9 ms·

The scourge of Rec dot gov (2021)

107 points by goplayoutside 4y ago

boozthrowaway 4y ago
I worked at Booz Allen on this project for some time actually before moving onto other projects during my time at the company. If I recall correctly, the site was made in React and used the internal government cloud.
- my69thaccount 4y ago
  Doesn't React break accessibility requirements for government sites?
  - SamBam 4y ago
    Why? You can make it as accessible as you like, I believe. Is something specific missing?
    - my69thaccount 4y ago
      Does it work for users without JavaScript enabled?
anm89 4y ago
This article reads like a 14 year old who is mad at society for the first time in their life. "That website is made by a company worth 14 Billion with a B!" There are around 1000 companies with a Billion or greater market cap. Is this supposed to be a criticism?
- goplayoutside 4y ago
  Outrage at mismanagement of public lands is not uncommon amongst those of us who follow the issue closely. I think Paul's emphasis on BAH's financials is meant to support the argument that a significant element of the management of a publicly owned resource should not have been handed over to an entity that is driven by profit motive. And signing over authority over pricing and eliminating much of the public oversight was especially inappropriate.
notRobot 4y ago
I have a question. I keep hearing about so many problems with the way things are done in the US. The tax filing system. Mass incarceration. Problematic police departments. Reproductive rights. Privacy rights. And on and on and on. But few (if any) representatives seem to want to fix any of this stuff. I see no progress. Just an ever increasing partisan divide based largely around religion and an "us vs them" mentality. Where do we go from here? Does this stuff ever get better?
- lucideer 4y ago
  There's problems in every country - no political system is devoid of corruption, cronyism and the influence of lobbyists. But one thing I do find unusual about US (and to a lesser extent the UK) politics is how extreme the partisan nature of every aspect of politics is. Any explicit discussion of politics is about "sides"; even the most good-natured discussions are about "balancing" red and blue, rather than representing the reality of diversity of thought. And that word - "diversity" - even means something different in the US than elsewhere: rather than actual diversity (acceptance of a spectrum), it rather tends to mean hitting a set of strictly predefined (discrete!) boxes. I can't help but think - especially given the existence of some parallels in UK politics - that FPTP must have some input into creating this culture.
- toss1 4y ago
  This stuff literally only gets better if people get out and vote Politics in the western world is shedding the 19-20th-century ideologies and right/left wing parties and devolving into at it's root, autocracy vs small-d democracy. The problem here is that the autocrats also support 'free-market capitalism' (which works basically as described in this article - crony capitalism), and motivates their voting blocs with fear. Their voting blocks vote reliably. The result is things like Trump and Brexit. The small-d democratic parties basically motivate their voters with hope and freedom to do your own thing. the problem is that their voters tend to do their own thing, and that thing is not attempting to control others for profit, and they tend to be apathetic about voting. Especially since their demographic tends to be young, and the young are famous for having loads of political opinions but not actually showing up to vote - especially in minor elections, such as mid-terms and state elections in the USA. Active disinformation campaigns don't help. Somehow, the Nordic countries seem to have cracked the participation code a few generations ago, and are anti-autocratic and nice places to live. Whether this can be sustained in other democracies is an open question.
csharpminor 4y ago
Honestly recreation.gov is one of the few government websites that has a “good” user experience. I’m not a fan of BAH but I think they executed well in this case. While $184M may sound like a lot, compare that to the $200M+ that was spent on the failed launch of Healthcare.gov - taxpayers got nothing out of that. That work was scrapped. That website ultimately cost closer to $840M. What you don’t see in these numbers are the insane requirements needed to launch successfully. It’s not just building an AirBnb clone for parks, there is a huge amount of bureaucracy and stakeholder management in a national project like this. $20M in annual recurring profit also doesn’t sound like that much in the grand scheme of things. Morally I wish it wasn’t necessary, but practically it’s impossible to deliver quality customer service without some form of financial performance incentive. Would I love to live in a world where government employs programmers and DIYs this stuff much cheaper and more efficiently? Of course. USDS and 18F are bright spots that are trying. But they also don’t have the capacity to work on anything except high priority projects.
- site-packages1 4y ago
  I agree with this. I am no fan of BAH for personal reasons having been forced to work adjacent to them, but the recreation.gov website is quite good and a good experience, coming from someone who uses it extensively for camping.
  - goplayoutside 4y ago
    The site's UX is not at issue. TFA focuses on the significant problem of mismanagement of US public lands, and the extent to which handing over such a large amount of control over these publicly owned resources to a private entity with a profit motive has lead to negative results. The design and functioning of rec.gov itself is not even tangential to the subject.
- dallasg3 4y ago
  USDS is United States Digital Service and 18F is part of the GSA. 18F is short for 1800 F Street, which is the address in Washington DC for the GSA. https://www.usds.gov https://www.usds.gov https://18f.gsa.gov/about https://18f.gsa.gov/about
timmaah 4y ago
> From a selfish standpoint, this type of system discourages spontaneous trips. When I did my road trip three years ago, I already noticed the trend of mandating an RSVP for any activity. I am not against any RSVPs as I understand the concept of resource protection, but with a greed-based system with profit and not sustainability as its goal, there are fewer incentives to set aside spots for walk-ups. The increased demand makes `walk-ups` a logistical headache for workers (volunteers) on the ground. If there are X amount of campsites available as first-come-first-served, the campground host then has to spend time turning away people all day when those spots get filled by 9am. I'm not certain what the solution is for bringing the type of spontaneity back that many people crave, but the reservation system is in place for a reason. Crazy demand for nature.
- manachar 4y ago
  A great example is sunrise at the peak in Haleakala National park on Maui. So many people were crowding the top that they started parking on critically endangered species and making an amazing experience something of a zoo. Something had to be done. The reservation approach is two pronged. One batch of the majority of reservations is offered well in advanced. Then something like 48 hours before hand the final batch is offered. This helps those who want more spontaneous while also keeping the numbers manageable. Bluntly, the US population has mostly grown to the point where we are regularly having to deal with the fact that some things and experiences are just limited. There's something endearing and maddening about a culture like ours that just flat out doesn't understand limits.
  - kingcharles 4y ago
    > Bluntly, the US population has mostly grown to the point where we are regularly having to deal with the fact that some things and experiences are just limited. This is the bigger problem. Not just US population, but world population has grown enormously, and is richer, and travel is cheaper. So there are exponentially more people arriving at tourist destinations that a hundred years ago received only a handful of people a week. Look at Everest. Total clusterfuck. https://s.abcnews.com/images/Nightline/190531_ntl_climber_0137_hpMain_16x9_992.jpg https://s.abcnews.com/images/Nightline/190531_ntl_climber_01...
khuey 4y ago
For some of the things the author complains about there really are no good options. You can only shove so many people up the Half Dome cables on any given day or so many campsites in Yosemite Valley before it becomes a nightmare. You can't just build more of the experiences people are looking for in national parks like you can build taller buildings in a city. So your options are to ration by price (which NPS/etc generally don't do), to ration by luck (lotteries for e.g. Half Dome), or to ration by ability to plan ahead (far-in-advance reservations for campgrounds). None of these are great but what is the alternative?
- throwaway1777 4y ago
  Make the experience so crappy that no one wants it anymore?
  - khuey 4y ago
    Yes, "demand destruction" is another option but I think less than ideal.
  - cardiffspaceman 4y ago
    It's Nature. It is crappy already. When I went up Half Dome in the 70s It was the middle of June and pretty hot. It's a long walk and all of it is steep and some of it is slippery and scary. But "I'm a tough mountaineer" so I didn't turn back. And that image/ego thing is why making it crappy will not work.
- mauvehaus 4y ago
  Read "Industrial Tourism and the National Parks" by Edward Abbey in Desert Solitaire. His solution is as simple as making people get off their asses and walk or bike, etc, rather than the then-current trend of building paved roads and parking lots ever closer to the "attractions". There is, believe it or not, an IMAX theater right outside of Zion that shows movies of the park. My first reaction was to be appalled by the brazen crassness of such a thing. In time, my opinion has softened: if it diverts people from coming into the park for nothing more than a look around, great. Let them stay the hell out of the park and move on to the next checkbox on their vacation. It'll be less crowded for those of us who do like to hike. Abridged version here: https://lvk104.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/polemic-industrial-tourism-the-national-parks-by-edward-abbey/ https://lvk104.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/polemic-industrial-t...
uoflcards22 4y ago
rec.gov is one of the least shitty government websites out there. With the GS pay system, we cannot expect to get decent technology out of our government. This is sadly the best alternative.
- goplayoutside 4y ago
  TFA addresses the problems with outsourcing a significant component of public lands management to a private entity with a profit motive. The site's UX is not at issue here.
flipgimble 4y ago
For years I was musing about a camping trip to Shenandoah National Park which is only a couple hours away from me. However due to family, busy work, and laziness I would start planning too late and saw most spots booked on rec.gov. I would usually blame myself for lack of organization This year I decided to just pack my car with equipment and drive to SNP one very early morning. At worst I would spend hours in the car for a day hike. However it turns out that many camping spots are available on first-come-first-serve basis, and not online. Another group without reservations joined my camping spot bordering the forest and it was a fun hanging out and chatting with strangers. You can also find plenty of camping space near hiking shelters, or with a permit in the back-country provided you're aware of the regulations and bear safety. After that first trip, I was kicking myself for forming a mental model of camping as severely constrained by space and crowds. I think that false model formed by relying on only rec.gov and some online articles about how crowded the Appalachian Trail has become. I hear the hiking crowds visit SNP in May-June, so we'll see how it goes.
dmckeon 4y ago
I have no issue with online reservations or contractors, but do have an issue with the incentive of application fees: to enter a lottery for a reservation, every applicant pays a fee, whether they get a reservation or not. After the lottery, the contractor keeps all the application fees.[0] The contractor could increase their profit at very little cost simply by getting more people to apply for the same limited number of reservations. Dark pattern, perverse incentive, or profit model? Does even Ticketmaster have that level of chutzpah? [0] FTA: https://www.nps.gov/glac/planyourvisit/gtsrticketedentry.htm https://www.nps.gov/glac/planyourvisit/gtsrticketedentry.htm
aaroninsf 4y ago
recreation.gov is one of a rare few citizen-facing sites/apps (another is Libby) which are good in almost every way that they need to be. I use both of these every week, often every day; and they are continue to evolve to get out of the way and let me get what I need quickly. Perfect? No. Infinitely better than they could be? Absolutely. Compare the site California decided to use after opting out of standard consolidated solutions. It's mildly better now, at least it can load and refresh, but it was god awful for years after launch. This is a win.
- timmaah 4y ago
  Mildly better is being kind to Reserve California. Florida saw what CA did and decided to follow in their footsteps, and now this new setup is the standard consolidated solution?!?
subsubzero 4y ago
If you think rec.gov is bad wait until you see parks.ca.gov. Its probably one of the worst campsite booking sites ever made. Rec.gov isn't that bad imo.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mceoin 4y ago
  Brought to you by Xerox (yep!)
mceoin 4y ago
I was intimately familiar with the period in time during which Booze Allen won the Rec.gov contract. (My company was a founding member of AccessLand.org, a coalition of non-profit and for-profit orgs pushing for open data reform for America’s parks.) As much as I want to dunk on BAH for their spook work, and more broadly opine on the the parasitical undermining of government by corporate lobbyists, it is important to give credit where it is due and recognize the overall-great work that BAH did on the rec.gov contract. People forget that before BAH, Reserve America (owned by IAC) used to have the federal and California contracts. RA delivered a terrible experience, never innovated or iterated, did the least amount of work possible, stripped their own internal team down to a skeleton crew in order to juice profits, and maximally leveraged their incumbency. What was supposed to be a 5 year contract turned into a 10 year contract, and then they leached out further profits by holding the transfer to BAH off for years through legal shenanigans. The RA team were transparently unethical, and in private meetings would say things that you might expect from a government contractor who truly thinks they have monopoly status and cannot be displaced. They did not have the user’s best interest at heart. Schadenfreude is generally distasteful, but I’m not above saying how pleased I was to see Reserve America lose the federal and California contracts. By contrast, my experience with the BAH team was that they brought “best-practices” to the table (they ran agile sprints, for starters), openly dialogued with community members to seek feedback on how best to improve Rec.gov, and had recruited an internal team that obviously cared about building a great experience for the parks, and for the government generally. BAH were not actively hostile to open data ideals — unlike other bidders, including RA — and seemed to have a more inclusive attitude to how government can be transformed through APIs and open data, whereby the gov’t contractor would build and maintain the core infrastructure, but 3rd parties could compete to provide better services to the public. In short, BAH operated in a good faith attitude and generally succeeded in building a good experience for users. As many comments here reflect, Rec.gov stands unique among many government websites and services as a pretty solid experience. On the downside: BAH has failed to provide full open-data access to 3rd parties. There is still no place online that a developer can register an API key and check availability data (an outstanding requirement of the RFP contract) — some 3rd parties do have access to this data, but by failing to make availability data publicly and easily accessible, innovation here has been stymied. Conversations with 3rd parties to design and negotiate a 3rd party bookings API have also not materialized, as they said they would in good faith. These shortcomings are frustrating, and represent missed opportunities for BAH to continue building upon their infrastructure in providing a template for Govt services, and turning around their brand. By contrast, Xerox won the California contract; an unusable abomination of contractor hack work. I did not think it was possible to do worse than RA, but they have somehow managed it. I suspect, however, that this is largely through incompetence rather than malice on their part. Unfortunately, without a full availability and bookings API, no 3rd parties can improve the experience either so we’re stuck with reservecalifornia.com for the interminable future. As much as I want to bag on the profit motive behind BAH, this OP article is missing some historical nuance about how bad things were, and could still be.
ryankshaw 4y ago
to me, the biggest problems with recreation.gov are: 1) the incentive to have lotteries for things (like angels landing in Zion, half dome cables in Yosemite, etc) where you have to pay just to enter the lottery and are out your money even if you are not selected. none of that money goes to actually help maintain that national park. BOA just pockets it 2) it has completely changed the landscape of who is in the campgrounds from local families that went up the canyon for the weekend with their kids to professional #vanlife / RVers that pay memberships into these services that tell them exactly which spots to book at exactly which time 8 months in advance so they can continue their year round lifestyle of living on the road

107 points by goplayoutside 4y ago

I worked at Booz Allen on this project for some time actually before moving onto other projects during my time at the company. If I recall correctly, the site was made in React and used the internal government cloud.

my69thaccount 4y ago
Doesn't React break accessibility requirements for government sites?
- SamBam 4y ago
  Why? You can make it as accessible as you like, I believe. Is something specific missing?
  - my69thaccount 4y ago
    Does it work for users without JavaScript enabled?

anm89 4y ago

This article reads like a 14 year old who is mad at society for the first time in their life. "That website is made by a company worth 14 Billion with a B!" There are around 1000 companies with a Billion or greater market cap. Is this supposed to be a criticism?

goplayoutside 4y ago
Outrage at mismanagement of public lands is not uncommon amongst those of us who follow the issue closely. I think Paul's emphasis on BAH's financials is meant to support the argument that a significant element of the management of a publicly owned resource should not have been handed over to an entity that is driven by profit motive. And signing over authority over pricing and eliminating much of the public oversight was especially inappropriate.

notRobot 4y ago

I have a question. I keep hearing about so many problems with the way things are done in the US. The tax filing system. Mass incarceration. Problematic police departments. Reproductive rights. Privacy rights. And on and on and on. But few (if any) representatives seem to want to fix any of this stuff. I see no progress. Just an ever increasing partisan divide based largely around religion and an "us vs them" mentality. Where do we go from here? Does this stuff ever get better?

lucideer 4y ago
There's problems in every country - no political system is devoid of corruption, cronyism and the influence of lobbyists. But one thing I do find unusual about US (and to a lesser extent the UK) politics is how extreme the partisan nature of every aspect of politics is. Any explicit discussion of politics is about "sides"; even the most good-natured discussions are about "balancing" red and blue, rather than representing the reality of diversity of thought. And that word - "diversity" - even means something different in the US than elsewhere: rather than actual diversity (acceptance of a spectrum), it rather tends to mean hitting a set of strictly predefined (discrete!) boxes. I can't help but think - especially given the existence of some parallels in UK politics - that FPTP must have some input into creating this culture.
toss1 4y ago
This stuff literally only gets better if people get out and vote Politics in the western world is shedding the 19-20th-century ideologies and right/left wing parties and devolving into at it's root, autocracy vs small-d democracy. The problem here is that the autocrats also support 'free-market capitalism' (which works basically as described in this article - crony capitalism), and motivates their voting blocs with fear. Their voting blocks vote reliably. The result is things like Trump and Brexit. The small-d democratic parties basically motivate their voters with hope and freedom to do your own thing. the problem is that their voters tend to do their own thing, and that thing is not attempting to control others for profit, and they tend to be apathetic about voting. Especially since their demographic tends to be young, and the young are famous for having loads of political opinions but not actually showing up to vote - especially in minor elections, such as mid-terms and state elections in the USA. Active disinformation campaigns don't help. Somehow, the Nordic countries seem to have cracked the participation code a few generations ago, and are anti-autocratic and nice places to live. Whether this can be sustained in other democracies is an open question.

csharpminor 4y ago

Honestly recreation.gov is one of the few government websites that has a “good” user experience. I’m not a fan of BAH but I think they executed well in this case. While $184M may sound like a lot, compare that to the $200M+ that was spent on the failed launch of Healthcare.gov - taxpayers got nothing out of that. That work was scrapped. That website ultimately cost closer to $840M. What you don’t see in these numbers are the insane requirements needed to launch successfully. It’s not just building an AirBnb clone for parks, there is a huge amount of bureaucracy and stakeholder management in a national project like this. $20M in annual recurring profit also doesn’t sound like that much in the grand scheme of things. Morally I wish it wasn’t necessary, but practically it’s impossible to deliver quality customer service without some form of financial performance incentive. Would I love to live in a world where government employs programmers and DIYs this stuff much cheaper and more efficiently? Of course. USDS and 18F are bright spots that are trying. But they also don’t have the capacity to work on anything except high priority projects.

site-packages1 4y ago
I agree with this. I am no fan of BAH for personal reasons having been forced to work adjacent to them, but the recreation.gov website is quite good and a good experience, coming from someone who uses it extensively for camping.
- goplayoutside 4y ago
  The site's UX is not at issue. TFA focuses on the significant problem of mismanagement of US public lands, and the extent to which handing over such a large amount of control over these publicly owned resources to a private entity with a profit motive has lead to negative results. The design and functioning of rec.gov itself is not even tangential to the subject.
dallasg3 4y ago
USDS is United States Digital Service and 18F is part of the GSA. 18F is short for 1800 F Street, which is the address in Washington DC for the GSA. https://www.usds.gov https://www.usds.gov https://18f.gsa.gov/about https://18f.gsa.gov/about

timmaah 4y ago

> From a selfish standpoint, this type of system discourages spontaneous trips. When I did my road trip three years ago, I already noticed the trend of mandating an RSVP for any activity. I am not against any RSVPs as I understand the concept of resource protection, but with a greed-based system with profit and not sustainability as its goal, there are fewer incentives to set aside spots for walk-ups. The increased demand makes `walk-ups` a logistical headache for workers (volunteers) on the ground. If there are X amount of campsites available as first-come-first-served, the campground host then has to spend time turning away people all day when those spots get filled by 9am. I'm not certain what the solution is for bringing the type of spontaneity back that many people crave, but the reservation system is in place for a reason. Crazy demand for nature.

manachar 4y ago
A great example is sunrise at the peak in Haleakala National park on Maui. So many people were crowding the top that they started parking on critically endangered species and making an amazing experience something of a zoo. Something had to be done. The reservation approach is two pronged. One batch of the majority of reservations is offered well in advanced. Then something like 48 hours before hand the final batch is offered. This helps those who want more spontaneous while also keeping the numbers manageable. Bluntly, the US population has mostly grown to the point where we are regularly having to deal with the fact that some things and experiences are just limited. There's something endearing and maddening about a culture like ours that just flat out doesn't understand limits.
- kingcharles 4y ago
  > Bluntly, the US population has mostly grown to the point where we are regularly having to deal with the fact that some things and experiences are just limited. This is the bigger problem. Not just US population, but world population has grown enormously, and is richer, and travel is cheaper. So there are exponentially more people arriving at tourist destinations that a hundred years ago received only a handful of people a week. Look at Everest. Total clusterfuck. https://s.abcnews.com/images/Nightline/190531_ntl_climber_0137_hpMain_16x9_992.jpg https://s.abcnews.com/images/Nightline/190531_ntl_climber_01...

khuey 4y ago

For some of the things the author complains about there really are no good options. You can only shove so many people up the Half Dome cables on any given day or so many campsites in Yosemite Valley before it becomes a nightmare. You can't just build more of the experiences people are looking for in national parks like you can build taller buildings in a city. So your options are to ration by price (which NPS/etc generally don't do), to ration by luck (lotteries for e.g. Half Dome), or to ration by ability to plan ahead (far-in-advance reservations for campgrounds). None of these are great but what is the alternative?

throwaway1777 4y ago
Make the experience so crappy that no one wants it anymore?
- khuey 4y ago
  Yes, "demand destruction" is another option but I think less than ideal.
- cardiffspaceman 4y ago
  It's Nature. It is crappy already. When I went up Half Dome in the 70s It was the middle of June and pretty hot. It's a long walk and all of it is steep and some of it is slippery and scary. But "I'm a tough mountaineer" so I didn't turn back. And that image/ego thing is why making it crappy will not work.
mauvehaus 4y ago
Read "Industrial Tourism and the National Parks" by Edward Abbey in Desert Solitaire. His solution is as simple as making people get off their asses and walk or bike, etc, rather than the then-current trend of building paved roads and parking lots ever closer to the "attractions". There is, believe it or not, an IMAX theater right outside of Zion that shows movies of the park. My first reaction was to be appalled by the brazen crassness of such a thing. In time, my opinion has softened: if it diverts people from coming into the park for nothing more than a look around, great. Let them stay the hell out of the park and move on to the next checkbox on their vacation. It'll be less crowded for those of us who do like to hike. Abridged version here: https://lvk104.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/polemic-industrial-tourism-the-national-parks-by-edward-abbey/ https://lvk104.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/polemic-industrial-t...

uoflcards22 4y ago

rec.gov is one of the least shitty government websites out there. With the GS pay system, we cannot expect to get decent technology out of our government. This is sadly the best alternative.

goplayoutside 4y ago
TFA addresses the problems with outsourcing a significant component of public lands management to a private entity with a profit motive. The site's UX is not at issue here.

flipgimble 4y ago

For years I was musing about a camping trip to Shenandoah National Park which is only a couple hours away from me. However due to family, busy work, and laziness I would start planning too late and saw most spots booked on rec.gov. I would usually blame myself for lack of organization This year I decided to just pack my car with equipment and drive to SNP one very early morning. At worst I would spend hours in the car for a day hike. However it turns out that many camping spots are available on first-come-first-serve basis, and not online. Another group without reservations joined my camping spot bordering the forest and it was a fun hanging out and chatting with strangers. You can also find plenty of camping space near hiking shelters, or with a permit in the back-country provided you're aware of the regulations and bear safety. After that first trip, I was kicking myself for forming a mental model of camping as severely constrained by space and crowds. I think that false model formed by relying on only rec.gov and some online articles about how crowded the Appalachian Trail has become. I hear the hiking crowds visit SNP in May-June, so we'll see how it goes.

dmckeon 4y ago

I have no issue with online reservations or contractors, but do have an issue with the incentive of application fees: to enter a lottery for a reservation, every applicant pays a fee, whether they get a reservation or not. After the lottery, the contractor keeps all the application fees.[0] The contractor could increase their profit at very little cost simply by getting more people to apply for the same limited number of reservations. Dark pattern, perverse incentive, or profit model? Does even Ticketmaster have that level of chutzpah? [0] FTA: https://www.nps.gov/glac/planyourvisit/gtsrticketedentry.htm https://www.nps.gov/glac/planyourvisit/gtsrticketedentry.htm

aaroninsf 4y ago

recreation.gov is one of a rare few citizen-facing sites/apps (another is Libby) which are good in almost every way that they need to be. I use both of these every week, often every day; and they are continue to evolve to get out of the way and let me get what I need quickly. Perfect? No. Infinitely better than they could be? Absolutely. Compare the site California decided to use after opting out of standard consolidated solutions. It's mildly better now, at least it can load and refresh, but it was god awful for years after launch. This is a win.

timmaah 4y ago
Mildly better is being kind to Reserve California. Florida saw what CA did and decided to follow in their footsteps, and now this new setup is the standard consolidated solution?!?

subsubzero 4y ago

If you think rec.gov is bad wait until you see parks.ca.gov. Its probably one of the worst campsite booking sites ever made. Rec.gov isn't that bad imo.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mceoin 4y ago
Brought to you by Xerox (yep!)

mceoin 4y ago

I was intimately familiar with the period in time during which Booze Allen won the Rec.gov contract. (My company was a founding member of AccessLand.org, a coalition of non-profit and for-profit orgs pushing for open data reform for America’s parks.) As much as I want to dunk on BAH for their spook work, and more broadly opine on the the parasitical undermining of government by corporate lobbyists, it is important to give credit where it is due and recognize the overall-great work that BAH did on the rec.gov contract. People forget that before BAH, Reserve America (owned by IAC) used to have the federal and California contracts. RA delivered a terrible experience, never innovated or iterated, did the least amount of work possible, stripped their own internal team down to a skeleton crew in order to juice profits, and maximally leveraged their incumbency. What was supposed to be a 5 year contract turned into a 10 year contract, and then they leached out further profits by holding the transfer to BAH off for years through legal shenanigans. The RA team were transparently unethical, and in private meetings would say things that you might expect from a government contractor who truly thinks they have monopoly status and cannot be displaced. They did not have the user’s best interest at heart. Schadenfreude is generally distasteful, but I’m not above saying how pleased I was to see Reserve America lose the federal and California contracts. By contrast, my experience with the BAH team was that they brought “best-practices” to the table (they ran agile sprints, for starters), openly dialogued with community members to seek feedback on how best to improve Rec.gov, and had recruited an internal team that obviously cared about building a great experience for the parks, and for the government generally. BAH were not actively hostile to open data ideals — unlike other bidders, including RA — and seemed to have a more inclusive attitude to how government can be transformed through APIs and open data, whereby the gov’t contractor would build and maintain the core infrastructure, but 3rd parties could compete to provide better services to the public. In short, BAH operated in a good faith attitude and generally succeeded in building a good experience for users. As many comments here reflect, Rec.gov stands unique among many government websites and services as a pretty solid experience. On the downside: BAH has failed to provide full open-data access to 3rd parties. There is still no place online that a developer can register an API key and check availability data (an outstanding requirement of the RFP contract) — some 3rd parties do have access to this data, but by failing to make availability data publicly and easily accessible, innovation here has been stymied. Conversations with 3rd parties to design and negotiate a 3rd party bookings API have also not materialized, as they said they would in good faith. These shortcomings are frustrating, and represent missed opportunities for BAH to continue building upon their infrastructure in providing a template for Govt services, and turning around their brand. By contrast, Xerox won the California contract; an unusable abomination of contractor hack work. I did not think it was possible to do worse than RA, but they have somehow managed it. I suspect, however, that this is largely through incompetence rather than malice on their part. Unfortunately, without a full availability and bookings API, no 3rd parties can improve the experience either so we’re stuck with reservecalifornia.com for the interminable future. As much as I want to bag on the profit motive behind BAH, this OP article is missing some historical nuance about how bad things were, and could still be.

ryankshaw 4y ago

to me, the biggest problems with recreation.gov are: 1) the incentive to have lotteries for things (like angels landing in Zion, half dome cables in Yosemite, etc) where you have to pay just to enter the lottery and are out your money even if you are not selected. none of that money goes to actually help maintain that national park. BOA just pockets it 2) it has completely changed the landscape of who is in the campgrounds from local families that went up the canyon for the weekend with their kids to professional #vanlife / RVers that pay memberships into these services that tell them exactly which spots to book at exactly which time 8 months in advance so they can continue their year round lifestyle of living on the road