This is a person's view of his working environment. It may or may not exists in many part of the US. On the other hand, I will try to raise questions that may lead to worthwhile discussions.
Personally, I have been working for US a state government in the US for over 40 years as IT professional. On the other hand, I have my background as achieved scientist. So, in a way, I am capable of doing more than my job asked for.
Let me begin with few instances in our agency while worked as an application developer.
Let me first talk about a project that is to develop a 'portal' which would serve as the entrance point for our customer to access various applications of ours.
The old version of the application was developed in house with a template from Microsoft long time ago. The old portal, though not perfect and up to date technology-wise, it does implement useful business logics.
When the agency received COVID relief fund, it decided to take the advantage of it and re-write/modernize the portal application. It took the money and decided to hire third party to develop the new portal application even though there were efforts to collect user stories and develop in-house previously.
As the decision was made, managers, and helpdeskers, with limited technology background, were sat down with the 3rd party company which brought in developers. Specifications, user stories and contract details were never revealed to agency developers until much later. The agency has about ten internal developers that develop and maintain many of its applications, many of which interact with the (old) portal. Let's be clear, many of these developer were not presented in the new portal specification meetings. The meeting were largely held between agency managers and 3rd party company alone with their developers.
Comments