Working For The Federal Government What Technology Companies: Fill & Download for Free

DisclaimersThis is a good question, but not easy to answer. Let me start with some disclaimers first.Because India is a big country and "Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his team" comprises the entire government machinery, whatever I write here will just scratch the surface of what has really been "achieved for India since coming to power". I hope others can point out in comments things that I missed.The question asks for "tangible" achievements as opposed to building India's brand "image". But given the level a Prime Minister operates at, brand building is an extremely important exercise. It also helps lay the foundation for some of the other "tangible" achievements in economy, foreign policy, etc. So while this answer focuses on "tangible", please do not discredit brand building by any means.Prime Minister, and the central government by extension, can not achieve most things on their own. They need cooperation of state governments, independent institutions (e.g. RBI), even opposition parties and so on. Hence while the initiative and direction may have come from Prime Minister's team, the credit for execution must be shared with appropriate partners.Prime Minister Modi has been in office for merely 30% of his 5-year term. Even though the achievements below are decent, naturally many of his efforts during this period were sowing-the-seeds, so I expect a lot more "tangible" fruits closer to the end of his tenure.AchievementsJan Dhan Yojna generated 6000 crores of deposits, bringing a lot of money back into the economy. This also liberates poor from the claws of private money lenders.Pension schemes for poor enrolls 12.5 lakh subscribers, accident insurance schemes for poor farmers enrolls 123 million subscribers, life insurance scheme enrolls 29.2 million. These schemes help poor who often have 1 earning member supporting an entire family survive in the event of a calamity or just old age. The schemes were just announced in 2015 but the high enrollment numbers suggest acceptance. I expect these numbers only to grow higher.Make in India - In terms of tangible investments, India already attracted $31 billion FDI (higher than China and USA) in 2015. $11 billion investments have been pledged by various companies, Japan pledged $12.5 billion. This is the begining, and PM Modi continues to pitch Make In India globally. But more important than the monetary investments is job creation, which is an urgent necessity to absorb poor from the over-employed agriculture sector.Make in India defense - India is one of the biggest importers of weapons, spending billions in the international market. But as part of Make in India, Defense Ministry approved $3.4 billion deals to purchase weapons produced in India. This is a start but strategic since not only does it prevent Indian money leaving the country, but also catalyses defense technology development in-house.India climbed 12 spots in ease of doing business global rankings, and India overtook USA to become #1 in the consumer confidence index in 2015. This is a tangible outcome of administrative improvements, policy reforms, and a growing middle class.India became the fastest growing economy in the world at 7.4%. This is at a time when other comparable developing countries like Russia, Brazil are demonstrating negative growth (not growing slower but economy is actually shrinking down), so one can not simply attribute this growth to global economic conditions. And this growth is not widening the economic gap between rich and poor, as a global study points that poverty in India has fallen from 21% to 12.4% over the last 2 years.Making PSUs profitable - Air India became profitable for the first time in ten years, and BSNL saw growth "highest in the last five years". So these are no longer a burden on the taxpayer, but now actually contributing positively to the economy.Rural electrification - believe it or not, even in 2015 there are villages in India that have never received electricity. Power Ministry has been doing an excellent job bringing such villages on the grid every day. So far more than 3000 such villages have been electrified, with the final target to bring electricity to everyone by 2019. Another very important tangible outcome of this effort has been transparency, with regular posts on social media and even a mobile app to track which villages have been electrified each day.Clean energy - India added 2,308.1 MW of wind power generation last year (10% of India's overall wind energy capacity added in just 1 year), and 2015 also saw $1 billion+ international investment in clean energy in India.The LED program saves Rs 61 lakh every day cutting down power load by 145MW.Nuclear deals - India signed strategic nuclear deals with Japan, Russia, Canada and France giving India access to unprecedented nuclear fuel and technology.Indian Railways is undergoing many reforms too - upgrading the quality of coaches, investing $6 billion in a developing state like Bihar to create jobs (part of "Make in India" as opposed to outsourcing the contract to foreign countries), giving prompt support to passengers, cleaning 12 important railway stations as part of "Swachh Bharat", and revenues increasing by 6.67% year-over-year.Yemen evacuation - it is now internationally accepted that India led the world in carrying out one of the best executed mass evacuations internationally.Transparency - Modi government made the (previously infamous) coal and spectrum auctions transparent, which earned Indian government Rs 2 lakh crores and Rs 1 lakh crores respectively. Indian Railways also introduced transparency in recruitment and handing out contracts with the aim to eliminate low level corruption.Delivered One Rank One Pension to armed forces after multiple decades of struggle (though some contention still exists).Stronger federalism - last year's budget gives states 42% of tax collected. This is an important achievement which stops political manipulation of the state governments by the center (example from before). Indian federalism also got a boost when the old Planning Commision (a central body which allocates national resources amongst states but state governments had almost no say) was replaced by Niti Ayog which has a much stronger representation of the states, so they can collectively shape their own destiny (instead of practically begging the center like before).There are many other initiatives - Smart Cities, Swachh Bharat, Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, etc - which are being executed well and I expect them to yield tangible achievements in the coming years, but I have left out from this list for now.Personal note: I would have loved to see such an analysis in India's mainstream media. If they analyse the government's performance on things that truly matter as opposed to things that merely grab attention, they would undoubtedly do a much better job than me or such Quora answers.

First, the US government has no issue violating our 4th Amendment rights (or any rights for that matter). Personally, I would extend our 4th Amendment rights to any person storing electronic data in US data centers.Second, you must accept that all US technology companies are subject to the will of the federal government and will either comply with their demands or be put out of business.Three, you cannot TRUST encryption software that is not open source.Four, you cannot TRUST operating systems that are not open source.Five, you cannot TRUST hardware manufactured by US companies or affiliates, including, but not limitted to, computers, notebooks, tablets, phones, routers, firewalls, switches and other security appliances. All devices must be considered compromised.Six, everyone in the world, including American citizens, are advesaries of the US federal government. Even if you support their unconstitutional activities.Seven, encryption works. Everyone needs to start learning and using open source encryption.Eight, all communications are monitored and collected by the federal government. You cannot in good confidence have faith that your communications are both secure and private....It all boils down to trust.... Essentially, you can no longer TRUST anyone...A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering This link takes you to the blog of professor Matthew Green, John Hopkins University.

My take is slightly different than what you'll read around the web. I see it as a trifecta of trouble:Federal IT Procurement: This world is disconnected from rest of the world - and reality. Not surprisingly - it's pure politics - from a "select" vendor list of "preferred" contractors. The whole bidding process is so byzantine and complex - that very few have the time or patience to wade through the process - so we wind up with the same vendors - for most Federal IT projects. Outside firms *may* try this process once - until they see how it works - then they simply never return. Here's a list of the Top 100 - and the names make perfect sense: Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Boeing, SAIC, HP, etc.... These companies are well versed in BIG, long contracts that rarely come in on time - or anywhere near budget. 2012 Washington Technology Top 100 -- Washington Technology The idea that they could arrive on-time with a "fixed date" is/was an unreasonable expectation.Existing Infrastructure: The whole world here is antiquated - mostly because there's rarely any money allocated to major upgrades. A recent report highlighted that over 65,000 U.S. bridges are "structurally deficient" and about 21,000 are "fracture critical." About 8,000 are both [10 Things: Making sense of nation's bad bridges]. The 8,000 are spread out over all 50 States. If this is how we view (and treat) infrastructure we can all see (and use), just imagine how that translates inside a Federal bureaucracy for something like software. It doesn't. Windows95, green screen, legacy code - all very evident at the Federal IT level. User [CTO of Rackspace] was quoted in USA Today last week: "It is a core problem in the sense of it's fundamental to this thing actually working, but it's not necessarily a problem that the people who wrote HealthcareDotGov can get to. Even if HealthcareDotGov was a perfect system - it still won't work." What he's referencing, of course, are all the antiquated, backend systems that HealthcareDotGov has to interact with.HHS/CMS: You can outsource all you want – but in the end – there's a Federal Department that has to assume ownership and responsibility for all the system specifications. By definition – that's a primary choke point. The lead contractor for Health Insurance Marketplace, Affordable Care Act (a company called CGI) was reliant on HHS/CMS for those specifications. As a Federal entity (with a Federal budget and Federal employees) both HHS and CMS are at the mercy of the raging political battle over the entire ACA. From the New York Times:To avoid giving ammunition to Republicans opposed to the project, the administration put off issuing several major rules until after last November’s elections. The Republican-controlled House blocked funds. More than 30 states refused to set up their own exchanges, requiring the federal government to vastly expand its project in unexpected ways." New York Times – 10/12/2013 [1]Those recalcitrant states also waited until the last possible moment to announce their decision. This wasn't a cozy Federal-State partnership. This was effectively dumping an exchange on the Federal Government in any way that could actually assist with failure.Now, this might have worked better - certainly differently - if there was one or two of the above, but with all 3 - the project was doomed long before 10/1/2013.Is it fixable? Absolutely. Solid progress has already been made - and the website isn't the only way to sign up applicants. Originally - HHS predicted that 30% of applications would be paper-based.Am I defending the mistakes? Nope - but I do understand the much larger context in which they were made. There's rarely any one single variable in a project of this size and scope.In the end - it's all reflective of the politics around the ACA itself. The ACA has survived many different maths. It survived electoral math (twice), SCOTUS math and then legislative math (twice). This is just a different math. Call it Systems Integration math. In the case of the Federal Government - SI math has never been - and likely never will be - a key strength.==========================[1] From the Start, Signs of Trouble at Health Portal