FYI, if anybody has questions, there are several YC alums who have joined the government in some capacity (healthcare.gov, USDS, Nava, PIFs) and are on HN.
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What do you see is being done to combat the issue of big contractors (Booz Allen, CGI, etc) who don't want the gov't building software with small teams because it would hurt their ability to obtain huge billion dollar contracts?
The existing contractors definitely don't like it, and on healthcare.gov, we learned to expect zero cooperation (indeed, plenty of interference) from the management of those companies. [1]
But ultimately, the people making the contracting decisions are agencies like CMS, HHS, the VA, and DHS. And with USDS, the agencies now have solid third party to provide technical advice--for example, that a consumer login system shouldn't cost $80 million to develop.
That's why you see results like the one quoted in the article, where a $200m initial healthcare.gov system was replaced with a $4m one. And if you read between the lines, you'll notice that the major federal contractor for healthcare.gov decided not to bid this year: http://www.wsj.com/articles/healthcare-gov-contractor-optum-...
Sometimes the good guys win.
[1] On the other hand, the engineers at those companies generally want to do the right thing, if they are empowered to.
Thanks, it's encouraging to hear that the contracting officers are now getting better advice from technical folks who understand the small teams approach.
To be fair, a lot of the contractors don't like to cooperate with even each other (a huge part of the cost overruns are related to this reality, same as with private sector probably, too). Historically, the government has basically done almost nothing to referee bad behavior between companies on a contract, but because so many contracts are basically winner-take-all style, much of the fighting would happen before the contract starts.
I like to think that if everyone of the contractors had their customers' interests as priority #1 that the current situation wouldn't be happening. This is why I have few hopes of much changing down the road without a massive reform. The most skilled, talented contractors tend to have trouble surviving the system despite the funding vehicles available.
Even the SETA system created to "police" contractors a bit in the government's best interest is fairly easily gamed by the reality that people form relationships and that people can easily switch companies.
I've heard from people that work in government that the tools they use are allowed to use are restricted by overly complex procurement rules. The result is that non-technical teams are forced to use ancient software as anything else (even if it's opensource) isn't kosher.
How could this be reformed?
I could believe that, but my personal experience is that we were able to introduce pretty modern tools--AWS, Node, Backbone, Hipchat and Google apps for communications. Getting these approved required going through a rather complex security audit and dispelling a decent amount of FUD, but otherwise, there's no real legal barrier to using modern open source software.
I think what was probably key is to find an internal champion within the organization you're working with. If you can find a good partner on the business side, you can often get things through the bureaucracy if you're patient and diligent.