Brookings seems to be advocating funding open source IT projects that already exist, for example a big ($10m+) check to the Apache Foundation. Apache already has the compliance competency.
It may be more efficient to use existing grant writing for universities. The Apache Foundation can redistribute the money it can’t hire programmers competently the way a university research department can. However it would be bigger impact to write smaller checks for many tools.
The real problem is that single purpose / single feature IT software tends to be the best at what it does but is the hardest to fund this way.
The compromise will probably be funding people to write and evangelize standards. This is too bad, because people who apply for grants aren’t Google, they aren’t standardizing an existing, widely deployed real piece of successful engineering without any economics brakes. They’re people writing things like SOC 2 or ISO 27000xxx that arguably do not provide any meaningful value at all - standards that could vanish overnight and absolutely nothing about a single person’s daily life would change at all.
18F or whatever publishes a lot of stuff like this. Markdown policy documents. I think it’s profoundly wasteful, it is taking talented people’s intellectual energy and diverting it to something that not only hardly anyone will use, but perpetuates the worst aspects of government - the belief that text and bureaucracy and the way lawyers do things is intrinsically valuable, as opposed to something normal people routinely completely and utterly ignore.
It may be more efficient to use existing grant writing for universities. The Apache Foundation can redistribute the money it can’t hire programmers competently the way a university research department can. However it would be bigger impact to write smaller checks for many tools.
The real problem is that single purpose / single feature IT software tends to be the best at what it does but is the hardest to fund this way.
The compromise will probably be funding people to write and evangelize standards. This is too bad, because people who apply for grants aren’t Google, they aren’t standardizing an existing, widely deployed real piece of successful engineering without any economics brakes. They’re people writing things like SOC 2 or ISO 27000xxx that arguably do not provide any meaningful value at all - standards that could vanish overnight and absolutely nothing about a single person’s daily life would change at all.
18F or whatever publishes a lot of stuff like this. Markdown policy documents. I think it’s profoundly wasteful, it is taking talented people’s intellectual energy and diverting it to something that not only hardly anyone will use, but perpetuates the worst aspects of government - the belief that text and bureaucracy and the way lawyers do things is intrinsically valuable, as opposed to something normal people routinely completely and utterly ignore.