6 ms·

> “When they legislate these things, they need to be appropriating enough money to make sure they work,” a source said. They estimated fixing the SB1310 bug wou

by elihu 6y ago

> “When they legislate these things, they need to be appropriating enough money to make sure they work,” a source said. They estimated fixing the SB1310 bug would take roughly 2,000 additional programming hours. 40 hours a week times 52 weeks is 2080 hours. Subtract a few weeks for vacations and holidays, and you get a little less that 2000 hours. So, basically, this is a little more than one programmer-year of effort if the estimate is in the right ballpark. It's gross that the decision not to fix this carries an apparent implicit economic calculation that one programmer-year is more valuable than the freedom that is being denied to an unknown number of people whom society deems less important. (Granted the actual situation is more complicated and the state is constrained by their contract with the vendor, which we can reasonably guess is going to charge as much as they can contractually get away with rather than the programmer's actual salary cost.) At least the Department of Corrections has assigned people to do the calculations manually. That's better, but it sounds like they just don't have enough people on it to keep up.

rsj_hn 6y ago
> It's gross that the decision not to fix this carries an apparent implicit economic calculation Spending money will remain economic decision until we can have government agencies fueled by the righteous indignation of their critics rather than having a line item added to their budget. Until you can convert that indignation into legal tender, agencies will remain subject to old fashioned accounting constraints.
- craig131 6y ago
  The onerous budget item we are talking about here is a feature that multiply days sentenced by 0.7 if the inmate completes one checkbox item. You know, just to keep things in perspective.
  - rsj_hn 6y ago
    Right, so that's just * a UI change to check the box this information is on * UI change to view whether the box is already checked or not * a data model change to store the information * business logic change that modifies some critical code that calculates when someone should be released * security/access control change to decide who is allowed to check this box * auditing logic to keep logs of this stuff * possibly new UI/management code to add/remove members to this group of people who can check the box * together with adding some procedures for tracking who completes what, documentation, training and auditing. * Testing the whole thing. Probably for piles of who knows what where the original author is long gone and the test code is no longer functional. Just to keep things in perspective.
    - GovCoderThrow 6y ago
      Given that your post didn't mention the human rights being violated here once, I think it's you that needs to find the correct perspective.
    - wly_cdgr 6y ago
      Ok, but you must be charging by the hour if you think this is anywhere near 2000 hours of work
      - rsj_hn 6y ago
        1. Once you work for a big bureaucracy, you realize how slow this stuff is. In terms of how much actual work it takes, it depends very much on the condition of the test environment -- whether it has been maintained and how much effort is required to get back up and running. Plus, how much paperwork is involved in dealing with the government agency that contracts this out. I can easily see a situation in which you don't even accept jobs that are less than 2000 hours as it's not worth it. 2. What I described is not the actual fix, it is the temporary stopgap. The prison department isn't going to pay someone to click checkboxes all the time for tens of thousands of inmates each year. They will want this info to be set automatically -- e.g. an integration from whatever software system(s) are used to track completion of the coursework to this system, so you are not hiring another employee to sit and click all the time nor do you need to create reporting procedures to get that info into the hands of the person who is clicking. The appropriate design then requires automation, which will require security controls, and it's a pain. It could easily be more than a year of work, again depending on how many systems they need to integrate against, what types of sign off/controls are required, how much paperwork is required, etc. For example, maybe the coursework has no software tracking, in which case they need to throw up a portal and have the people running the course fill out who did what, and then throw up another portal to have someone else review that. Lots of stuff ends up being passed around by ftp or csv uploads. I've seen horror stories. So it really depends on how they plan to do this integration -- the manual button clicking was just an example of a least effort system that relied on a lot of manual labor, but perhaps this is not in their budget either.
  - DougN7 6y ago
    Multiply by 0.7? Doesn’t that mean the sentence is shortened?
    - bigwavedave 6y ago
      Yep! The problem here is that the software doesn't take into account extra release credits earned from a piece of legislation introduced in 2019. Currently, additional credits are earned and the software fails to apply them to the release date, so the parent is saying the fix is to multiply the number of time in the original sentence by .7 to get the new, reduced sentence.
JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> an apparent implicit economic calculation that one programmer-year is more valuable than the freedom that is being denied to an unknown number of people whom society deems less important I’m surprised this doesn’t create a massive liability for the state.
- elihu 6y ago
  Yeah, I'd assume this would be resolved real quick if the state (or the contractor responsible for the software) had to pay out, say, $100 per inmate per day that they improperly spent in jail past the end of their sentence. That this problem is allowed to persist seems like an indication that the people in charge believe that prisoners have a low probability of successfully suing the state for damages.
  - alasdair_ 6y ago
    Don’t they have liability? Unlawful imprisonment is a crime. I am amazed that the people can’t sue about this.
    - elihu 6y ago
      You'd think so, but then again it's not too surprising to find that not everyone enjoys the same rights in actuality that we all theoretically have. And rights can vanish if they aren't actively asserted and the people affected don't know about them. The article mentions that the people who have had the problem addressed were the people that complained, or who had family on the outside who knew what was going on. If Arizona isn't acting quickly enough, I wonder if the federal government can get involved?
- myth2018 6y ago
  I've had the opportunity of participating on the design phase of an application to control the distribution of ostomy bags for a network of public hospitals. I was a bit shocked when I knew that the decision-makers were about to cut functionality intended to provide workarounds in case of system failures, so that employees could keep delivering bags upon request. That would basically result on patients not getting their ostomy bags on time, and I can't even imagine what would follow afterwards. What would be the reactions of patients and their relatives, what levels of stress would hospitals' employees would be subjected to, and so on. I left the company some months after that, and I don't know what was the final decision, but they'd been warned. Maybe one day some set of ethical standards will be considered non-functional requirements as important as robustness, security and others. With technicians being responsible for warning their managers, managers being responsible for assessing risks and documenting their decisions, everything being made transparently and everybody being accountable.
ipsin 6y ago
I understand that there's a lot of work that could go into this sort of thing (mocks, accessibility, testing)... but is 2000 hours really a defensible number? It sounds like there's new per-inmate data and calculations for inmate eligibility and sentencing credit. But 2000 hours worth of work? Even sand-bagging it sounds like way too much.
- maybenotafart 6y ago
  sounds much more like budget politics against the incompetent
- codyb 6y ago
  I was pretty incredulous until a cousin poster started talking about auditing, testing, red tape, out of date systems, and security. Seems plausible it could balloon.
- pixl97 6y ago
  Of course you're assuming they have anyone left at the company that understand the software. So many times the original team that wrote it is gone, and there is a plate of spaghetti left for the next group to figure out.
  - dreamcompiler 6y ago
    It's probably worse than that. Most likely the vendor subcontracted it out to an overseas contractor that hired mostly junior-level programmers who are now working elsewhere.
maybenotafart 6y ago
That is horse shit and we all know it. What bug takes 2k hours???? thats 250 work days. jesus christ, if I took that long to fix a bug, fire me. And yes, I'm also talking about time to test, write/fix unit tests, write/fix integration tests, releasing into production, and data conversion.
- adrianN 6y ago
  You don't know the codebase. Even people who know a codebase have a hard time giving accurate estimates.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  Look at the description of the issue. It's really less of a bug and more of a feature request, in the sense that the legislature changed the rules for how "earned release credits" could be calculated. All of the details are here: https://corrections.az.gov/sites/default/files/documents/PDFs/1310_faq_0919.pdf https://corrections.az.gov/sites/default/files/documents/PDF... . Previously, it seems like there was a single standard, applied universally: 1 day of earned release credit for every 6 days served. The new rules have many more inputs, with lots of caveats: only certain offenses are eligible, and the inmate can not have been convicted of some other types of offenses, and the inmate must have completed some specific courses, and the inmate can't have previously been convicted of certain felonies. The 2k hours may very well be excessive, and I don't care if it takes 20k hours, it means they should mothball their software and do it manually if that's the case, but just calling it a "bug" is misleading IMO.
  - curryst 6y ago
    Totally agree. Looking at this, it is substantially more complicated than it was before. I'm guessing up til now, the days of time off earned was done in real time. Basically all you need is the day they entered, divide by 6 and truncate and there's your days. If there are infractions that cost days, you could still probably do it in a single SQL query. This new system will have to know what kind of crime they committed, which might mean integrating with some byzantine government software from the 90s that looks like it's from the 70s. Previously they only really needed the prison system's records, which may or may not include their past crimes. I'm guessing they're worried the integration won't be as easy as proposed. I wouldn't be surprised if it takes a month just to get the dev access to everything. I might even be surprised if it was that short.

by elihu 6y ago

rsj_hn 6y ago

> It's gross that the decision not to fix this carries an apparent implicit economic calculation Spending money will remain economic decision until we can have government agencies fueled by the righteous indignation of their critics rather than having a line item added to their budget. Until you can convert that indignation into legal tender, agencies will remain subject to old fashioned accounting constraints.

craig131 6y ago
The onerous budget item we are talking about here is a feature that multiply days sentenced by 0.7 if the inmate completes one checkbox item. You know, just to keep things in perspective.
- rsj_hn 6y ago
  Right, so that's just * a UI change to check the box this information is on * UI change to view whether the box is already checked or not * a data model change to store the information * business logic change that modifies some critical code that calculates when someone should be released * security/access control change to decide who is allowed to check this box * auditing logic to keep logs of this stuff * possibly new UI/management code to add/remove members to this group of people who can check the box * together with adding some procedures for tracking who completes what, documentation, training and auditing. * Testing the whole thing. Probably for piles of who knows what where the original author is long gone and the test code is no longer functional. Just to keep things in perspective.
  - GovCoderThrow 6y ago
    Given that your post didn't mention the human rights being violated here once, I think it's you that needs to find the correct perspective.
  - wly_cdgr 6y ago
    Ok, but you must be charging by the hour if you think this is anywhere near 2000 hours of work
    - rsj_hn 6y ago
      1. Once you work for a big bureaucracy, you realize how slow this stuff is. In terms of how much actual work it takes, it depends very much on the condition of the test environment -- whether it has been maintained and how much effort is required to get back up and running. Plus, how much paperwork is involved in dealing with the government agency that contracts this out. I can easily see a situation in which you don't even accept jobs that are less than 2000 hours as it's not worth it. 2. What I described is not the actual fix, it is the temporary stopgap. The prison department isn't going to pay someone to click checkboxes all the time for tens of thousands of inmates each year. They will want this info to be set automatically -- e.g. an integration from whatever software system(s) are used to track completion of the coursework to this system, so you are not hiring another employee to sit and click all the time nor do you need to create reporting procedures to get that info into the hands of the person who is clicking. The appropriate design then requires automation, which will require security controls, and it's a pain. It could easily be more than a year of work, again depending on how many systems they need to integrate against, what types of sign off/controls are required, how much paperwork is required, etc. For example, maybe the coursework has no software tracking, in which case they need to throw up a portal and have the people running the course fill out who did what, and then throw up another portal to have someone else review that. Lots of stuff ends up being passed around by ftp or csv uploads. I've seen horror stories. So it really depends on how they plan to do this integration -- the manual button clicking was just an example of a least effort system that relied on a lot of manual labor, but perhaps this is not in their budget either.
- DougN7 6y ago
  Multiply by 0.7? Doesn’t that mean the sentence is shortened?
  - bigwavedave 6y ago
    Yep! The problem here is that the software doesn't take into account extra release credits earned from a piece of legislation introduced in 2019. Currently, additional credits are earned and the software fails to apply them to the release date, so the parent is saying the fix is to multiply the number of time in the original sentence by .7 to get the new, reduced sentence.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago

> an apparent implicit economic calculation that one programmer-year is more valuable than the freedom that is being denied to an unknown number of people whom society deems less important I’m surprised this doesn’t create a massive liability for the state.

elihu 6y ago
Yeah, I'd assume this would be resolved real quick if the state (or the contractor responsible for the software) had to pay out, say, $100 per inmate per day that they improperly spent in jail past the end of their sentence. That this problem is allowed to persist seems like an indication that the people in charge believe that prisoners have a low probability of successfully suing the state for damages.
- alasdair_ 6y ago
  Don’t they have liability? Unlawful imprisonment is a crime. I am amazed that the people can’t sue about this.
  - elihu 6y ago
    You'd think so, but then again it's not too surprising to find that not everyone enjoys the same rights in actuality that we all theoretically have. And rights can vanish if they aren't actively asserted and the people affected don't know about them. The article mentions that the people who have had the problem addressed were the people that complained, or who had family on the outside who knew what was going on. If Arizona isn't acting quickly enough, I wonder if the federal government can get involved?
myth2018 6y ago
I've had the opportunity of participating on the design phase of an application to control the distribution of ostomy bags for a network of public hospitals. I was a bit shocked when I knew that the decision-makers were about to cut functionality intended to provide workarounds in case of system failures, so that employees could keep delivering bags upon request. That would basically result on patients not getting their ostomy bags on time, and I can't even imagine what would follow afterwards. What would be the reactions of patients and their relatives, what levels of stress would hospitals' employees would be subjected to, and so on. I left the company some months after that, and I don't know what was the final decision, but they'd been warned. Maybe one day some set of ethical standards will be considered non-functional requirements as important as robustness, security and others. With technicians being responsible for warning their managers, managers being responsible for assessing risks and documenting their decisions, everything being made transparently and everybody being accountable.

ipsin 6y ago

I understand that there's a lot of work that could go into this sort of thing (mocks, accessibility, testing)... but is 2000 hours really a defensible number? It sounds like there's new per-inmate data and calculations for inmate eligibility and sentencing credit. But 2000 hours worth of work? Even sand-bagging it sounds like way too much.

maybenotafart 6y ago
sounds much more like budget politics against the incompetent
codyb 6y ago
I was pretty incredulous until a cousin poster started talking about auditing, testing, red tape, out of date systems, and security. Seems plausible it could balloon.
pixl97 6y ago
Of course you're assuming they have anyone left at the company that understand the software. So many times the original team that wrote it is gone, and there is a plate of spaghetti left for the next group to figure out.
- dreamcompiler 6y ago
  It's probably worse than that. Most likely the vendor subcontracted it out to an overseas contractor that hired mostly junior-level programmers who are now working elsewhere.

maybenotafart 6y ago

That is horse shit and we all know it. What bug takes 2k hours???? thats 250 work days. jesus christ, if I took that long to fix a bug, fire me. And yes, I'm also talking about time to test, write/fix unit tests, write/fix integration tests, releasing into production, and data conversion.

adrianN 6y ago
You don't know the codebase. Even people who know a codebase have a hard time giving accurate estimates.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
Look at the description of the issue. It's really less of a bug and more of a feature request, in the sense that the legislature changed the rules for how "earned release credits" could be calculated. All of the details are here: https://corrections.az.gov/sites/default/files/documents/PDFs/1310_faq_0919.pdf https://corrections.az.gov/sites/default/files/documents/PDF... . Previously, it seems like there was a single standard, applied universally: 1 day of earned release credit for every 6 days served. The new rules have many more inputs, with lots of caveats: only certain offenses are eligible, and the inmate can not have been convicted of some other types of offenses, and the inmate must have completed some specific courses, and the inmate can't have previously been convicted of certain felonies. The 2k hours may very well be excessive, and I don't care if it takes 20k hours, it means they should mothball their software and do it manually if that's the case, but just calling it a "bug" is misleading IMO.
- curryst 6y ago
  Totally agree. Looking at this, it is substantially more complicated than it was before. I'm guessing up til now, the days of time off earned was done in real time. Basically all you need is the day they entered, divide by 6 and truncate and there's your days. If there are infractions that cost days, you could still probably do it in a single SQL query. This new system will have to know what kind of crime they committed, which might mean integrating with some byzantine government software from the 90s that looks like it's from the 70s. Previously they only really needed the prison system's records, which may or may not include their past crimes. I'm guessing they're worried the integration won't be as easy as proposed. I wouldn't be surprised if it takes a month just to get the dev access to everything. I might even be surprised if it was that short.