving the orders, confusion will remain.
The converse would also be true though; a technologically adept leadership that didn't understand society's principles would also lead to confusion, likely worse confusion.
Deeper still, a militarily adept leadership, or any other narrowly adept leadership, that didn't understand society's principles would also lead to confusion.
Politicians have to deal with society as a whole, and as long as no one can master every area of expertise, they need to have someone doing analyses on their behalf.
If you think they’re going to end up with “technically competent” engineers I have some bad news for you: they’re all gainfully employed. What they’ll end up with is the same thing committees always up with: bureaucrats who wouldn’t be able to hack in the private sector.
So your argument is that there's nobody both technically competent and willing to work in an important role for the government? I can tell you for a fact you're wrong, and if you don't believe me, you may want to widen your social circle.
Just pay more. I can guarantee you there are plenty of software engineers currently coding dark patterns and rigging Candy Crush or what have you that would prefer to work for the government if they paid competitively.
OTA is just a government agency that existed some time into the academic computing phase, where lots of theory and conjecture was thrown around but no broad enterprise or consumer application was possible. Think like blockchain in 2019. It was defunded when those applications were just taking off in the 90s.
s/politicians/executives and you'll see that good decisions can be made by non-technical people, as long as they have been adequately informed by technical folks.
Readit News
What's interesting about all this isn't that this is a new idea by Warren – it's that the Government had an office like this but it was closed down by Republican leadership in the mid 90s.
I have a (truly genuine) question for Republican techies here (really, really not trying to point fingers or start a political argument) – when you see that Newt Gingrich closed the OTA office, what do you feel? Maybe he did the right thing, you'd like to learn more why? Or Newt Gingrich was wrong? Or what?
I don't trust a government entity to be "independent" or "non-partisan." The rule of thumb I use is "would I trust this government entity if my respective political party is only in control ~50% of the time?"
Some other folks in the threads already mentioned this, but as one example: the Obama campaign was pretty close to the Facebooks / Googles of the world - meaning that there could be a scenario that this OTA office was staffed fully with ex-Googlers or the like, almost like a lobbying firm would do. On one hand, they're fully qualified and (probably) very knowledgeable; on the other hand, I wouldn't trust that the office would provide a fair assessment into regulating those tech companies.
EDIT: grammar / more precise vocabulary
They remind me of Journalists. Most journalists I've met are not centrists in their personal lives. But in their professional lives, they try (they're not perfect, they are human) to stay impartial, but some of your bias will definitely leak into things.
But most federal agencies are simply too large and bureaucratic for individuals to push their own political agendas. (Not talking about the leadership that's appointed by each administration, but career employees). And it's been my informal experience that their hands are too often (rightly) tied by the laws and regulations of the day, in exactly what they can do. So this idea of non-partisan people truly being partisan is often true at an individual level, but generally false at an agency level.
And they do take the non-partisan side of their jobs very seriously.
I'm surprised that you'd use 50% as the threshold. I would use 0%.
There are plenty of government agencies and functions that I trust even though my affiliated party is never in control.
Does the US not have some kind of similar element?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-ministerial_government_dep...
This is unfortunate perspective, but I can understand why many would have this view.
As others have stated, for the overwhelming majority of the career Civilian and Military workforce, partisanship is a third rail topic at best.
I've been in government service as a military officer or civilian for about half of my working life and being vocally partisan is just not something that is institutionally tolerated, is actively frowned upon and in certain cases unlawful.
I wonder how we could change that perception.
Maybe we should judge people for their own actions rather than who they once worked for?
so do you worry about the post office not delivering your mail if it's of a political nature, the fire department not showing up to put out a fire at your political parties' headquarters, cops not showing up if you're known to be of "that party" ? do these people all act in a partisan fashion throughout their day jobs ?
As somebody who grew up in the german language area (Central Europe) and dealt with Nazi history and extremism for half his life, I am quite sure that a too strong government without proper division of forces is equally dangerous to a weak government that can be taken over too easily by political movements like Germany was in the late 20s.
The whole history of how the Nazis came into power is really something people should study, because I am convinced similar things could easily happen today in multiple democratic nations.
Power is after all fluid and if you weaken your elected government just enough it will flow somewhere else. And if you are unlucky that somewhere else is even more out of the control of the citizen than a government would be.
An argument can be made that a biased OTA is better than no OTA.
Government is inherently political.
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Is this feeling or sentiment, or can you give reason why private enterprise providing the same service would be less partisan?
>The Office of Technology Assessment's (1972-1995) purpose was to provide Congressional members and committees with objective and authoritative analysis of complex scientific and technical issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Technology_Assessmen...
Government 'independent' offices are not immune from political spin. Congressional committees are ultimately the ones tasked with making policy and they have authlrity to call whomever they want to testify. If the OTA wouldn't say what they wanted to hear, they'd just call someone else.
The United states does not suffer from a dearth of scientists. We should be able to get everything we need from the OTA via private commissions and private subpoenas.
While it may be in the congressional authority to do their own research having a shared resource helps all do so and acts as a well of institutional knowledge which makes the system less dependent upon incumbent's assembled teams.
Plus one upside of bueracracies is that they are an anti-spoils system by being harder to sway in a "he who pays the piper sets the tune". If they are wrong then their own private researchers should be able to make a case refuting it.
Willfull ignorance is still unfortunately always possible but having one removes the cover and excuses from bad actors.
The issue is that those who listen to the arguments and make the decision may not know enough to counter the arguments.
Any tech company can come up with some argument to explain why a given change is necessary.
But the Obama administration also created the US Digital Service and 18F (after the healthcare.gov debacle), which are doing stellar work and continue to do so in the federal gov under the Trump Administration.
Obama also did create the Office of Science and Technology Policy, so maybe this was the successor of what this office would've been. But they were more science focused.
But that doesn't address my question about this particular office.
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Suffice to say, he wasn't going to introduce a way to give the government objective understanding of issues around Google's monopoly.
While the hope is those private contractors will just follow the contract and not let any bias seep in, it's inevitable. For the time, and to his agenda, closing the OTA seems like the correct move (for him and the party). Not sure if it was the best move overall, but, it did follow the mood and spirit of the Republicans at that time.
I'm no Warren fan (center/right so there is no one I actually support in 2020 right now - and I don't expect there will be) but it seems to me to ensure the people regain control of our government we (the American populace) must place less reliance on the private sector for such specialized tasks. The private sector use should be more towards the mundane tasks of government. Such specialized areas like tech have to separated from the firms who would benefit from whatever actions and effects they make upon our government.
As far as how I feel about it, my political views are closer to Ron Swanson than Leslie Knope, so I'm not too unhappy about it.
I'm not saying that's the case here but it seems like an interesting challenge to somehow leave an agency intact but be able to spin up and down like that. People in general prefer a lot more consistency in their careers.
So like the NAS has a lot of Nobel Prize winners, etc... this new "Academy" would have IEEE/ACM recipients, others that have a much longer view, pretty much what a lot of "distinguished engineers" or "fellows" do at private companies.
From my short stint in Government service (the Executive Branch), most employees are a bit too busy trying to do what they can with what they've got to really play the partisanship game. There is also a heavy inertia constituted by the fact that making the decision isn't your responsibility. Collating information is to make the decision well informed is.
When I learned the OTA existed and was dismantled a few years ago, I was extremely upset. I'd sign up to act as a fact finder/researcher for policy makers in an instant. Lobbyists cannot be trusted to have the safeguarding of the public's liberty at heart, whereas a Legislative Research Division has one goal. Collect and parse information to impartially feed the policy making process.
When I heard the justification for getting rid of it (I.e. always being at odds with lobbyists) I had to unplug for a couple days to try to figure out how my model of the world could be so inaccurate.
Does anyone know what agencies are being alluded to?
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Technology_Assessmen...
The government is not "us" as former president Obama and many HN readers believe. It is a entity separate and apart from the people it claims to represent and therefore its size and role should be extremely limited. Any representation it claims to provide can be easily proven wrong under scrutiny, if only the educated elite would bother to do so.
I think there are a lot of parallels to banking & financing and the regulation and oversight of those industries.
Definitely it’s good to do something rather than nothing, and many good things happen because of oversight etc.
But just like in banking, don’t expect this to be a panacea and things are going to happen very slowly.
For me, I look at analogous examples where we have tried to build technical expertise in the government. One such reference point is the US Patent Office. Although they don't have a "small" workforce in absolute terms, they are overwhelmed with the number and kind of filings they get. You basically need to remain an expert in the field in order to do that job well, but it is very hard to remain an expert in the field if you are working at the USPTO instead of the field. It is also difficult to keep people in this position where if they are particularly creative or knowledgable they could alternatively be doing exciting meaningful work in the field. The result is ultimately what many of us complain about: nonsense patents getting through, patent trolls pushing people around, and a new vested interest in exploiting the patent office. Importantly, this is not to say that an ideal patent office wouldn't be a meaningful job: I think many of us here wish that we had "the best" working there to prevent these sorts of lapses (and potentially allow "good patents" -- not meaning to get into a discussion as to the validity of software patents in general, just saying that the hypothetical version of the patent office diverges significantly from the one we actually have).
I have a hard time believing this organization wouldn't work similarly. Would they coincidentally have a an expert on lattice encryption when quantum computers become a realistic threat to current schemes? Would the general leanings of career-members of the OTA (who thus have a somewhat "frozen" view of technology from whenever they started) create the opportunity to form some sort of regulatory capture? I don't know. Ultimately the solution is "if we had a group that really cared about the public good, then...".
My point is that I'd like for something like the OTA to be good, but I think practically speaking it won't have the effects we think it will. I am much more in favor of trying to create an adversarial counter-balance (or ideally multiple adversarial counter-balances). If I could somehow snap my fingers and grant the equivalent budget that this OTA would have to the EFF for example, I'd take that immediately. This is because things like this become issues maybe in one election, but ultimately get drowned out for a much more popular issue later. The forming of some government agency to "fix this" makes people feel like it is thus "fixed", instead of realizing that it is a constant battle we need to be actively engaged in -- that's what makes me feel like supporting groups like the EFF is more important and potentially more effective than creating some organization that could easily just be disbanded just like it was in the 90s and completely undone.
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I'd probably be more OK with the idea if there were mandatory term limits, like the USDS, and the vetting process had oversight from a committee of congress.
How did I feel? Step out of the box, and imagine for a second that business and profit are not inherently evil. This is what we are told, every day by people like Warren. I believe profit is a reward for providing something people want for a lower price - and absolutely necessary to be in business. Profit is a function of efficiency.
The question rests in the in the notion that Government, (not motivated by the ability to make something people want for a lower price) will be able to do a better job than the free market in making tech policy decisions. It seems silly that a small team of government hired employees would know better than tens of thousands of Google, Amazon or Facebook experts.
Libertarians could view this small group of government employees as corrupt. Using their personal politics and authoritarian power to pick winners and losers - rather than let the free people pick real winners and losers.
So it depends on your perspective. Do you personally believe the Government can do a better job than the people?
For example, private enterprise can certainly make a lot of money providing health care but I'd be very disappointed if my country switched to privatized health care. I personally believe that the Government can do, and does, a better job than "the people" in providing me with health care.
Well, what you said is entirely true...from the perspective of someone using their imagination to form their world view.
In the world I can observe, business is neither inherently good or inherently evil. It tends to take on the morality or immorality of its owners and directors. I'll leave it to the reader to decide what kind of people tend to rise into those positions, and thus what kind of morality their businesses assume. Business is motivated by all kinds of incentives not necessarily related to "lower prices". Left unchecked, without guidance from the general public, those incentives will always converge on "profiting and growing" to the exclusion of everything else. I don't think this view requires imagination, but happy to be shown otherwise.
How do monopolies work with this? If I am a car manufacturer and I buy up all the steel and steel mills, and then jack my prices up, I get more profit, and also am protected from competitors. If there are no power or resource disparities, I could see this working, but at the very least government is (to a much larger extent than the private sector) accountable to people.
Those tens of thousands of Google/Amazon/Facebook experts are not going to provide the government with objective recommendations, they're going to provide the government with recommendations that favor them. The idea of the government office of experts is to help make decisions that are objectively in the best interests of the people, not the corporations that are going to be affected by those decisions.
I work for a government office that, fortunately, is not hated by Republicans because it supports the military. But in this office our job is to ensure that private companies are giving the government good value and not feeding us a bunch of crap. I see the kind of shoddy workmanship they try to sneak past us all the time.
Is the libertarian perspective really that the government should just de facto trust all private companies and not try to provide oversight?
> Do you personally believe the Government can do a better job than the people?
The government is made up of people too.
My concern, is the massive amounts of failed promises Warren has made in efforts to shut down things like Robocalls, and for her to be auditioning for her next job before she's completed her current one bothers me.
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Unless the government radically raises salaries and benefits for these positions to attract top talent, I’d be concerned with it being stacked with a bunch of people who don’t have much developer or engineering experience.
I say this as various friends at times worked for government agencies and sought promotion. They could have filled extant positions due to their experience, but they were denied before becoming a public servant due to lack of public service and then denied after for lack of seniority (even when asking to be considered as an external hire).
Coming from them, jobs often seemed to open up after a person had retired and were catered towards an individual.
Anyone competent enough to retrain and retool could've done so, obviating their need for your training.
It's true that there are many programmers in government who were promoted from within, learned on the job, and are limited on technical knowledge we would expect from a CS grad or a seasoned "software engineer" from industry. In many cases the code is written by contractors under the watch of a government employee who is responsible for delivering the system.
But I have found some aspects very rewarding: guiding new programmers who are eager to learn modern languages and techniques; introducing industry tools and practices to leadership who are excited to modernize/replace legacy systems.
Of course, for every ColdFusion developer who is humble and motivated update their toolbelt, there is one who resents all new technology and technologists. Not talking about the groans about going "agile", I mean people who say "react is silly, I can do all this with jquery! New devs don't know how to do it the 'real' way".
Overall, there is a powerful current within these organizations that is pushing toward new tech and better talent. But I don't know how leadership will manage to bring in new grads and private sector talent while still honoring its promise to promote those in non-technical jobs after years of service.
Whilst companies should have a say, the general feeling of myself and again, I'm sure others - is that they monopolise the perspective of some officials. Then you have, `donations` and for want of another way of expressing that - it is just bribery and corruption with legal window-dressing.
This only leads to angst in the populus, who end up rising up and acting in ways that get heard, but equally demonised. For example - Anonymous raised many fair issues in their days, valid points. Albeit in a way that was to some extent - extreme, but when you drive people to the edge and the fall off, you can't blame them all the time.
Again, this is an excellent initiative and whilst Google may not be the worst offender, they are no angel.
[EDIT - that grammar and spelling error you just spot after you hit send, even though you read it thru before hitting send]
If i felt the need to do civic duty, I think I'd rather join the Army than take that job. At least there's the chance of shooting someone who deserves it there.
(Perhaps I'm still a little PTSD from my time supporting users)
* Edit: Calmer now; I have to say it's a great idea that Congress (and whoever else in government) could have a resource to tap for specialized knowledge in technical fields they currently lack coverage of. I can't imagine they can make the job attractive enough for me
Of course, I also have 14 years of dealing with the DOD in technical capacities, so that didn't help.
This would be a fragile suture over the gushing wound that is corporate lobbying. It's literally allowing wolves in the hen house.
If we're going to keep doing this whole Democratic Republic thing, along with the Constitution, we need to adhere to the spirit of the framework and not just the letter of it.
The federal government was set (what was at the time) far away from everyday life so that our representatives would not be swayed by salesmen and their snake oil.
So, if you want to make a difference Liz, do something about the root problem and help us defeat corporate lobbying.
The business of lobbying has grown to over $3 billion per year according to OpenSecrets.org [1]. That doesn't include campaign contributions. It's impossible for so much money to make its way through individuals with their own self interests and result in a sustainable government beneficial to the people. Money will always win whenever it makes an appearance. We can't combat lobbying with tools, we have to prevent it.
So, it's a non-starter until she lays out actual actions to consider or commits to ending the practice.
1. http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/
Almost every facet of our country could use re-evaluation. Health care should be a right for the people. Basic living conditions should be provided for all. The country has the money, the space and the food.
We could be so much better than we are now - and we're pretty good now.
RFPs work in every industry. Depending on the bill, Congress should request proposals or maintain a list of credentialed experts overseen by a watchdog agency outside of their control. Or they could be nominated by professional organizations and guilds.
Either way, no, Google, Shell, et al should not be allowed to spend X dollars sending former members of Congress or others to advocate for them, especially when experts in those fields, or scientists, contradict them.
Regardless, throwing our hands up and shrugging it off is absolutely the wrong course of action.
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I think that if you really care about this issue, it's most effective if you donate to a special interest group like the EFF, and stay informed.
However, if the top-level politicians, who remain technically inept, are the ones giving the orders, confusion will remain.
The converse would also be true though; a technologically adept leadership that didn't understand society's principles would also lead to confusion, likely worse confusion.
Deeper still, a militarily adept leadership, or any other narrowly adept leadership, that didn't understand society's principles would also lead to confusion.
Politicians have to deal with society as a whole, and as long as no one can master every area of expertise, they need to have someone doing analyses on their behalf.
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