re: DOGE member Brad Smith tells Bret Baier there are 700 different IT systems at NIH

Even a computer moron like myself knows you are going to need a huge amount of IT at a place like NIH. It's the largest funder of biomed research on the planet. This is so much more complex than running something like Twitter or whatever nonsense these DOGE dumbasses did before this project. I believe NIH usually has about 60k grants/contracts going at any time, with tens of thousands of grant applications each year.

There are tons of institutes, there is intramural research that takes place with human subjects (huge privacy issues there), human resources (privacy stuff there as well), payment systems (high security), there are grant submission portals and grant review panels - all of these will need dedicated IT space / effort.

Then you have things like the National Library of Medicine (the world's largest such resource) with PubMed, separate domains for biochemistry repositories, gene data, portals for research teams to submit reports and closeouts and many more - showing that Brad is wrong about things being connected. When researchers do reports, if they merely submit their names and grant numbers, the system can reach out and grab all of their publications and other items connected to a grant to help compile the report.

There are a few things our govt has done really well and the National Library of Medicine is one of them - those people should all get raises. Should there be more efficiency? Absolutely. But give them all raises first. NLM is a phenomenal resource if you are in healthcare, research, or are just interested in health and healthcare. Hell, I wish NLM was expanded.

Brad is a dumbass who clearly knows nothing about how massive NIH is - it's a behemoth. Just for manuscripts, there are about 2,500 arriving every day. Research from all over the world is published there. There are over 30M citations at the NLM. This guy's lack of perspective is stunning.

Also, if Brad was correct, things like NIH's Reporter Database would not exist where you can search for grants from all of the institutes across every grant program, school, geographic region, researcher name, key word, etc. Again, Brad is a dumbass.

I know the federal govt is fricked up from the floor up, but this is why long ago they created things like the GAO - people that got to know how agencies worked and could publish pretty good reports on these matters. The GAO puts out tons of stuff and the problem is that no one pays attention, especially Congress. And we the public don't pay attention either and then put pressure on Congress or change our votes. That's why things are messed up.

Stop listening to DOGE - these guys are idiots.