7 ms·

Someone pointed out that there's technically a web portal that requesters can use. That web portal, however, goes beyond the law to add a bunch of restrictions

• elfchief 10y ago
  Websites that don't work on weekends (of which I've seen more than a few) are really quite possibly the stupidest thing I've ever seen. I shudder to think that somewhere there was a requirements document that details what days the site should and shouldn't work...
  • OJFord 10y ago
    The UK National Lottery website is non-functional overnight, presumably to prevent drunken gambling. That's the one good reason for implementing that sort of restriction I've seen. Even support chats it annoys me - support open Mon-Fri 9-5 - fine, but can you not just take my message and let's do it over email, or send me a reminder in opening hours with a link that automatically starts a chat with the request I type out now?
  • Shivetya 10y ago
    truly sounds as if they don't staff the receiving end with anyone who has authority on the weekend to either approve or or even accept the requests. part of me wants to think its just work place rules but the cynical side keeps thinking they do this on purpose to make it annoying
    • bisby 10y ago
      If only they could use a server to cache the requests until Monday, when they do staff someone to receive it.
  • KirinDave 10y ago
    The folks who built it couldn't make it stable, and they can't be made to work overtime or be on call. So the website just doesn't work off hours. That's how it goes for banks, anyways...
  • chias 10y ago
    I had to file some forms on irs.gov about a year ago, and the web portal was only open on weekdays between 9am and 5pm eastern time. My fantasy explanation is that the form feeds directly into a printer, and they have a guy who takes the printouts, staples them, and puts them in a box. If the website is open 24/7 then when Stapleman shows up to work Monday morning the backlog might be discouraging. Not to mention if the printer jams during off hours and nobody's there to notice, filings may be lost. Or maybe I'm overthinking this.
    • metaobject 10y ago
      I realize you're speculating, but ... I'm not sure if the IRS is trending towards a paperless office or not (is that even still a thing?), but triggering a print job for every form submitted via a web portal sounds very wasteful. I'd hope they have have some sort of workflow system in place instead.
      • chias 10y ago
        Another theory I have involves concessions to webserver unions and/or acknowledging the need for time off to take care of the child processes. These fantasies are the only place I can find closure and sanity when my carefully filled out submission is rejected by the website because it is now 4:01 pm and that's Miller Time on the east coast.
        • phil21 10y ago
          You're actually closer than you realize :) It's a government worker union thing. They don't have a contract for being called at 4am when the website breaks, so you better shut it off at 5pm. If you think this is the stupidest thing in government you should ensure you never have to work in that environment over your lifetime :)
          • virusduck 10y ago
            I'm not sure there are many government web services run by actual government employees.
  • Mithaldu 10y ago
    Some of my CC's website features don't work on the weekend, holidays, or at night.
  • patio11 10y ago
    Explained here so I will link rather than repeating it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10505251 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10505251
    • elfchief 10y ago
      If only there was some way a frontend system could queue things until a backend system was ready to accept them...
  • bradleyjg 10y ago
    B&H, an electronics store in NYC, won't take orders by web from Friday night to Saturday night but the website itself works otherwise. It is owned by Hasidic Jews (Satmar) and apparently a Rabbi must have issued a responsa that allows them to keep the site on but not to take orders.
  • colordrops 10y ago
    Never attribute to stupidity that which is more likely explained by malice.
    • sverige 10y ago
      At last, someone else who correctly understands the phenomena even though it's contrary to the popular saying.
      • lithos 10y ago
        Class warfare. All those agreeable office workers and higher class people can access the site whenever (including work). All the icky people working in factories, services or places you sweat don't need govt. services anyways.
  • secfirstmd 10y ago
    Yeh if I recall, Companies House in the UK used to do this for some stupid reason.
  • amyjess 10y ago
    My alma mater had one like that. Worse, it had operating hours in general: it was closed at night, too. It was the Student Information System that we used to register for classes, pay tuition, update our contact information, etc. So it was a pretty important system. One day, I asked someone who would know. I was told that it was because SIS ran on an old mainframe that couldn't read and write the disk at the same time. So it made all changes in memory during the operating hours, and then it shut down and wrote out the disk at night. (also, our username for SIS was our full SSN... and the password they assigned to us was the last four digits of our SSN)
• jessriedel 10y ago
  Currently, the policy appears to be that FOIA requests that take less than two hours of personnel time are free. https://www.foia.gov/faq.html#cost https://www.foia.gov/faq.html#cost This subsidy is plausibly a good one, to avoid discouraging requests from private citizens, but it can also probably justify why FOIA requests would be rate-limited. (In some situations, you might be able to avoid ever paying by breaking you request up into a bunch of sub-requests that can individually be completed in less than 2 hours.) Are there any sorts of outside investigations that are substantially hampered by the rate limiting? It seems like the turn-around time is going to be more than a day anyways, so you might as well bundle all your requests into one and submit daily. Or is there an aspect of this I'm missing? Incidentally, are there estimates on how much the FBI (or other agencies) spend to fulfill FOIA requests? This report from 1980 says ~$50M, but that that might be a substantial underestimate since there were large ancillary costs it doesn't cover. https://www.justice.gov/oip/blog/foia-update-costs-and-benefits-foia https://www.justice.gov/oip/blog/foia-update-costs-and-benef...
  • koheripbal 10y ago
    Isn't it reasonable that all requests be provided "at cost"? Maybe at a $/hour corresponding to the federal minimum wage? I don't think FOIAs should be free nor anonymous. I imagine foreign governments would exploit that to try to probe for information.
    • fjdlwlv 10y ago
      We are the "leaders of the free world". Why should we be afraid of foreign governments having access to non-classified information?
• SyneRyder 10y ago
  Maybe worth pointing out that following media interest/inquiries today, the FBI now claim (according to The Daily Dot) that the website terms and conditions will be changed on March 1st to allow 24/7 access and unlimited requests from individuals. Also: "The FBI eFOIA portal has been under development and testing for two years." That's a long time to spend developing a website that doesn't work on weekends.... http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/fbi-foia-records-requests-email-fax/ http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/fbi-foia-records-requests-ema...
  • ryanlol 10y ago
    >That's a long time to spend developing a website that doesn't work on weekends.... Well, when you're building websites in COBOL...