World War 1 ended November 11th, 1918
Last weekend, people across Hawaii spent 38 minutes thinking they were going to die because a government worker selected the wrong option on a missile alert interface. Multiple images, including several from the governor’s office , later circulated showing an interface similar to the screen the employee would have been using. They all shared the same quality: outdated, confusing, problematic design.
We don’t know if the system in Hawaii was ancient or simply poorly designed, but we know that no user-experience designer worth her salt would create a giant list of links or a drop-down menu for a lifesaving function. It’s the design equivalent of installing a hand-cranked engine on a Tesla or communicating with Alexa via smoke signals.
The incident in Hawaii exposes a problem far larger than a single confusing screen: Government is not good at buying, building and using technology. So maybe the most shocking part of this story is that mistakes like this don’t happen more frequently.
As former government technologists, we’ve worked as contractors and in civil service at federal and local levels, including buying and building out New Orleans’s emergency response systems. Over the past six months, we’ve also conducted in-depth interviews with people in and around government working to improve its technology and modernize its processes.
Thomas Jefferson´s Republicanism refers to the believe in virtue, with priority for the ¨plain folks¨ that referred to ordinary Americans. Jeffersonian Republicanism is deeply committed to American Republicanism, which means fighting against aristocracy and corruption. He advocated for liberty from government oppressions and relished the French Revolution. He was not an anarchist, but rather thought that the policies established during the 1790´s limited personal freedoms gave more power to the executive power; more than, according to Jeffersonian Republicanism, was not suppose to be. This ideology also feared a big military, and instead opted for a smaller size army of about 3,000 soldiers and only 6 naval ships. A few characteristics of Jefferson´s Republicanism is still visible to this day in America´s democratic culture; the fight against corruption and any form of Monarchy are still in use, as well as the individual freedoms. Besides being an American Founding Father, he was the main author of the Declaration of Independence. In conclusion, Thomas Jefferson´s Republicanism still dominates and guides American values and those believes are now what characterizes the United States around the world.
Indira Gandhi, the prime minister of India, is assassinated in New Delhi by two of her own bodyguards. Beant Singh and Satwant Singh, both Sikhs, emptied their guns into Gandhi as she walked to her office from an adjoining bungalow.
