As companies and agencies get larger, they start to value the importance of “process” over the “product.” And by product, I mean the creation of new hardware, services, software, tools, operations, tradecraft, etc.
People who manage processes are not the same people as those who create product. Product people are often messy, hate paperwork, and prefer to spend their time creating stuff rather than documenting it.
The process people dominate management, and the product people end up reporting to them.
If the company is large enough it will become a “rent-seeker” and look to the government and regulators as their first line of defense against innovative competition. They’ll use government regulation and lawsuits to keep out new entrants with more innovative business models.
The result of monopolist behavior is that innovation in that sector dies until technology/consumer behavior passes them by. By then the company has lost the ability to compete as an innovator.
Many agencies outsource product development to private contractors, leaving the government with mostly process people who write requirements, and oversee acquisition, program management, and contracts.
However, when the government is faced with new adversaries, new threats, or new problems, both the internal process people as well as the external contractors are loath to obsolete their own systems and develop radically new solutions.
For the contractors, anything new threats, the real risk of losing a lucrative existing stream of revenue.
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For the process people, because the status quo is a known and comfortable space, if the contract and contractor are large enough, they put their thumb on the scale and use the political process and lobbying to maintain the status quo.
The result is that legacy systems live on as an albatross and an impediment to making the country safer and more secure.