3 ms·

Um ridiculous government waste! We could have done it all in $300K and so could have many other startups

by EGreg 5y ago

stuaxo 5y ago
I don't know what they were covering, but there is a multitude of different systems from local councils up to central Gov. GDS is full of mostly django based systems, some legacy ruby and that's just the stuff from the last few years. Going back further there are various C# systems, the amount of separate systems is staggering, it's not too surprising costs add up.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- rjzzleep 5y ago
  The problem in these environments is often not technical, but human, full of egos, people without competence wanting to be involved in every discussion and generally people talking and evaluating systems based on specs for a year without actually testing things. For every one of the systems you mentioned there is a fairly straightforward solution. And even if you can't solve them all you could gradually migrate everything. Oftentimes because of management wanting to push liability to a private party, they don't want to invest into local dev teams, but instead want to buy a big enterprise solution. The VA, NHS and the German systems all have these issues, but it's not because they're public institutions, it's because they work like enterprise.
- petepete 5y ago
  Definitely not mostly-Django. There are probably more new Rails than Django projects these days.
harel 5y ago
Sounds like quite a naive statement. The scope of this project is huge. there are so many different systems at play here. Some are so legacy they go back to Tudor times.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  Still, I could have attained an “undeliverable” state for far less money.
dboreham 5y ago
$300K doesn't get you much. Perhaps $10M though..
- Aeolun 5y ago
  Hmm, it gets you me for 3 years or so. I can do quite a lot in 3 years if I have zero communications overhead.
onion2k 5y ago
You could deliver a single sign on system for 300k based on your requirements. Unfortunately you have to deliver it to the customer's requirements. If you go around quoting for projects without seeing the specifications outside of HN comments then your business is doomed.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  Government projects always go to the lowest bidder! You’d just fail faster.
- EGreg 5y ago
  That’s not how it works. If you make a system that is secure and flexible enough, you then work with other stakeholders to integrate with it over time. They each come up with a roadmap to migrate their systems to support your protocol. The key is to skillfully negotiate the budgets and politics between teams, so as not to get stuck building the next healthcare.gov.

Um ridiculous government waste! We could have done it all in $300K and so could have many other startups

by EGreg 5y ago

Um ridiculous government waste! We could have done it all in $300K and so could have many other startups

I don't know what they were covering, but there is a multitude of different systems from local councils up to central Gov. GDS is full of mostly django based systems, some legacy ruby and that's just the stuff from the last few years. Going back further there are various C# systems, the amount of separate systems is staggering, it's not too surprising costs add up.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rjzzleep 5y ago
The problem in these environments is often not technical, but human, full of egos, people without competence wanting to be involved in every discussion and generally people talking and evaluating systems based on specs for a year without actually testing things. For every one of the systems you mentioned there is a fairly straightforward solution. And even if you can't solve them all you could gradually migrate everything. Oftentimes because of management wanting to push liability to a private party, they don't want to invest into local dev teams, but instead want to buy a big enterprise solution. The VA, NHS and the German systems all have these issues, but it's not because they're public institutions, it's because they work like enterprise.
petepete 5y ago
Definitely not mostly-Django. There are probably more new Rails than Django projects these days.

harel 5y ago

Sounds like quite a naive statement. The scope of this project is huge. there are so many different systems at play here. Some are so legacy they go back to Tudor times.

tshaddox 5y ago
Still, I could have attained an “undeliverable” state for far less money.

dboreham 5y ago

$300K doesn't get you much. Perhaps $10M though..

Aeolun 5y ago
Hmm, it gets you me for 3 years or so. I can do quite a lot in 3 years if I have zero communications overhead.

onion2k 5y ago

You could deliver a single sign on system for 300k based on your requirements. Unfortunately you have to deliver it to the customer's requirements. If you go around quoting for projects without seeing the specifications outside of HN comments then your business is doomed.

Aeolun 5y ago
Government projects always go to the lowest bidder! You’d just fail faster.
EGreg 5y ago
That’s not how it works. If you make a system that is secure and flexible enough, you then work with other stakeholders to integrate with it over time. They each come up with a roadmap to migrate their systems to support your protocol. The key is to skillfully negotiate the budgets and politics between teams, so as not to get stuck building the next healthcare.gov.