Whenever I read things like this, my immediate reaction is "How do these people have so much money to travel around the world doing nothing-in-particular for two years?"<p>Are there just a lot of really rich people out there? Or am I over-cautious and they're operating without a safety net?
This looks great.<p>You know what's really wacky about government inefficiency?<p>It's damn near impossible to help, much less fix from the inside.<p>I've long been convinced that the best/only way to help right along the lines of what these guys are doing - build boxed solutions from the outside.<p>This is effectively an air-drop of tools which sails in over top of all the petty backbiting, ass covering and general self-serving bullshit that stifles in-house projects.
Really interesting — I think the question of "How can I help make government better?" is not asked enough. My guess is that there is a large number of very smart people who would love to write code to improve the government; I know that when I'm looking for a new gig I'll be reaching out.
For those who, like me, were clueless, DOBT = "Department of Better Technology"[1].<p>Not, oddly enough, "Depth-Oriented Brief Therapy" which is the only Wikipedia hit[2].<p>[1] <a href="http://www.dobt.co/" rel="nofollow">http://www.dobt.co/</a>
[2] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherence_therapy#History" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherence_therapy#History</a>
This is similar to what I would do in the same situation. If I didn't need the income of my day job, I'd spend the time on public service or charity of some sort. I can't see myself spending money like a trust fund dilettante nor funding yet another startup.
I don't believe in the government. Unfortunately it believes in me. Well done on being almost as free as a person can be in this unfree society. But please don't help the biggest source of unfreedom there is. Instead, use your time to help make others free if you want a suggestion as to what to do.<p>Easy to use crypto for one.
For all their hand-wringing over the healthcare.gov debacle you'd think at least one of these DoBT guys would have gone in to help fix it. That probably would have gotten in the way of fund-raising, though.