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On paper that's interesting. I'm skeptical that the national government can do that well, however. The rollout of the ACA websites makes it clear that the gover

On paper that's interesting. I'm skeptical that the national government can do that well, however. The rollout of the ACA websites makes it clear that the government isn't good at producing that sort of product. Furthermore, the premise of the article is that the government is very inefficient. I'm not sure $1.6M is a fair estimate for the cost of this sort of product. There are millions of teachers in the U.S. not to speak of parents, administrators, and kids. I'm open to providing incentives to make this sort of progress more feasible. I'm partial to better support of open source software that meets these ends (like tax deductions for time or cash contributions to OSS projects the government uses).

thoth 11y ago
>The rollout of the ACA websites makes it clear that the government isn't good at producing that sort of product. You mean that the private contractor hired to do the HealthCare.gov website, CGI Federal, did a lousy job?
- caseysoftware 11y ago
  Most of the things the government "produces" are not produced by the government. They're sent out for bidding by private companies - roads, guns, websites, whatever - and the government is in charge of oversight. And the fact that they've been proven incapable at oversight and management should figure into the planning.
  - emodendroket 11y ago
    But what makes you so sure the government wouldn't do better taking it in-house? And even if we throw out that possibility, we're talking about implementing off-the-shelf software here, no producing custom software.
    - caseysoftware 11y ago
      Great point! And since - as described - it's all open source, there doesn't even need to be Federal oversight or management. If the only thing standing between now and doing it is the will and tech support, that's an easy problem to solve.
- humanrebar 11y ago
  > You mean that the private contractor hired to do the HealthCare.gov website, CGI Federal, did a lousy job? That may be true as well, but any customer that's changing requirements at the last minute and demands idiotic deployments (nationwide, hard deadline, untested, lots of PR, etc.) is ultimately responsible for what happens. Maybe every single vendor should have sensed that outcome, but it's more realistic to think that someone will take that contract, even if it's doomed.
rtkwe 11y ago
ACA was very complex and the time from the law actually passing to the site going live was pretty short. Until the law was completely signed there was basically no spec for GCI to work with other than some vague generalities about what it'd have to do. I'd put a fair amount of the blame for how shoddy it was to that compressed timeline as much as contractor waste and inefficiency.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > ACA was very complex and the time from the law actually passing to the site going live was pretty short. And the federally-run state exchanges were a fallback that was intended to not need to be used, anyway; the whole point was that every state was going to have an exchange and that not setting one up wouldn't affect that, with the idea being that in that scenario even states that didn't support the idea would prefer to have control of the state exchange rather than handing it to the feds. The timeline from determining that there'd actually need to be federally-run exchanges to the site needing to be live was even shorter from the time from the law actually passing to the site going live.
- humanrebar 11y ago
  > I'd put a fair amount of the blame for how shoddy it was to that compressed timeline as much as contractor waste and inefficiency. That's more or less my take, but I consider that part of the government's terrible project management.
euyyn 11y ago
> There are millions of teachers in the U.S. not to speak of parents, administrators, and kids. How's the number relevant? It's not like they'll charge per user, and each school only cares about O(10,000) users at most.
- theanomaly 11y ago
  Huh? I worked in school district IT for quite some time and a huge number of services are billed per-student.
- humanrebar 11y ago
  > How's the number relevant? I'm just saying $1.6M is underfunded for something that complex. That's on the right order of magnitude to build out a proof-of-concept to pitch for an actual production rollout. Keep in mind that you'll be dealing with a lot of relational data with some interesting security requirements, some of them legal. It's not just photos of cats.
jsprogrammer 11y ago
I believe the US recently paid about as much for the functionality of a coin flip on an iPad and the software was only used for a few months. OP is talking about much more complicated software than simulating a coin flip.

thoth 11y ago

>The rollout of the ACA websites makes it clear that the government isn't good at producing that sort of product. You mean that the private contractor hired to do the HealthCare.gov website, CGI Federal, did a lousy job?

caseysoftware 11y ago
Most of the things the government "produces" are not produced by the government. They're sent out for bidding by private companies - roads, guns, websites, whatever - and the government is in charge of oversight. And the fact that they've been proven incapable at oversight and management should figure into the planning.
- emodendroket 11y ago
  But what makes you so sure the government wouldn't do better taking it in-house? And even if we throw out that possibility, we're talking about implementing off-the-shelf software here, no producing custom software.
  - caseysoftware 11y ago
    Great point! And since - as described - it's all open source, there doesn't even need to be Federal oversight or management. If the only thing standing between now and doing it is the will and tech support, that's an easy problem to solve.
humanrebar 11y ago
> You mean that the private contractor hired to do the HealthCare.gov website, CGI Federal, did a lousy job? That may be true as well, but any customer that's changing requirements at the last minute and demands idiotic deployments (nationwide, hard deadline, untested, lots of PR, etc.) is ultimately responsible for what happens. Maybe every single vendor should have sensed that outcome, but it's more realistic to think that someone will take that contract, even if it's doomed.

rtkwe 11y ago

ACA was very complex and the time from the law actually passing to the site going live was pretty short. Until the law was completely signed there was basically no spec for GCI to work with other than some vague generalities about what it'd have to do. I'd put a fair amount of the blame for how shoddy it was to that compressed timeline as much as contractor waste and inefficiency.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> ACA was very complex and the time from the law actually passing to the site going live was pretty short. And the federally-run state exchanges were a fallback that was intended to not need to be used, anyway; the whole point was that every state was going to have an exchange and that not setting one up wouldn't affect that, with the idea being that in that scenario even states that didn't support the idea would prefer to have control of the state exchange rather than handing it to the feds. The timeline from determining that there'd actually need to be federally-run exchanges to the site needing to be live was even shorter from the time from the law actually passing to the site going live.
humanrebar 11y ago
> I'd put a fair amount of the blame for how shoddy it was to that compressed timeline as much as contractor waste and inefficiency. That's more or less my take, but I consider that part of the government's terrible project management.

euyyn 11y ago

> There are millions of teachers in the U.S. not to speak of parents, administrators, and kids. How's the number relevant? It's not like they'll charge per user, and each school only cares about O(10,000) users at most.

theanomaly 11y ago
Huh? I worked in school district IT for quite some time and a huge number of services are billed per-student.
humanrebar 11y ago
> How's the number relevant? I'm just saying $1.6M is underfunded for something that complex. That's on the right order of magnitude to build out a proof-of-concept to pitch for an actual production rollout. Keep in mind that you'll be dealing with a lot of relational data with some interesting security requirements, some of them legal. It's not just photos of cats.

jsprogrammer 11y ago

I believe the US recently paid about as much for the functionality of a coin flip on an iPad and the software was only used for a few months. OP is talking about much more complicated software than simulating a coin flip.