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January 14, 2010

White House: "The computers ate our governing"

White House budget director blames old computers for ineffective government
A big reason why the government is inefficient and ineffective is because Washington has outdated technology, with federal workers having better computers at home than in the office. This startling admission came Thursday from Peter Orszag, who manages the federal bureaucracy for President Barack Obama.
Well, it is a step away from blaming Bush.

Posted by Vanderleun at January 14, 2010 8:46 PM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.

Your Say

Wha Wha Wha it's not our fault, Bush wouldn't buy us new computers....it's all Bush's fault we can't do our jobs....Whaaaaaaa....we can't be expected to keep up with technology all by ourselves....we need a vacation in Hawaii.....or maybe another round of golf.....

Posted by: Boots at January 14, 2010 10:48 PM

Excuse me. When is the government going to take accountability and start blaming themselves for their inadequacy and short comings? When is the government going to say "the buck stops here?"

Posted by: Cilla Mitchell, Galveston, Texas at January 15, 2010 4:46 AM

This speaks to an issue I sometimes bring up on these blogs:

The government cannot keep up with its mandates. Even with all the money that it spends, it has tasked itself with even more responsibilities than it is willing to pay for, and I'm including the $1.5 to $2 trillion dollars we borrow annually to make up the short fall. Also, I'm including all that money spent above and beyond what is called "the budget," which now stands at $3.5 trillion (for which only about $2.1 trillion can be collected yearly in this shithole economy). We now spend around $4.5 trillion total, but are trying to do around $5 trillion worth of government work with that 'inadequate' amount.

The fedds have tasked themselves with so much of the nation's business that they can't afford to equip and staff themselves adequately for many functions.

THAT is how bad things are -- worse even than most people imagine.

Posted by: Don Rodrigo at January 15, 2010 1:06 PM

This is BS. Most government workers don't need good computers. They need them for word processing, spreadsheet work and for accessing information in the municipal, state or federal cloud. In fact, there are some advantages to their having crippled machines that merely access certain databases as it can be tracked who accesses them and what they do with the information (copy it, edit it, print it, etc.)

The reason why we all need hot computers at home is that we multitask, game or access graphics intensive porn...er...do field work on the social mores of modern Americans,edit photos, share music and videos, keep multiple tabs and programs on at once.

But at work? The average government worker (except for scientists and medical researchers and perhaps spooks analyzing communications patterns) can manage with the equivalent of a netbook.

Posted by: retriever at January 15, 2010 3:44 PM

Must be a problem leftover when all the 'w's' disappeared.

Posted by: Sadie at January 16, 2010 6:30 PM

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