Even people who are familiar with internal politics may not realize the extent to which technical decision-making can be a distant second, or worse, to political concerns. An extreme case is real politics:
<dparter> allbery_b: it sounds like there are serious computer problems if each new administration has to start from scratch. version 0 is never right, we all know that
<allbery_b> dp: actually I would not be surprised if they do have to: for party reasons
<allbery_b> you do not, in general, want to leave anything behind the incoming administration might be able to use against you
<allbery_b> and it's likely easier to yank all the equipment than to scrub it all
<allbery_b> moreover, as I learned back when my company was providing services to the [REDACTED] board of elections, in general the service providers have to have close party ties. (we were highly abnormal in refusing to play that game, and that the then head of the [REDACTED] department demanded we be kept on anyway)
<dparter> i can understand starting fresh, but not with a fresh design... you would think they could roll out an empty system that is "the same" or something... not picked between the election and inauguration day
<allbery_b> sadly no
<allbery_b> it makes sense from a technical standpoint --- what you are missing is that the process is not primarily technical.
<allbery_b> it's *political*
<dparter> uhuh
<allbery_b> and part of the political angle is (over)paying your highly-party-placed contractor to build a new system
<allbery_b> I got to see that happening in micro at the BOE (twice to us; the first time [REDACTED] threw the other folks out and hauled us back in, the second time she got kicked upstairs and her replacement was a good party flunky)
<allbery_b> and every time there was a new governor, everything changed
by