Why the federal court record system PACER is so broken, and how to fix it — Tech News and Analysis

http://gigaom.com/2014/08/27/why-the-federal-court-record-system-pacer-is-so-broken-and-how-to-fix-it/

So what happened? Why has the federal courts’ IT system stagnated despite more money? The answer, unsurprisingly, is that the money has gone elsewhere.

Bureaucracies and budgets … if there is money unspent in one at the end of the year …

The bottom line is that fixing PACER is not a technological challenge, but a political one, and technology has yet to solve the problem of getting the politically powerful to focus on the right things at the same time.

I admin a lot of weird one-off applications where I work.  Last week, PACER dropped into my lap as a direct result of the upgrade mentioned in the article above. I can attest to the very dated interface. In fact I probably hadn’t seen PACER in over a decade and it looked and acted just as it did back then. I have never understood how this system is allowed to charge anyone fees because all the information it contains is public information. Compare to NASA which makes an incredible amount of information available for everyone – researchers and citizens – easily accessible and free.

Article: Y2K bug triggers army conscription notices sent to 14,000 dead men

Y2K bug triggers army conscription notices sent to 14,000 dead men

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/11/y2k-bug-us-army-conscription-1800s-pennsylvania

Only the government or the military could suffer from a Y2K bug fifteen years after the fact.

I am not surprised.

Posted from WordPress for Android via my Samsung smartphone. Please excuse any misspellings. Ciao, Jon