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January 19, 2014 12:00 am GMT

Announcing Major Changes: The Government Vs. The Private Sector

8995091735_0d06d9d650_bThe Internet is collectively experiencing disappointment over President Obama’s big National Security Agency reform speech. Instead of announcing a sweeping end to the bulk surveillance of our entire digital lives, the President charged authorities to investigate how incremental privacy protections could be enacted. For our readers who don’t think this meets the dictionary definition of “major,” you probably come from the private sector. When you think about government change, think incremental change, eventual retirement, a committee, and adopting decades-old technology. Governments only on very rare and very scary occasions do anything that is immediately substantial. For instance, upon entering office, when Obama announced he would radically overhaul how we treat enemy combatants in our custody, he promised to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center in a year. After more than four years, it’s still open and he’s created a special committee to oversee how it can be closed. In TechCrunch’s own corner of the world, technology policy, Obama appointed a brand new senior position, the Chief Technology Officer, and promised a new era of open government and participatory technology. Aneesh Chopra, the first CTO, did not produce a suite of radically cool products (Congress XP or SenateOS). Instead, hislandmark initiative was to create a set of legal principles that would finally allow future groups to work with the private sector, independent hackers, and release stores of government data. And, to be sure, by government standards, Chopra was moving at breakneck speed. A few influential products did get developed, such as the White House petition platform,WeThePeople, but it was more an indirect result of Chopra’s overarching reforms and it still took years to come to fruition. So, for those folks in the private sector, here’s a handy guide. Personnel Changes In the private sector, when people need to get fired, the CEO is ousted, there are mass staff layoffs, and a dramatic management restructuring. The beleaguered Blackberry’srestructuring dropped the CEO and laid off a hundreds of employees. At Zappos, the entire company changed overnight, converting to a leaderless form of management known as “holeocracy”. In government, when folks need to go, an embattled director makes plans to retire, there are a few modified hiring standards and most everyone keeps their job. For example, the deputy NSA director is retiring in the Spring,most everyone involved in the Healthcare.gov website debacle still has their job, andthe White House has made plans tohire morepeople

Original Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/BzxZK7k24Fs/

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