Jennifer Pahlka - the founder of Code for America - did a talk recently at the Long Now Foundation that digs into this idea from the perspective of government technology development and use.

The feeling I got after listening to her discuss the obviously broken system for creating of procuring government technology is that people are earnestly trying to produce quality tools, but are forced into ridiculously slow improvement schedules due to the procurement standards and laws.

It talk includes, of course, a call to arms for tech workers to invest in their government by doing a term of service, fixing government by improving its tools.