• cybersandwich@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Another way to encourage interoperability is to use the government to hold out a carrot in addition to the stick. Through government procurement laws, governments could require any company providing a product or service to the government to not interfere with interoperability. President Lincoln required standard tooling for bullets and rifles during the Civil War, so there’s a long history of requiring this already. If companies don’t want to play nice, they’ll lose out on some lucrative contracts, “but no one forces a tech company to do business with the federal government.”

    That’s actually a very interesting idea. This benefits the govt as much as anyone else too. It reduces switching costs for govt tech.

    • Benjaben@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Can confirm, I’ve worked for a company doing govt contract work and I really don’t know what it’d take for us to have walked away. They can dictate whatever terms they like and still expect to find plenty of companies happy to bid for contracts I think.

      • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Except the tech companies are among the politicians’ biggest “donors”.

        Public cloud computing companies that want to host government IT workloads still have to be Fedramp compliant. Doesn’t matter how much their donors pay, if they aren’t Fedramp compliant they can’t bid for the work.

        • AustralianSimon@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Yeah but donations can help make procurement tenders slightly in favour of donors. Or get inside scoop so they have time to be ready.