All of the government contracts I’ve ever worked on required the source code as part of the contract and the language was specified. This current mess reflects the fact that the government has outsourced their IT, and they don’t have anyone left who can write a decent request for bids, or a contract. If you look at all of the major failures for government IT contracts, the underlying problem is that the contractors fulfilled the contract as written, rather than doing the job that was needed.

The last contract that I was asked to work on I turned down because I knew what they specified in the contract would not work. It would not provide the information that was needed and the people involved didn’t understand what I was telling them.

They went ahead with it anyway, and the guys who had the primary contract told me they had finally gotten their money, but the project ended up being scrapped because it didn’t work. That was a few hundred thousand dollars that the taxpayers will never see again.

Thanks for the background on Diebold & voting machines. It reminds me of my father’s adage, “Never assume malice where incompetence will suffice.”

I’ve certainly dealt with my share of systems designed by engineers, for engineers, with every cool bell and whistle, minimal documentation, and less testing. (OK, I’ve designed my share of such systems as well. ;-)) It hadn’t occurred to me that Diebold had pulled the same stunt. I had thought they were better, at least technically.