4 ms·

Lol at the copyright notice at the bottom. I notice the app is made by Booz Allen Hamilton. It's a shame we have to farm this stuff out to contractors and not

by xxpor 7y ago

Lol at the copyright notice at the bottom. I notice the app is made by Booz Allen Hamilton. It's a shame we have to farm this stuff out to contractors and not use the USDS or 18F.

mceoin 7y ago
*18F
- xxpor 7y ago
  facepalm Thanks, fixed.
  - mceoin 7y ago
    All good. And to your original comment. I'd also love to see the government building out solid technical teams for provision of services. I'm also a firm believer that for _some_ government functions, there's a strong argument for "government as a platform". Rec.gov is a great test bed for this; among many reasons it's (mostly) politically impartial, so is less. For at least the online portion of parks reservation, we really want to be offering availability and booking via API, and incentivizing 3rd parties to compete on experience (UI/UX, etc.). It gets tricky because this is newer terrain and areas like "who pays for support costs/requests" is still being hashed out. Note: still important to have the government providing the base layer of functionality. Accessibility is important and capitalism won't solve for every piece of product minutia that government should provide.
dannyr 7y ago
And this likely cost over $10 million. Will not be surprised if it's $100m.
- xxpor 7y ago
  Found this: Duration of the performance-based contract will be three and a half years, with a total potential value of $128 million. It provides for additional options of up to 10 years. https://gcn.com/Articles/2004/08/09/USDA-awards-contract-for-Recreation-OneStop.aspx?m=1 https://gcn.com/Articles/2004/08/09/USDA-awards-contract-for... Sooooo yeah.
  - mceoin 7y ago
    I read through these contracts a _long_ time ago. I think the contract is for managing a bunch of parks stuff and is expansive far beyond the website.
  - xur17 7y ago
    That article is from 2004, is this a new site, or something that was just released?
  - kristopolous 7y ago
    The fetish we have with trying to private sector everything is a financial disaster. We can pay people to build it directly, it's ok. There doesn't need to be an unaccountable greased palm making $100 million in the background through some "public-private partnership". If the contractor makes a profit we pay more. If instead the government makes a profit, we pay less (see public banking for an example). Kinda funny how that works.
    - mortdeus 7y ago
      The government makes a profit? How does that work?
      - mikekchar 7y ago
        Lots of government operations around the world make a profit. Usually the money is reinvested to improve operations, but it can also be sent back for general spending depending on the structure of the organisation. Now, it's been a very long time since I lived in Canada, but the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) used to make a tidy profit. It also used to be the largest single purchaser of wine in the world and as such was able to get incredibly rare wine. Back in the day, if you wanted to tour a winery someday, you could often set it up with the LCBO and the winery would absolutely roll out the red carpet for you. Not sure if that hack still exists, but it was pretty sweet 10-20 years ago. Although unpopular with a lot of people due to all the politics that a government monopoly on alcohol gave, the LCBO was profitable and provided surprisingly good value (as long as you happened to live near a store where influential people lived :-P ). Like I said, it's been ages since I lived there, so I'm not sure what the current status is, but it lasted a long time due to its ability to deliver service and provide revenue for the government.
mceoin 7y ago
Worth noting is that USDS got involved in the contracting stage to write certain language sections (e.g. availability API requirements). My takeaway from watching this whole RFP process play out is that an early impactful leverage point is having USDS get involved in auditing/writing RFP requirements in the public interest (this was quite a few years ago, so they may already be more involved in all tech contracting decisions). Without having a technically strong government team weighing in on contracting, I get the feeling that language and technical expertise falls on contractors/corporations/lobbyists to provide.
mortdeus 7y ago
The last time the government tried to build a website inhouse.... Well we all know how funny that was. Ahh the good ol' days. Good times. Welp back to grind.
tingletech 7y ago
How can a federal government site be copyrighted? And, copyrighted by a domain name nonetheless. I worked on a project once with the national park service. Their Office of General Council or whatever its called didn't want to agree to make their metadata on https://npgallery.nps.gov https://npgallery.nps.gov available to use with a CC0 license for use in https://dp.la/ https://dp.la/ . Sure, the images might not have been taken by federal employees, but why try to assert copyright ownership in the metadata? Eventually they agreed for one collection, but they have lots of cool content on there from California parks we would like to put on https://calisphere.org https://calisphere.org . The stuff they have up at Clemson has CC0 metadata, and the rights info for the content is pretty clearly marked https://openparksnetwork.org/about/opn-rights/ https://openparksnetwork.org/about/opn-rights/
- rory096 7y ago
  Work done by private entities under contract to the government is copyrightable.
  - xxpor 7y ago
    To whom though? The contractor? That's fucked up if true.
justaguyhere 7y ago
this doesn't seem restrictive - https://www.recreation.gov/use-our-data https://www.recreation.gov/use-our-data

by xxpor 7y ago

Lol at the copyright notice at the bottom. I notice the app is made by Booz Allen Hamilton. It's a shame we have to farm this stuff out to contractors and not use the USDS or 18F.

mceoin 7y ago

*18F

xxpor 7y ago
facepalm Thanks, fixed.
- mceoin 7y ago
  All good. And to your original comment. I'd also love to see the government building out solid technical teams for provision of services. I'm also a firm believer that for _some_ government functions, there's a strong argument for "government as a platform". Rec.gov is a great test bed for this; among many reasons it's (mostly) politically impartial, so is less. For at least the online portion of parks reservation, we really want to be offering availability and booking via API, and incentivizing 3rd parties to compete on experience (UI/UX, etc.). It gets tricky because this is newer terrain and areas like "who pays for support costs/requests" is still being hashed out. Note: still important to have the government providing the base layer of functionality. Accessibility is important and capitalism won't solve for every piece of product minutia that government should provide.

dannyr 7y ago

And this likely cost over $10 million. Will not be surprised if it's $100m.

xxpor 7y ago
Found this: Duration of the performance-based contract will be three and a half years, with a total potential value of $128 million. It provides for additional options of up to 10 years. https://gcn.com/Articles/2004/08/09/USDA-awards-contract-for-Recreation-OneStop.aspx?m=1 https://gcn.com/Articles/2004/08/09/USDA-awards-contract-for... Sooooo yeah.
- mceoin 7y ago
  I read through these contracts a _long_ time ago. I think the contract is for managing a bunch of parks stuff and is expansive far beyond the website.
- xur17 7y ago
  That article is from 2004, is this a new site, or something that was just released?
- kristopolous 7y ago
  The fetish we have with trying to private sector everything is a financial disaster. We can pay people to build it directly, it's ok. There doesn't need to be an unaccountable greased palm making $100 million in the background through some "public-private partnership". If the contractor makes a profit we pay more. If instead the government makes a profit, we pay less (see public banking for an example). Kinda funny how that works.
  - mortdeus 7y ago
    The government makes a profit? How does that work?
    - mikekchar 7y ago
      Lots of government operations around the world make a profit. Usually the money is reinvested to improve operations, but it can also be sent back for general spending depending on the structure of the organisation. Now, it's been a very long time since I lived in Canada, but the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) used to make a tidy profit. It also used to be the largest single purchaser of wine in the world and as such was able to get incredibly rare wine. Back in the day, if you wanted to tour a winery someday, you could often set it up with the LCBO and the winery would absolutely roll out the red carpet for you. Not sure if that hack still exists, but it was pretty sweet 10-20 years ago. Although unpopular with a lot of people due to all the politics that a government monopoly on alcohol gave, the LCBO was profitable and provided surprisingly good value (as long as you happened to live near a store where influential people lived :-P ). Like I said, it's been ages since I lived there, so I'm not sure what the current status is, but it lasted a long time due to its ability to deliver service and provide revenue for the government.

mceoin 7y ago

Worth noting is that USDS got involved in the contracting stage to write certain language sections (e.g. availability API requirements). My takeaway from watching this whole RFP process play out is that an early impactful leverage point is having USDS get involved in auditing/writing RFP requirements in the public interest (this was quite a few years ago, so they may already be more involved in all tech contracting decisions). Without having a technically strong government team weighing in on contracting, I get the feeling that language and technical expertise falls on contractors/corporations/lobbyists to provide.

mortdeus 7y ago

The last time the government tried to build a website inhouse.... Well we all know how funny that was. Ahh the good ol' days. Good times. Welp back to grind.

tingletech 7y ago

How can a federal government site be copyrighted? And, copyrighted by a domain name nonetheless. I worked on a project once with the national park service. Their Office of General Council or whatever its called didn't want to agree to make their metadata on https://npgallery.nps.gov https://npgallery.nps.gov available to use with a CC0 license for use in https://dp.la/ https://dp.la/ . Sure, the images might not have been taken by federal employees, but why try to assert copyright ownership in the metadata? Eventually they agreed for one collection, but they have lots of cool content on there from California parks we would like to put on https://calisphere.org https://calisphere.org . The stuff they have up at Clemson has CC0 metadata, and the rights info for the content is pretty clearly marked https://openparksnetwork.org/about/opn-rights/ https://openparksnetwork.org/about/opn-rights/

rory096 7y ago
Work done by private entities under contract to the government is copyrightable.
- xxpor 7y ago
  To whom though? The contractor? That's fucked up if true.

justaguyhere 7y ago

this doesn't seem restrictive - https://www.recreation.gov/use-our-data https://www.recreation.gov/use-our-data