My department spends millions of dollars on software for urgently needed functions. They don't do any systems analysis, and build them by accretion. They are extraordinarily difficult to use, and people who have trained themselves in Lotus and dBASe, and love computers, can't figure them out. A complex system that works is by definition an expansion of a simple system that works, but they don't even do that. They don't work. When we complain, we are told that the only problem with the system is our complaints, and to make it work. Computers are the wave of the future. We have to get familiar with them. How many managers don't even know how to turn them on? I heard one software developer say that he needed to change the graphic on a program he was developing, cost-plus. He said he needed a graphic of Uncle Sam shovelling money into a furnace. My department paid Martin-Marietta IBM prices for Hyundai computers. A GS-15 Management Information Systems person in my Department has the unique ability of being able to fix a LAN so it won't work, and of crashing LAN's. He burned out a $6,000 fileserver doing something he was specifically told not to do. Several computer people had to work weekends to fix a major problem he caused by not mapping his LAN menus corectly. He managed to erase information in a database which took 8 people 2 years to gather, and have no backups. He routinely blames temporary employees for his mistakes. I am held accountable, and expected to perform. Why is this not also true for management personnel?
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