[TriLUG] mostly OT: Tech Lobbyist

[Jeremy Davis via TriLUG]

My apology! I was a bit scatterbrained in my previous response and rambled
about bitcoin Legislation. I was at a Vet Startup conference at RTP
Frontier when I sent the response.

The original question of this thread was.."Is there any Lobbyist
representing tech? "

Chris Emanuel is a local tech lobbyist. I met him at a recent Triangle
Bitcoin meetup, which I video recorded.

http://theemanuelgroup.com

He has recently lobbied for drones and bitcoin related Legislation.

Jeremy
On Sep 24, 2015 9:20 PM, "Danielle White via TriLUG" <trilug at trilug.org>
wrote:

> On 2015-09-24 11:34, Aaron Joyner via TriLUG wrote:
>
>> There's a large / entrenched base of government IT workers who
>> support the
>> existing systems (desktops, web servers, app servers, etc).  There's
>> also
>> likely a large quantity of somewhat-specialized software for which
>> FLOSS
>> alternatives may not be fully baked for yet (think GIS, accounting,
>> etc).
>> Migrating all those systems to FLOSS alternatives is an excellent
>> long-term
>> goal, but government tends to move very slowly in this regard for
>> many of
>> those reasons.
>>
>
> Given my few years of experience as a state employee in IT, there's a
> large amount of aversion to risk and solid non-technical reasons for that.
> Staying with what they already have and doing the minimum needed to keep it
> working is a safer bet when risks like any sort of resource budget overrun
> (which includes deadlines, personnel needed, etc.) are something that you
> quickly learn to avoid at all costs because of the repercussions for doing
> so. While it can save money, the budgeting system is painfully exacting
> about how money can be moved, which can lead to situations where a rack of
> servers that are on lease but have depreciated to the point that they can
> be purchased for less than the annual lease payments remain leased because
> it proves effectively impossible to move the funds between the budget lines
> to purchase. There are a lot of laws that were added to end abuses but
> become obstacles in new and exciting ways.
>
> There are a lot of very talented people doing work and succeeding often in
> spite of the system rather than because of it, and there's a pretty
> significant flight of talent to the private sector for that reason. For one
> friend it even proved most fortuitous; she was repeatedly passed over for
> some policy reasons for a high-level IT position in OPM and went corporate
> as a result, which meant she wasn't caught up in the data breach issue.
>
> --
> Danielle at whitrel.com
> http://danielle-white.info/
> --
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