The problems with opening up big government contracts to multiple bidders is there is then a race to the bottom. However, outsourcing it one component at a time is definitely an interesting idea. Deliverables!
Yeah, but if each component is outsourced, there's the potential that the entire system becomes a huge, disorganized, unmaintainable mess with no consistency in coding standards or even technologies. When something breaks, who debugs the system? Who do you call to fix it?
Then again, just look at this app. How could it get any worse? lol
Isn't a race to the bottom on price the desired outcome?
The presence of a race to the bottom on functionality is independent of whether or not the contract is open. If they don't have anyone competent who is vetting the proposals or evaluating the progress and deliverables, then they will wind up with shit no matter how they arrange the contracting. But if it's open to normal software shops, then at least they probably won't wind up with $200,000 shit.
That is an easy problem to get around - make the bidding for 30 day coding with an option to have in extended for another 30 days until the government is no longer happy with the progress.
Probably the whole process of bidding for any of these reduces the pool of potential contractors to a couple of these giant government contractors who have bidding down.
I know there are bidding procedures for everything to fight corruption but for little projects like this they should come up with a procedure to use odesk or similar services.
I'm curious if this really surprises anyone here that the entire process for the government purchasing three mobile applications (Android, iOS, and BB) was ~200k. This seems pretty ordinary/normal to me.
Actually, me and a team of two other developers recently applied for a government contract for the NIST that would have had us fixing a bug in OpenSceneGraph that was causing it to perform worse when more graphics cards were added.
Due to what they were asking for and the amount of time we thought it would take to accomplish it and provide the documentation they were asking for, we bid in at $60,000. We did not get the bid. I believe it was given to a university in Florida (damn grad students!) for a bid of $42,000.
In regards to the Android app in question, I think they just didn't have enough bidders. It's also possible they bogged them down in paperwork and status reports / updates (tends to happen with government contracts) which drove up the cost. I am a bit bothered that the bidding system does not favor companies based in the US that are not owned by foreign companies.
Yes. Doing business with the Government means you have to spend endless hours in meetings and produce endless piles of paperwork. In small projects such as this one, overhead is probably around 90% of total cost.
Incidentally, that's why auctioning small pieces of a larger project independently is probably not a good idea. Costs could in fact skyrocket: each part would have its own contract, negotiation process, meetings, forms, etc.
Precisely, I wouldn't try to get involved in a government contract for less then $100k, even if the final result was to produce a single document, because you're going to spend so much of your budget just navigating the waters.
In the governments defense, I think big corporations routinely overpay for web development and marketing expenses.
Aanecdotally, a girl I know who works for a pharmaceutical company said they spent $60,000 on a three page web site.
Then I sit in Starbucks and listen to some freelancer get reamed for charging $1,000 to build and manage some guy's website. One would think that the price discrepancies for the same product among different buyers would not be so extreme in a capitalist marketplace.
1. "The shocking part about this isn't even that it happened, but rather that it is incredibly routine. This is just one FOIA request to one tiny department for one tiny, single use application that will perhaps be used by, at most, five hundred people.. and it cost as much as a house. You can imagine what the waste must be like in other government run sectors..."
2. "The other issue is the source code. In my opinion, since we taxpayers paid for the development of this piece of shit, we should at least be able to modify and redistrubute the code. Apparently though, the Government doesn't have to supply any information which it considers to be a "trade secret," and OSHA has determined that this crappy source code is somehow a privileged secret. "
I wonder if the denial of showing source code was because they really DO think it is a trade secret. Or they are too embarrassed to show it?
> The shocking part about this isn't even that it happened, but rather that it is incredibly routine. This is just one FOIA request to one tiny department for one tiny, single use application
You realize that these two sentences oppose each other, right?
You have to click-through to read the entire paragraph (sorry, wanted to abide by fair use). The sentiment is that if this kind of low-standards wasteful spending happened in one small department, then imagine what happens at the Dept of Defense.
The problem with the government trying to do something is that anyone who's really really qualified will find the paperwork, compliance, and bidding procedures way too complicated for the sums of money involved.
The Android app cost 106k btw. So looking at this guys hourly rate, it would take approximately 6 months of 40 hour weeks for him to cost that much to do the app.
So if he:
Learned out to submit the forms that got him into the bidding
Made changes to his company required to make it seem a valid bid target
Filed the correct forms to put in his bid
Factored in correctly the amount of oversight and travel that would be required to get even a simple app done according to the whims of the people hired to get it made
Used server technologies compliant with government desires, including ones he may never really willingly touch with a 10 foot pole
Then MAYBE, just MAYBE, he'd be able to go as low as say, 60k or so. And that's for a small indie dev. Now look at a bigger company doing this app (as the government likes support, unlike a single freelancer can necessarily provide), and you easily hit the 106k range.
Does it not work well? Sounds like it works like crap. But complicated crap still can be expensive to make.
The app itself was outsourced. Someone else did the development, a company that caters to the government put in the work to do the bidding. Money just happened to fall between the crack.
BTW I looked at the code, and there's nothing that an average iOS (and probably Android) developer couldn't do in 4-6 hours.
Maybe they should have created a competition for finished apps instead. If the app is as simple as it sounds (not sure what it actually does), maybe some high school kids would have entered a better version and raked in 5000$ as the first price.
What test would they use to check whether an app is simple or not? At a certain point, you put out a bid for a complicated monstrocity, and the only entrant is some RentACoder who claims he can re-write Windows in Python in two weeks for $50.
Sure it would. If OSHA wants a new operating system, putting out an open call for a deliverable would be retarded. Absolutely nobody would be able to deliver such a thing on spec, and those that would be willing would be obvious scam artists.
At best, it would cost someone a few weeks of time evaluating these bullshit submissions and realizing that they're a waste of time. At worst, they would be accepted, another $100k would be paid out, and we'd be worse off than when we began.
We were talking about some temperature app, not a new operating system. I did not suggest such a competition would be a good idea for every kind of project.
It's true that there would be overhead for running the competition and judging the entries, too.
> We were talking about some temperature app, not a new operating system. I did not suggest such a competition would be a good idea for every kind of project.
Right, I was trying to raise the point that it's not always obvious where the line between "trivial app" and "major project" should be drawn.
If someone is interested in how the government procurement process is gamed, "The Stoner Arms Dealers: How Two American Kids Became Big-Time Weapons Traders" in Rolling Stone is a good read - http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-stoner-arms-de...
It sounded to me like the whole business was getting the contract written correctly. Once the contract was procured, fulfillment it was more of an after thought.
You seem to be arguing this as if this is reality. What you are stating is the justification. Its the theater. The story. The reality is that there are two ways to get people to give you money.
1. Make something people want.
2. Bribe people in government to give you enough money to cover cost of said bribe, plus handsome profit, plus possibly actually making something, and then have the government force those people to pay through taxes.
I dare say that what you describe may even have been the original idea, but the facts of (2) are unarguable. Sometimes (for really big ticket items) the government official has to wait until they leave government to get the paycheck, but claim it they do.
I am stating what government contracting is like. I don't quite get the psudolibertarian point of your post, but I know personally that as I worked for a Georgia state agency doing federal contracting, nothing even CLOSE to a bribe was used anywhere. We couldn't even buy them lunch.
If you jump through a series of hoops and bid low enough, you WILL get government contracts. They're just expensive hoops.
In the government agency where I work, $200k would actually be considered very reasonable for a steaming pile of shit. We've paid many times that amount and sometimes the shit wasn't even lukewarm, let alone steaming. Believe it or not, we often spend $150 to $200k or more just to make the decision about whether or not we're going to invest in a particular pile of shit.
A lot of government agencies, as well as groups within large companies, want to keep their budgets (or increase them), so there isn't an incentive to be cost effective -- as you mentioned.
But, as another person commented, the overhead around government projects (documentation, reports, meetings, etc) will bloat things beyond a simple time/materials development contract.
The FBO has a site listing the contacts, but there are actually some pretty interesting projects that pop up to be bid upon. Only downside for someone new to the process (or a small shop) is that the big boys (SAIC, etc) have this part pretty streamlined as well as sometimes having in's with the agency requesting the proposal.
Yeah the same happens within any large organization - universities are one example I am familiar with. If you get a large grant from NIH or NSF or whoever, you don't have any incentive to minimize expenses because you don't benefit in any way from spending less than your budget.
So typically people will order the most expensive things that can fit within the budget or even buy stuff they don't need just to spend all the money.
This does strike me as often wasteful but I don't see an easy fix.
How does this further the proper mission of the government, which is to protect individual rights?
I can't fathom a way that this could have anything to do with the government doing the one essential job it actually has to do! It's not just that it's a badly made app. I think the entire fact that the government making apps like this is absurd.
Given what the government actually is (the only agency with the legitimate, legal monopoly on the use of force), it is no wonder that it fails so miserably at doing stuff like this.
This is an app specifically designed to help protect your life (one of those rights) from unsafe employment. I get the dig you're making but this seems a weak target for it...
The government's duty to protect your life does not extend beyond protecting it from the use of force by other people.
If you choose to work in a place, that's your choice. Even if you fail to make sure it's safe before you work there, or decide to work there despite the risk.
Anyway, even if OSHA were legitime, this app is not effective at achieving anything, even if executed well.
Your definition of "government's duty" is not universally agreed upon, and it's intellectually dishonest to predicate an argument on the presumption that it is.
I didn't present any argument. I just made a statement, without presenting (here) any supporting evidence.
Yes, I realize most people won't agree with the statement.
My hope is that by providing it as food for thought, some people may thinking about it and decide that they agree, or may at least be more open to the idea when it comes up in some other context.
Isn't it intellectually dishonest for you to call someone intellectually dishonest, when you don't know all the relevant causal factors? (Answer: no, it's just a mistake.)
In the European Union, governments are legally required to open public works and supplying contracts to competition through an open tendering process. I'm surprised that this doesn't happen in the US.
There's a fair bit of criticism levelled against the EU tendering processes, though. Many feel that the process emphasizes price at the expense of quality, resulting in a "race to the bottom" as another poster mentioned.
Public contracts currently open in the EU can be found on a website:
http://ted.europa.eu
Looking quickly through the site, the contracts seem to have a huge range -- everything from large architectural projects to supplying a small Swedish town with photocopier paper...
I was surprised by this and decided to check it out, and it looks like they're not really.
the implementation of EU government law by national governments is far from uniform and sometimes weak – in 2002, for instance, only 16% of governmental calls to tender were published – government procurement has been called "the weakest link in the common market".[2]
Indeed, the minimum amounts (known in EU jargon as de minimis tresholds) are higher than I had assumed.
As the Wikipedia article states, these de minimis tresholds "provide an incentive for authorities to divide contracts into separate lots", which is thought to be the reason for the small amount of public contracts that go through the tendering process.
I think individual member governments are free to set stricter limits, though. At least in Finland, some public contracts as small as 15,000 € are required to be openly tendered. (Last year there was a well-published scandal when a high-level Helsinki city administrator ordered some 70k€ worth of office furniture without official tendering.)
Outstanding piece of marketing on Gun.io's part with a clear "here's how my biz solves this" at the end.
#1 on Hacker News is a feat, but this thing has legs on every political and general fluff channel - HuffPo, FoxNews, Conservative Radio, CNN, wire services, etc.
I learned from our own blogging efforts when you have a winner, take it to the bank.
EG - Hit every PR angle you can think of to get redistribution while you've got the momentum.
Any PR gurus out there that would comment on the top handful of ways to fan the flames on PR for a story like this?
I'd love to understand the process when you've got this ripe of content.
The irony would be that whatever legislated change the government would make to publicly "fix" this problem would in reality just add another step with another form to the process.
The $200k price tag is unsurprising if you factor in the cost of non-coding work like requirements gathering, travels, expenses, benefits, etc. This seems like a simple app but when you have a design by committee, approvals, etc it can be quite manpower intensive.
The OSHA document is not rendering for me so I can't tell if there's a cost breakdown.
I highly doubt there was design by committee. More like:
1) Dev gets contract, builds app
2) Person who was arbitrarily moved to dept. of mobile-app development reviews app, figures it's good because it works on a phone, forwards the results to his/her boss.
3) Repeat step 2 at a higher level
4) Done.
There is a more stringent audit trail, perhaps. But I doubt there's a committee of people who sat aorund a whiteboard and designed this puppy. I hope there wasn't, at least.
I can't help but get warm fuzzy job security feelings when I see something like this, someone actually paid money for that. Well specifically I paid money for that, warm fuzzies taken care of.
I've dealt with some Government agencies before in a few different capacities, and they actually WANT To spend their money. The actual cost doesn't really matter, as they are trying to get as close to their budgets as possible, as to not have them decreased the next year.
This is especially true in the last 30 or 60 days - to the point where you invoice and are paid before the job is done just because it "has" to be in the billing period.
Thank you for the info on MuckRock! Never knew about the site. hopefully one day my country will pass the freedom of information act and we the citizenry can request this kind of information.
I agree with his point regarding source code.
Often I have interacted with web applications supplied by parts of the UK Civil service and they have obvious bugs that I often feel should be fairly easy fixes.
I often feel that I would happily fix them for free as a public service in a fairly short time period, but no doubt it takes months and lots of $ before they are addressed.
I've looked at the source code for the application (which is available), the claim that this can be done in 6 hours is absolutely right.
Another thing. It seems like the company outsourced the development as well to these guys pixelbitcreative. The entire application contains ~1400 lines of code. I wonder how the money got eaten as we went up the chart.
Is this really much different than outsourced projects for huge corporations? Seems like large organizations get charged a premium for the same amount of work.
Government can hire technical people who can do the work in house, or who are qualified to evaluate the work. But because of the pressure to keep government small, qualified tech people go to the private sector and overcharge the government. Seems like one can't win here.
Its also worth pointing out that sometimes, just sometimes, it works out the other way. I was the lead on a team that took $150k in funding and produced an open-source implementation of some CDC specifications (https://github.com/talho/openphin), and became the first software in the country to be certified with it. We developed it in about 12 weeks, and the first milestone certifications were actually complete-able (meaning we had the features, though the paperwork took longer) within 2 weeks. We were up against companies used in other states like Northrup and SAIC that literally spent millions on the implementations (and don't even get me started on how much those same companies spent coming up with the standards in the first place, which is a whole 'nother problem) and beat them handily at their own game.
We did use private contractors as additional assets starting out and while they were more expensive than hiring additional developers, they had two great attributes: temporary, and good at what they did. Its worth it to pay for competence, every single time. And when its a one-time expense for a project, its much, much easier to deal with than something that incurs year-over-year expenditures.
Really? It's clear that open source projects can produce excellent quality software. It's also clear that proprietary software can be excellent quality. Both can also produce garbage.
If you have evidence that open source can produce generally better quality software, or is consistently better for the same kinds of problem, I would like to see it presented.
Did you notice my choice to use the words "can produce" (as in "sometimes") not the word "produce" (as in "always")? I would never make the later statement: open projects always produce higher quality software than proprietary ones. That's not my belief.
As such, you are asking me in your last sentence if I have evidence to support a statement I would never make. Of course, the answer is no, because I would not bother to look for it.
But I would be interested to know why you would like to see such evidence if it exists? I could take a guess as to the reason(s) but I do not want to make assumptions.
I don't think you're claiming that open source software is always better.
I do think you're claiming that overall open source software is systematically better in some way than proprietary software, obviously not in every instance and subject to noise and variance. Feel free to correct me if you not making any such claim.
I'm asking for evidence because you stated catgorically that evidence exists but I have personally never come across it.
What is the evidence you referred to in your original comment?
I'm not making any such claim. But I'm curious why you want to see me as making that claim. Why would you be interested in evidence that open source projects produce generally/consistently better software than proprietary projects for the same sort of problems?
As for evidence that open source projects can (sometimes) produce "high quality" software, TCP/IP is the first example that comes to mind.
Once upon a time, there was a government software project, a government contractor and a grad student...
Assuming the usual kernels, we're all using that code, or derivatives of it, right now.
It should be obvious why I think you're making such a claim - you said: "What's different now is that there is historical evidence that open source projects can produce higher quality software than proprietary ones."
By using the word 'higher' you clearly indicate that you think that there is a quality advantage to open source software.
If you don't think there's an advantage to open source development, then I don't see what meaning you were trying to convey in your original comment.
It seems bizarre that you don't know why I'd be interested in evidence that open source projects have systematically better quality. It would be a major result with implications in project planning, system architecture, organizational philosophy etc. To date, I have never seen such evidence - only reasoned opinion which is valuable but inconclusive.
If you had evidence, I'm sure you'd have produced it by now.
It's obvious (as I stated in my first reply) that open source can sometimes produce high quality software. Another great example would be webkit.
I thought you knew of some evidence that might show why governments should choose open source, other than opinion and dogma.
I'm disappointed that it doesn't exist because it would be powerfully persuasive in furthering the cause of open source.
You have made assumptions about what I meant with my original comment. Your assumptions are incorrect. Why not just ask me: "What do you mean by that?"
Here's what I meant. I believe there were naysayers in the 1980's and early 1990's (and maybe they are still around today) who argued open source would never work. I believe history has proved them wrong.
As you pointed out, open source, like proprietary, can produce good results or bad results. It can produce "high quality"[1] results. It can even produce "higher quality" results.
I believe the reasons why open source is as good a choice as proprietary are very simple and quite obvious:
If the user of the software can read the code, then
1. it is easier to evaluate the author's skill and programming sensibilities and
2. it is easier to fix errors and make improvements (without having to pester a proprietary software vendor).
You were also hoping that I would make an argument that the results obtained are somehow related to whether a project is open or closed. As I said, I won't make that argument. And as such I won't look for evidence to support it. That's because I do not believe it.
You have set yourself up for disappointment. I played no part in it.
If you want to know what I believe in terms of how "high quality" or "higher quality" software is achieved, just ask me and I will tell you[2].
But please do not make assumptions about what I think.
All the best.
1. Quality is a subjective determination.
2. I should warn you it is nothing revolutionary. I will only state the obvious.
No. I explained what I meant and you still don't seem to get it. Read what I said about the naysayers again.
You asked for the historical evidence I mentioned and I gave you the example of the TCP/IP stack we're all using.
I shouldn't have to say it but "open source" does not produce software, developers produce software. They might be working on a closed project or they might be working on an open one. The open/closed status of the project does not determine the quality of the software. The developers do.
You appear to be making the same mistake as the naysayers did when they said open source would never work. They believed the closed/open status of a project was somehow tied to quality. They were wrong. (Developers working on) open source projects can produce high quality software just as well as (developers working on) proprietary ones can. You cited the example of KDE's webkit to indicate you agreed.
If this is still somehow confusing to you, then I'm afraid I cannot help you.
Earlier you said: "What's different now is that there is historical evidence that open source projects can produce higher quality software than proprietary ones."
Now you say: "The open/closed status of the project does not determine the quality of the software. The developers do."
Whoever runs ERG is getting very rich by making crap that doesn't even work. It's like a negative programmer. Except we're all paying for it.
And this is the 'obvious' case, in which it's easy to tell it's crap. What about those times when I'm relying on the experts at these agencies to find solutions to difficult problems without a clear indicator of success? I'm not anti-government by any stretch, but man. The legalese sounded so good: "critical, real-time hot weather information"...
Sure, I know that's BS, but what about when I'm not qualified to judge it (i.e. military decisions in Afghanistan based on intel that I'm not privy to).
I have worked for one of these "green energy"/"smart grid" companies. My conclusion about that company (after about six months of working there) was that its core competency wasn't writing software. The software was a shoddy pile of half-working crap written in a proprietary programming language made by another company that didn't exist any more. No, their core competency was 1) navigating government bureaucracy and 2) filling out government forms. These two competencies ensured that there was never a need to actually produce good software because few competitors would have the time and contacts to even bid on the contract, much less secure it and write good software.
My girlfriend works for the Health Department in my home state. They paid two consultants $100,000 to convert paper documents to digital form. The contract lasted one week.
The consultants literally put documents into a scanner and converted them to PDF. At the end of the week they took their money and left, leaving the bulk of the documents unscanned.
An intern could've done this work for $10 an hour. And he/she would've actually finished the job.
Good find! I need go find the dailywtf submission form. I've only glanced at the code but my favorite part so far is using integers 0/1 as booleans and putting "myValid1 == 1" everywhere they want to check if it is true. Didn't they list in the billing that they internationalized this? it's full of hardcoded english strings and nothing is done with the resource files.
There's probably a good startup to be had in managing the government procurement bidding process for small developers, and thus lowering the barrier to bidding, and reducing the likelihood that contracts will go to folks like this.
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[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 162 ms ] threadThen again, just look at this app. How could it get any worse? lol
The presence of a race to the bottom on functionality is independent of whether or not the contract is open. If they don't have anyone competent who is vetting the proposals or evaluating the progress and deliverables, then they will wind up with shit no matter how they arrange the contracting. But if it's open to normal software shops, then at least they probably won't wind up with $200,000 shit.
Cheap yet sufficient is the desired outcome in government work.
I'm guessing 'sufficient' was defined too broadly or too specifically, and therefore was not correctly tested for on delivery.
Then do it Scrum style.
I know there are bidding procedures for everything to fight corruption but for little projects like this they should come up with a procedure to use odesk or similar services.
Due to what they were asking for and the amount of time we thought it would take to accomplish it and provide the documentation they were asking for, we bid in at $60,000. We did not get the bid. I believe it was given to a university in Florida (damn grad students!) for a bid of $42,000.
In regards to the Android app in question, I think they just didn't have enough bidders. It's also possible they bogged them down in paperwork and status reports / updates (tends to happen with government contracts) which drove up the cost. I am a bit bothered that the bidding system does not favor companies based in the US that are not owned by foreign companies.
People who've never worked on government contracts cannot conceive of the reporting and documentation projects.
I've been on several (govt) projects where we spent as much time writing as doing.
Because they're the government, they often overspecify to not get taken advantage of.
Incidentally, that's why auctioning small pieces of a larger project independently is probably not a good idea. Costs could in fact skyrocket: each part would have its own contract, negotiation process, meetings, forms, etc.
Aanecdotally, a girl I know who works for a pharmaceutical company said they spent $60,000 on a three page web site.
Then I sit in Starbucks and listen to some freelancer get reamed for charging $1,000 to build and manage some guy's website. One would think that the price discrepancies for the same product among different buyers would not be so extreme in a capitalist marketplace.
The purchase and sale of cocaine occurs in a market where virtually all sellers are capitalists. It is neither free nor ideal.
In the big corporations defense, they don't use tax dollars.
Instead they use excess costs to reward us, their executives and us, their contractors.
The difference between big business and big government are sometimes difficult for me to see.
1. "The shocking part about this isn't even that it happened, but rather that it is incredibly routine. This is just one FOIA request to one tiny department for one tiny, single use application that will perhaps be used by, at most, five hundred people.. and it cost as much as a house. You can imagine what the waste must be like in other government run sectors..."
2. "The other issue is the source code. In my opinion, since we taxpayers paid for the development of this piece of shit, we should at least be able to modify and redistrubute the code. Apparently though, the Government doesn't have to supply any information which it considers to be a "trade secret," and OSHA has determined that this crappy source code is somehow a privileged secret. "
I wonder if the denial of showing source code was because they really DO think it is a trade secret. Or they are too embarrassed to show it?
You realize that these two sentences oppose each other, right?
The Android app cost 106k btw. So looking at this guys hourly rate, it would take approximately 6 months of 40 hour weeks for him to cost that much to do the app.
So if he:
Learned out to submit the forms that got him into the bidding
Made changes to his company required to make it seem a valid bid target
Filed the correct forms to put in his bid
Factored in correctly the amount of oversight and travel that would be required to get even a simple app done according to the whims of the people hired to get it made
Used server technologies compliant with government desires, including ones he may never really willingly touch with a 10 foot pole
Then MAYBE, just MAYBE, he'd be able to go as low as say, 60k or so. And that's for a small indie dev. Now look at a bigger company doing this app (as the government likes support, unlike a single freelancer can necessarily provide), and you easily hit the 106k range.
Does it not work well? Sounds like it works like crap. But complicated crap still can be expensive to make.
BTW I looked at the code, and there's nothing that an average iOS (and probably Android) developer couldn't do in 4-6 hours.
Also, where is the code?
You can get it from MuckRock or from OSHA's own site. http://www.muckrock.com/foi/view/united-states-of-america/so...
They provided it 20 days ago, so no idea why the author mentioned that it wasn't available.
At best, it would cost someone a few weeks of time evaluating these bullshit submissions and realizing that they're a waste of time. At worst, they would be accepted, another $100k would be paid out, and we'd be worse off than when we began.
It's true that there would be overhead for running the competition and judging the entries, too.
Right, I was trying to raise the point that it's not always obvious where the line between "trivial app" and "major project" should be drawn.
In fact why not have contests about stuff that saves lives?
It sounded to me like the whole business was getting the contract written correctly. Once the contract was procured, fulfillment it was more of an after thought.
Sponsers care a hell of a lot that things do the right things when it's important.
1. Make something people want.
2. Bribe people in government to give you enough money to cover cost of said bribe, plus handsome profit, plus possibly actually making something, and then have the government force those people to pay through taxes.
I dare say that what you describe may even have been the original idea, but the facts of (2) are unarguable. Sometimes (for really big ticket items) the government official has to wait until they leave government to get the paycheck, but claim it they do.
If you jump through a series of hoops and bid low enough, you WILL get government contracts. They're just expensive hoops.
You meant doubleplusungood, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak
But, as another person commented, the overhead around government projects (documentation, reports, meetings, etc) will bloat things beyond a simple time/materials development contract.
The FBO has a site listing the contacts, but there are actually some pretty interesting projects that pop up to be bid upon. Only downside for someone new to the process (or a small shop) is that the big boys (SAIC, etc) have this part pretty streamlined as well as sometimes having in's with the agency requesting the proposal.
Edit: The site -- https://www.fbo.gov/
So typically people will order the most expensive things that can fit within the budget or even buy stuff they don't need just to spend all the money.
This does strike me as often wasteful but I don't see an easy fix.
I can't fathom a way that this could have anything to do with the government doing the one essential job it actually has to do! It's not just that it's a badly made app. I think the entire fact that the government making apps like this is absurd.
Given what the government actually is (the only agency with the legitimate, legal monopoly on the use of force), it is no wonder that it fails so miserably at doing stuff like this.
If you choose to work in a place, that's your choice. Even if you fail to make sure it's safe before you work there, or decide to work there despite the risk.
Anyway, even if OSHA were legitime, this app is not effective at achieving anything, even if executed well.
Yes, I realize most people won't agree with the statement.
My hope is that by providing it as food for thought, some people may thinking about it and decide that they agree, or may at least be more open to the idea when it comes up in some other context.
Isn't it intellectually dishonest for you to call someone intellectually dishonest, when you don't know all the relevant causal factors? (Answer: no, it's just a mistake.)
You are mistaken: http://www.amazon.com/Darwin-Economy-Liberty-Competition-Har...
Chapter 1: http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s9509.pdf
There's a fair bit of criticism levelled against the EU tendering processes, though. Many feel that the process emphasizes price at the expense of quality, resulting in a "race to the bottom" as another poster mentioned.
Public contracts currently open in the EU can be found on a website: http://ted.europa.eu
Looking quickly through the site, the contracts seem to have a huge range -- everything from large architectural projects to supplying a small Swedish town with photocopier paper...
You can also go here and see contracts already awarded (search for "iphone" for instance): http://www.usaspending.gov/
The US allows "no bid" or "sole source" contracts, which have several problems, not the least of which is rampant cronyism. Note that even the President failed to stop this gravy train: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/pr...
Also, you'd be surprised on how many hours get billed visiting the stakeholders for "face time" and to ensure follow-on work.
the implementation of EU government law by national governments is far from uniform and sometimes weak – in 2002, for instance, only 16% of governmental calls to tender were published – government procurement has been called "the weakest link in the common market".[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_procurement_in_the_E...
Also check the minimum amounts this applies to, this probably wouldn't have been necessary to put through the process anyway.
As the Wikipedia article states, these de minimis tresholds "provide an incentive for authorities to divide contracts into separate lots", which is thought to be the reason for the small amount of public contracts that go through the tendering process.
I think individual member governments are free to set stricter limits, though. At least in Finland, some public contracts as small as 15,000 € are required to be openly tendered. (Last year there was a well-published scandal when a high-level Helsinki city administrator ordered some 70k€ worth of office furniture without official tendering.)
#1 on Hacker News is a feat, but this thing has legs on every political and general fluff channel - HuffPo, FoxNews, Conservative Radio, CNN, wire services, etc.
I learned from our own blogging efforts when you have a winner, take it to the bank.
EG - Hit every PR angle you can think of to get redistribution while you've got the momentum.
Any PR gurus out there that would comment on the top handful of ways to fan the flames on PR for a story like this?
I'd love to understand the process when you've got this ripe of content.
The OSHA document is not rendering for me so I can't tell if there's a cost breakdown.
But that's government. Still want to move more things under their purview?
1) Dev gets contract, builds app 2) Person who was arbitrarily moved to dept. of mobile-app development reviews app, figures it's good because it works on a phone, forwards the results to his/her boss. 3) Repeat step 2 at a higher level 4) Done.
There is a more stringent audit trail, perhaps. But I doubt there's a committee of people who sat aorund a whiteboard and designed this puppy. I hope there wasn't, at least.
It didn't even stay in the American economy which should be a minimum requirement these days if a US solution is available.
This is especially true in the last 30 or 60 days - to the point where you invoice and are paid before the job is done just because it "has" to be in the billing period.
I often feel that I would happily fix them for free as a public service in a fairly short time period, but no doubt it takes months and lots of $ before they are addressed.
Another thing. It seems like the company outsourced the development as well to these guys pixelbitcreative. The entire application contains ~1400 lines of code. I wonder how the money got eaten as we went up the chart.
Government can hire technical people who can do the work in house, or who are qualified to evaluate the work. But because of the pressure to keep government small, qualified tech people go to the private sector and overcharge the government. Seems like one can't win here.
Its also worth pointing out that sometimes, just sometimes, it works out the other way. I was the lead on a team that took $150k in funding and produced an open-source implementation of some CDC specifications (https://github.com/talho/openphin), and became the first software in the country to be certified with it. We developed it in about 12 weeks, and the first milestone certifications were actually complete-able (meaning we had the features, though the paperwork took longer) within 2 weeks. We were up against companies used in other states like Northrup and SAIC that literally spent millions on the implementations (and don't even get me started on how much those same companies spent coming up with the standards in the first place, which is a whole 'nother problem) and beat them handily at their own game.
We did use private contractors as additional assets starting out and while they were more expensive than hiring additional developers, they had two great attributes: temporary, and good at what they did. Its worth it to pay for competence, every single time. And when its a one-time expense for a project, its much, much easier to deal with than something that incurs year-over-year expenditures.
This is recurring theme that traces back at least as early as the 1990's.
What's different now is that there is historical evidence that open source projects can produce higher quality software than proprietary ones.
If you have evidence that open source can produce generally better quality software, or is consistently better for the same kinds of problem, I would like to see it presented.
Did you notice my choice to use the words "can produce" (as in "sometimes") not the word "produce" (as in "always")? I would never make the later statement: open projects always produce higher quality software than proprietary ones. That's not my belief.
As such, you are asking me in your last sentence if I have evidence to support a statement I would never make. Of course, the answer is no, because I would not bother to look for it.
But I would be interested to know why you would like to see such evidence if it exists? I could take a guess as to the reason(s) but I do not want to make assumptions.
I don't think you're claiming that open source software is always better.
I do think you're claiming that overall open source software is systematically better in some way than proprietary software, obviously not in every instance and subject to noise and variance. Feel free to correct me if you not making any such claim.
I'm asking for evidence because you stated catgorically that evidence exists but I have personally never come across it.
What is the evidence you referred to in your original comment?
As for evidence that open source projects can (sometimes) produce "high quality" software, TCP/IP is the first example that comes to mind.
Once upon a time, there was a government software project, a government contractor and a grad student...
Assuming the usual kernels, we're all using that code, or derivatives of it, right now.
By using the word 'higher' you clearly indicate that you think that there is a quality advantage to open source software.
If you don't think there's an advantage to open source development, then I don't see what meaning you were trying to convey in your original comment.
It seems bizarre that you don't know why I'd be interested in evidence that open source projects have systematically better quality. It would be a major result with implications in project planning, system architecture, organizational philosophy etc. To date, I have never seen such evidence - only reasoned opinion which is valuable but inconclusive.
If you had evidence, I'm sure you'd have produced it by now.
It's obvious (as I stated in my first reply) that open source can sometimes produce high quality software. Another great example would be webkit.
I thought you knew of some evidence that might show why governments should choose open source, other than opinion and dogma.
I'm disappointed that it doesn't exist because it would be powerfully persuasive in furthering the cause of open source.
Here's what I meant. I believe there were naysayers in the 1980's and early 1990's (and maybe they are still around today) who argued open source would never work. I believe history has proved them wrong.
As you pointed out, open source, like proprietary, can produce good results or bad results. It can produce "high quality"[1] results. It can even produce "higher quality" results.
I believe the reasons why open source is as good a choice as proprietary are very simple and quite obvious: If the user of the software can read the code, then 1. it is easier to evaluate the author's skill and programming sensibilities and 2. it is easier to fix errors and make improvements (without having to pester a proprietary software vendor).
You were also hoping that I would make an argument that the results obtained are somehow related to whether a project is open or closed. As I said, I won't make that argument. And as such I won't look for evidence to support it. That's because I do not believe it.
You have set yourself up for disappointment. I played no part in it.
If you want to know what I believe in terms of how "high quality" or "higher quality" software is achieved, just ask me and I will tell you[2].
But please do not make assumptions about what I think.
All the best.
1. Quality is a subjective determination.
2. I should warn you it is nothing revolutionary. I will only state the obvious.
Fair enough.
[edit - changed "produces" to "can produce"] - doesn't change my point.
You asked for the historical evidence I mentioned and I gave you the example of the TCP/IP stack we're all using.
I shouldn't have to say it but "open source" does not produce software, developers produce software. They might be working on a closed project or they might be working on an open one. The open/closed status of the project does not determine the quality of the software. The developers do.
You appear to be making the same mistake as the naysayers did when they said open source would never work. They believed the closed/open status of a project was somehow tied to quality. They were wrong. (Developers working on) open source projects can produce high quality software just as well as (developers working on) proprietary ones can. You cited the example of KDE's webkit to indicate you agreed.
If this is still somehow confusing to you, then I'm afraid I cannot help you.
Now you say: "The open/closed status of the project does not determine the quality of the software. The developers do."
So mentioning open source was irrelevant then?
Here goes.
What are the arguments _against_ open source?
What if someone says, "Open source means poor quality"?
You can look back on the last 15 years, choose some examples of open source software and rebut that with evidence.
I would make this rebuttal.
You apparently would as well.
Now, what are the arguments _for_ open source?
You could say "Open source produces high quality software." Note: Not "can produce" but "produces". As in always.
You could say that.
I wouldn't.
I wouldn't make that argument.
I would argue open source make sense because the source can be reviewed and corrected if necessary, without being dependent on a proprietary vendor.
Hope this is clear.
And this is the 'obvious' case, in which it's easy to tell it's crap. What about those times when I'm relying on the experts at these agencies to find solutions to difficult problems without a clear indicator of success? I'm not anti-government by any stretch, but man. The legalese sounded so good: "critical, real-time hot weather information"...
Sure, I know that's BS, but what about when I'm not qualified to judge it (i.e. military decisions in Afghanistan based on intel that I'm not privy to).
My girlfriend works for the Health Department in my home state. They paid two consultants $100,000 to convert paper documents to digital form. The contract lasted one week.
The consultants literally put documents into a scanner and converted them to PDF. At the end of the week they took their money and left, leaving the bulk of the documents unscanned.
An intern could've done this work for $10 an hour. And he/she would've actually finished the job.