My wager is that NWS is like every other gov't agency. IT is a necessary evil, not a core focus. They do enough to keep it going but until shit hits the fan it won't get enough attention from their leadership to receive the funding (for staff or systems) necessary to actually grow or even properly sustain it (that is, actually replace problem components in servers or properly update/upgrade systems, or properly convert to even minimal degrees of virtualization to allow mobility of services).

The ironic/annoying part is that some agencies have figured out how to do it correctly, but they never share with other agencies. Either out of selfishness (fiefdoms, it's mine and I get the accolades for having it, if I shared then it would be ours and I'd have to share those accolades, screw you) or lack of communication (silos, they don't know what anyone else is doing and may not have any good channels of communication to find out). This same thing gets played out over and over again over the years, and it's not just with the government. It's any group that views what's actually their critical infrastructure as a cost center to minimize spending on and, ideally, cut; and any organization that creates overly siloed groups and forces communication up and down a hierarchy rather than direct communication between peer groups.

> When will they distribute observation data through some swarmable system like IPFS? Yet even the rogue Alabama office recommended siloed Slack rather than something open.

I think I'd also be comfortable making a multi-hundred dollar wager that they've heard of Slack and never heard of IPFS or similar approaches.