11 ms·

The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application

504 points by Mizza 15y ago

jsight 15y ago
I'm curious if this really surprises anyone here that the entire process for the government purchasing three mobile applications (Android, iOS, and BB) was ~200k. This seems pretty ordinary/normal to me.
- altrego99 15y ago
  Great... how can be one to help the government with such requirements?
- altrego99 15y ago
  Great... how can I be one to help the government with such requirements?
- cobrausn 15y ago
  Actually, me and a team of two other developers recently applied for a government contract for the NIST that would have had us fixing a bug in OpenSceneGraph that was causing it to perform worse when more graphics cards were added. Due to what they were asking for and the amount of time we thought it would take to accomplish it and provide the documentation they were asking for, we bid in at $60,000. We did not get the bid. I believe it was given to a university in Florida (damn grad students!) for a bid of $42,000. In regards to the Android app in question, I think they just didn't have enough bidders. It's also possible they bogged them down in paperwork and status reports / updates (tends to happen with government contracts) which drove up the cost. I am a bit bothered that the bidding system does not favor companies based in the US that are not owned by foreign companies.
  - gte910h 15y ago
    >and provide the documentation they were asking for, People who've never worked on government contracts cannot conceive of the reporting and documentation projects. I've been on several (govt) projects where we spent as much time writing as doing.
    - danso 15y ago
      But what's the quality expectation on the reporting and documentation? Is it likely that your audience (the gov't managers) have lower standards?
      - gte910h 15y ago
        They not only expected very high quality with lots of thoroughness, they also wanted very specific formatting and types of sections, etc. Because they're the government, they often overspecify to not get taken advantage of.
- bambax 15y ago
  Yes. Doing business with the Government means you have to spend endless hours in meetings and produce endless piles of paperwork. In small projects such as this one, overhead is probably around 90% of total cost. Incidentally, that's why auctioning small pieces of a larger project independently is probably not a good idea. Costs could in fact skyrocket: each part would have its own contract, negotiation process, meetings, forms, etc.
  - seanalltogether 15y ago
    Precisely, I wouldn't try to get involved in a government contract for less then $100k, even if the final result was to produce a single document, because you're going to spend so much of your budget just navigating the waters.
- AJ007 15y ago
  In the governments defense, I think big corporations routinely overpay for web development and marketing expenses. Aanecdotally, a girl I know who works for a pharmaceutical company said they spent $60,000 on a three page web site. Then I sit in Starbucks and listen to some freelancer get reamed for charging $1,000 to build and manage some guy's website. One would think that the price discrepancies for the same product among different buyers would not be so extreme in a capitalist marketplace.
  - gcv 15y ago
    Neither the government nor large corporations qualify as the kind of free and ideal market you're referring to.
    - AJ007 15y ago
      How does the term "capitalist marketplace" infer "free and ideal market?" The purchase and sale of cocaine occurs in a market where virtually all sellers are capitalists. It is neither free nor ideal.
  - VMG 15y ago
    > In the governments defense, I think big corporations routinely overpay for web development and marketing expenses. In the big corporations defense, they don't use tax dollars.
    - com 15y ago
      Yep - they use excess revenues from us, their customers, and don't even translate that into excess profits for us, their owners. Instead they use excess costs to reward us, their executives and us, their contractors. The difference between big business and big government are sometimes difficult for me to see.
davedx 15y ago
The problems with opening up big government contracts to multiple bidders is there is then a race to the bottom. However, outsourcing it one component at a time is definitely an interesting idea. Deliverables!
- mquander 15y ago
  Isn't a race to the bottom on price the desired outcome? The presence of a race to the bottom on functionality is independent of whether or not the contract is open. If they don't have anyone competent who is vetting the proposals or evaluating the progress and deliverables, then they will wind up with shit no matter how they arrange the contracting. But if it's open to normal software shops, then at least they probably won't wind up with $200,000 shit.
  - gte910h 15y ago
    >Isn't a race to the bottom on price the desired outcome Cheap yet sufficient is the desired outcome in government work. I'm guessing 'sufficient' was defined too broadly or too specifically, and therefore was not correctly tested for on delivery.
- AerieC 15y ago
  Yeah, but if each component is outsourced, there's the potential that the entire system becomes a huge, disorganized, unmaintainable mess with no consistency in coding standards or even technologies. When something breaks, who debugs the system? Who do you call to fix it? Then again, just look at this app. How could it get any worse? lol
- tomjen3 15y ago
  That is an easy problem to get around - make the bidding for 30 day coding with an option to have in extended for another 30 days until the government is no longer happy with the progress. Then do it Scrum style.
- mousa 15y ago
  Probably the whole process of bidding for any of these reduces the pool of potential contractors to a couple of these giant government contractors who have bidding down. I know there are bidding procedures for everything to fight corruption but for little projects like this they should come up with a procedure to use odesk or similar services.
jxcole 15y ago
And people wonder why the US has a deficit problem.
danso 15y ago
Brilliant article. Couple of key takeaways: 1. "The shocking part about this isn't even that it happened, but rather that it is incredibly routine. This is just one FOIA request to one tiny department for one tiny, single use application that will perhaps be used by, at most, five hundred people.. and it cost as much as a house. You can imagine what the waste must be like in other government run sectors..." 2. "The other issue is the source code. In my opinion, since we taxpayers paid for the development of this piece of shit, we should at least be able to modify and redistrubute the code. Apparently though, the Government doesn't have to supply any information which it considers to be a "trade secret," and OSHA has determined that this crappy source code is somehow a privileged secret. " I wonder if the denial of showing source code was because they really DO think it is a trade secret. Or they are too embarrassed to show it?
- jellicle 15y ago
  > The shocking part about this isn't even that it happened, but rather that it is incredibly routine. This is just one FOIA request to one tiny department for one tiny, single use application You realize that these two sentences oppose each other, right?
  - danso 15y ago
    You have to click-through to read the entire paragraph (sorry, wanted to abide by fair use). The sentiment is that if this kind of low-standards wasteful spending happened in one small department, then imagine what happens at the Dept of Defense.
gte910h 15y ago
The problem with the government trying to do something is that anyone who's really really qualified will find the paperwork, compliance, and bidding procedures way too complicated for the sums of money involved. The Android app cost 106k btw. So looking at this guys hourly rate, it would take approximately 6 months of 40 hour weeks for him to cost that much to do the app. So if he: Learned out to submit the forms that got him into the bidding Made changes to his company required to make it seem a valid bid target Filed the correct forms to put in his bid Factored in correctly the amount of oversight and travel that would be required to get even a simple app done according to the whims of the people hired to get it made Used server technologies compliant with government desires, including ones he may never really willingly touch with a 10 foot pole Then MAYBE, just MAYBE, he'd be able to go as low as say, 60k or so. And that's for a small indie dev. Now look at a bigger company doing this app (as the government likes support, unlike a single freelancer can necessarily provide), and you easily hit the 106k range. Does it not work well? Sounds like it works like crap. But complicated crap still can be expensive to make.
- sumukh1 15y ago
  The app itself was outsourced. Someone else did the development, a company that caters to the government put in the work to do the bidding. Money just happened to fall between the crack. BTW I looked at the code, and there's nothing that an average iOS (and probably Android) developer couldn't do in 4-6 hours.
  - gte910h 15y ago
    And finding out exactly what they want done, and documenting it could have taken weeks. Also, where is the code?
    - sumukh1 15y ago
      That is true, but in an ideal world, it shouldn't. You can get it from MuckRock or from OSHA's own site. http://www.muckrock.com/foi/view/united-states-of-america/source-code-of-heat-safety-tool/766/ http://www.muckrock.com/foi/view/united-states-of-america/so... They provided it 20 days ago, so no idea why the author mentioned that it wasn't available.
GiraffeNecktie 15y ago
In the government agency where I work, $200k would actually be considered very reasonable for a steaming pile of shit. We've paid many times that amount and sometimes the shit wasn't even lukewarm, let alone steaming. Believe it or not, we often spend $150 to $200k or more just to make the decision about whether or not we're going to invest in a particular pile of shit.
- thirsteh 15y ago
  This is double-plus not good.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - spodek 15y ago
    Watch your newspeak, citizen. You meant doubleplusungood, right? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak
    - thirsteh 15y ago
      Doubleplussorry!
- jmspring 15y ago
  A lot of government agencies, as well as groups within large companies, want to keep their budgets (or increase them), so there isn't an incentive to be cost effective -- as you mentioned. But, as another person commented, the overhead around government projects (documentation, reports, meetings, etc) will bloat things beyond a simple time/materials development contract. The FBO has a site listing the contacts, but there are actually some pretty interesting projects that pop up to be bid upon. Only downside for someone new to the process (or a small shop) is that the big boys (SAIC, etc) have this part pretty streamlined as well as sometimes having in's with the agency requesting the proposal. Edit: The site -- https://www.fbo.gov/ https://www.fbo.gov/
maxharris 15y ago
How does this further the proper mission of the government, which is to protect individual rights? I can't fathom a way that this could have anything to do with the government doing the one essential job it actually has to do! It's not just that it's a badly made app. I think the entire fact that the government making apps like this is absurd. Given what the government actually is (the only agency with the legitimate, legal monopoly on the use of force), it is no wonder that it fails so miserably at doing stuff like this.
- dangrossman 15y ago
  This is an app specifically designed to help protect your life (one of those rights) from unsafe employment. I get the dig you're making but this seems a weak target for it...
  - javert 15y ago
    The government's duty to protect your life does not extend beyond protecting it from the use of force by other people. If you choose to work in a place, that's your choice. Even if you fail to make sure it's safe before you work there, or decide to work there despite the risk. Anyway, even if OSHA were legitime, this app is not effective at achieving anything, even if executed well.
    - jellicle 15y ago
      Because you've tested it?
    - pndmnm 15y ago
      Your definition of "government's duty" is not universally agreed upon, and it's intellectually dishonest to predicate an argument on the presumption that it is.
      - javert 15y ago
        I didn't present any argument. I just made a statement, without presenting (here) any supporting evidence. Yes, I realize most people won't agree with the statement. My hope is that by providing it as food for thought, some people may thinking about it and decide that they agree, or may at least be more open to the idea when it comes up in some other context. Isn't it intellectually dishonest for you to call someone intellectually dishonest, when you don't know all the relevant causal factors? (Answer: no, it's just a mistake.)
pavlov 15y ago
In the European Union, governments are legally required to open public works and supplying contracts to competition through an open tendering process. I'm surprised that this doesn't happen in the US. There's a fair bit of criticism levelled against the EU tendering processes, though. Many feel that the process emphasizes price at the expense of quality, resulting in a "race to the bottom" as another poster mentioned. Public contracts currently open in the EU can be found on a website: http://ted.europa.eu http://ted.europa.eu Looking quickly through the site, the contracts seem to have a huge range -- everything from large architectural projects to supplying a small Swedish town with photocopier paper...
- sehugg 15y ago
  We do theoretically have such a thing in the US, for instance: http://www.findrfp.com/service/search.aspx?s=iphone&t=FE&x=0&y=0 http://www.findrfp.com/service/search.aspx?s=iphone&t=FE... You can also go here and see contracts already awarded (search for "iphone" for instance): http://www.usaspending.gov/ http://www.usaspending.gov/ The US allows "no bid" or "sole source" contracts, which have several problems, not the least of which is rampant cronyism. Note that even the President failed to stop this gravy train: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/30/end-no-bid-contracts-above-25000/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/pr... Also, you'd be surprised on how many hours get billed visiting the stakeholders for "face time" and to ensure follow-on work.
- mattmanser 15y ago
  I was surprised by this and decided to check it out, and it looks like they're not really. the implementation of EU government law by national governments is far from uniform and sometimes weak – in 2002, for instance, only 16% of governmental calls to tender were published – government procurement has been called "the weakest link in the common market".[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_procurement_in_the_European_Union http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_procurement_in_the_E... Also check the minimum amounts this applies to, this probably wouldn't have been necessary to put through the process anyway.
  - 15y ago
aresant 15y ago
Outstanding piece of marketing on Gun.io's part with a clear "here's how my biz solves this" at the end. #1 on Hacker News is a feat, but this thing has legs on every political and general fluff channel - HuffPo, FoxNews, Conservative Radio, CNN, wire services, etc. I learned from our own blogging efforts when you have a winner, take it to the bank. EG - Hit every PR angle you can think of to get redistribution while you've got the momentum. Any PR gurus out there that would comment on the top handful of ways to fan the flames on PR for a story like this? I'd love to understand the process when you've got this ripe of content.
- captainaj 15y ago
  Right, was thinking that the writer could file a petition on change.org, great way to build the buzz (aside from the main purpose)
  - gravitronic 15y ago
    The irony would be that whatever legislated change the government would make to publicly "fix" this problem would in reality just add another step with another form to the process.
- taylorbuley 15y ago
  Go upstream and send it to Drudge. This has sensationalist anti-gov headline written all over it.
cdk 15y ago
The $200k price tag is unsurprising if you factor in the cost of non-coding work like requirements gathering, travels, expenses, benefits, etc. This seems like a simple app but when you have a design by committee, approvals, etc it can be quite manpower intensive. The OSHA document is not rendering for me so I can't tell if there's a cost breakdown.
- fennecfoxen 15y ago
  The sad thing is the amount of non-coding work that exists. But that's government. Still want to move more things under their purview?
- danso 15y ago
  I highly doubt there was design by committee. More like: 1) Dev gets contract, builds app 2) Person who was arbitrarily moved to dept. of mobile-app development reviews app, figures it's good because it works on a phone, forwards the results to his/her boss. 3) Repeat step 2 at a higher level 4) Done. There is a more stringent audit trail, perhaps. But I doubt there's a committee of people who sat aorund a whiteboard and designed this puppy. I hope there wasn't, at least.
ck2 15y ago
What's really sad is the money went to a foreign company (aeat.co.uk) It didn't even stay in the American economy which should be a minimum requirement these days if a US solution is available.
Jacquass12321 15y ago
I can't help but get warm fuzzy job security feelings when I see something like this, someone actually paid money for that. Well specifically I paid money for that, warm fuzzies taken care of.
matdwyer 15y ago
I've dealt with some Government agencies before in a few different capacities, and they actually WANT To spend their money. The actual cost doesn't really matter, as they are trying to get as close to their budgets as possible, as to not have them decreased the next year. This is especially true in the last 30 or 60 days - to the point where you invoice and are paid before the job is done just because it "has" to be in the billing period.
kennethologist 15y ago
Thank you for the info on MuckRock! Never knew about the site. hopefully one day my country will pass the freedom of information act and we the citizenry can request this kind of information.
npaquin 15y ago
Govt = epic fail.
jiggy2011 15y ago
I agree with his point regarding source code. Often I have interacted with web applications supplied by parts of the UK Civil service and they have obvious bugs that I often feel should be fairly easy fixes. I often feel that I would happily fix them for free as a public service in a fairly short time period, but no doubt it takes months and lots of $ before they are addressed.
nextparadigms 15y ago
The title should be edited. It's 200,000 for all versions Android, iPhone and Blackberry. The Android one was 100,000.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
sumukh1 15y ago
I've looked at the source code for the application (which is available), the claim that this can be done in 6 hours is absolutely right. Another thing. It seems like the company outsourced the development as well to these guys pixelbitcreative. The entire application contains ~1400 lines of code. I wonder how the money got eaten as we went up the chart.
mcknz 15y ago
Is this really much different than outsourced projects for huge corporations? Seems like large organizations get charged a premium for the same amount of work. Government can hire technical people who can do the work in house, or who are qualified to evaluate the work. But because of the pressure to keep government small, qualified tech people go to the private sector and overcharge the government. Seems like one can't win here.
- karmajunkie 15y ago
  No, its not. Its also worth pointing out that sometimes, just sometimes, it works out the other way. I was the lead on a team that took $150k in funding and produced an open-source implementation of some CDC specifications (https://github.com/talho/openphin https://github.com/talho/openphin), and became the first software in the country to be certified with it. We developed it in about 12 weeks, and the first milestone certifications were actually complete-able (meaning we had the features, though the paperwork took longer) within 2 weeks. We were up against companies used in other states like Northrup and SAIC that literally spent millions on the implementations (and don't even get me started on how much those same companies spent coming up with the standards in the first place, which is a whole 'nother problem) and beat them handily at their own game. We did use private contractors as additional assets starting out and while they were more expensive than hiring additional developers, they had two great attributes: temporary, and good at what they did. Its worth it to pay for competence, every single time. And when its a one-time expense for a project, its much, much easier to deal with than something that incurs year-over-year expenditures.
101001010111 15y ago
"broken proprietary software which the public isn't even allowed to fix." This is recurring theme that traces back at least as early as the 1990's. What's different now is that there is historical evidence that open source projects can produce higher quality software than proprietary ones.
- rbarooah 15y ago
  Really? It's clear that open source projects can produce excellent quality software. It's also clear that proprietary software can be excellent quality. Both can also produce garbage. If you have evidence that open source can produce generally better quality software, or is consistently better for the same kinds of problem, I would like to see it presented.
  - 101001010111 15y ago
    Thanks for the reply. Did you notice my choice to use the words "can produce" (as in "sometimes") not the word "produce" (as in "always")? I would never make the later statement: open projects always produce higher quality software than proprietary ones. That's not my belief. As such, you are asking me in your last sentence if I have evidence to support a statement I would never make. Of course, the answer is no, because I would not bother to look for it. But I would be interested to know why you would like to see such evidence if it exists? I could take a guess as to the reason(s) but I do not want to make assumptions.
    - rbarooah 15y ago
      I did notice. I don't think you're claiming that open source software is always better. I do think you're claiming that overall open source software is systematically better in some way than proprietary software, obviously not in every instance and subject to noise and variance. Feel free to correct me if you not making any such claim. I'm asking for evidence because you stated catgorically that evidence exists but I have personally never come across it. What is the evidence you referred to in your original comment?
kevinalexbrown 15y ago
Whoever runs ERG is getting very rich by making crap that doesn't even work. It's like a negative programmer. Except we're all paying for it. And this is the 'obvious' case, in which it's easy to tell it's crap. What about those times when I'm relying on the experts at these agencies to find solutions to difficult problems without a clear indicator of success? I'm not anti-government by any stretch, but man. The legalese sounded so good: "critical, real-time hot weather information"... Sure, I know that's BS, but what about when I'm not qualified to judge it (i.e. military decisions in Afghanistan based on intel that I'm not privy to).
quanticle 15y ago
I have worked for one of these "green energy"/"smart grid" companies. My conclusion about that company (after about six months of working there) was that its core competency wasn't writing software. The software was a shoddy pile of half-working crap written in a proprietary programming language made by another company that didn't exist any more. No, their core competency was 1) navigating government bureaucracy and 2) filling out government forms. These two competencies ensured that there was never a need to actually produce good software because few competitors would have the time and contacts to even bid on the contract, much less secure it and write good software.
jwallaceparker 15y ago
I am not the least surprised. My girlfriend works for the Health Department in my home state. They paid two consultants $100,000 to convert paper documents to digital form. The contract lasted one week. The consultants literally put documents into a scanner and converted them to PDF. At the end of the week they took their money and left, leaving the bulk of the documents unscanned. An intern could've done this work for $10 an hour. And he/she would've actually finished the job.
rgarcia 15y ago
The code was actually released November 2nd: http://www.muckrock.com/foi/view/united-states-of-america/source-code-of-heat-safety-tool/766/ http://www.muckrock.com/foi/view/united-states-of-america/so...
- Jacquass12321 15y ago
  Good find! I need go find the dailywtf submission form. I've only glanced at the code but my favorite part so far is using integers 0/1 as booleans and putting "myValid1 == 1" everywhere they want to check if it is true. Didn't they list in the billing that they internationalized this? it's full of hardcoded english strings and nothing is done with the resource files.
yahelc 15y ago
There's probably a good startup to be had in managing the government procurement bidding process for small developers, and thus lowering the barrier to bidding, and reducing the likelihood that contracts will go to folks like this.
ullrich 15y ago
There's a Thumbs.db file in the iOS Sources... scared
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
Omnipresent 15y ago
Check out this RFI from IRS for JAVA Open Source. It makes no sense why they would want a team to consolidate all the open source libraries they want rather than just going out and getting those libraries. https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=a479da77b849e4946272d9bf0aa1bfb3&tab=core&_cview=0 https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id...
jellicle 15y ago
Fine. "6 hours maximum", says the author, for an app translated into English and Spanish that interfaces with a remote database and performs some user-initiated calculations, and also has a bunch of static pages. Before starting you must consult with at least a dozen people who know very little about Android and succinctly describe the capabilities of the smartphone and what sorts of applications are even possible. Finally you must provide documentation. Ready? Go! Keep track of your hours... I installed the app. It works fine. Responsive, fast, no problems. I have two minor quibbles with the design, but they are minor. Does what it says on the box. Not an exciting piece of software, but... Has even one person commenting on this thread installed it except me? No? Didn't think so. "It's a piece of crap" says a highly self-interested blogger, and Hacker News jumps on that like starving dogs on Alpo.
- rweba 15y ago
  It seems this guy doesn't account for "bureaucratic overhead" that is involved in dealing with any large client: You already mentioned the need for lots and lots of meetings and doing the translations, there is also writing up a proposal and some reports, drawing up contracts and sub-contracts, doing usability testing and ensuring compliance with applicable federal regulations. And there is probably a lot of other stuff involved that I don't know about. And lets not forget some overhead to pay for the office and some profit. It probably ends up being a few hundred man hours once you account for everything. So yeah - it could most likely be cheaper or better, but the pitchfork attitude is probably going too far.
  - balsam 15y ago
    Looks to me like there's room for someone to come in and make a buck off "AIs" that can handle the regulations, reports and meetings efficiently.
    - civilian 15y ago
      Do you really want to be managed by an AI?
feralchimp 15y ago
These guys are clearly elite: <code> - (float)getHeatIndex:(float)temp:(float)humidity { NSLog(@"[getHeatIndex] temp: %f, humidity: %f", temp, humidity); float hIndex = -42.379 + 2.04901523 * temp + 10.14333127 * humidity - 0.22475541 * temp * humidity - 6.83783 * pow(10, -3) * temp * temp - 5.481717 * pow(10, -2) * humidity * humidity + 1.22874 * pow(10, -3) * temp * temp * humidity + 8.5282 * pow(10, -4) * temp * humidity * humidity - 1.99 * pow(10, -6) * temp * temp * humidity * humidity; //hIndex = round(hIndex); NSLog(@"-Heat Index: %f", hIndex); return hIndex; } </code>
- jlev 15y ago
  Snark aside, that is the correct NWS formula for Heat Index given temperature in farenheight and percent humidity. Sure it's un ugly regression, but it's accurate within +- 1.3˚F http://www.srh.noaa.gov/images/ffc/pdf/ta_htindx.PDF http://www.srh.noaa.gov/images/ffc/pdf/ta_htindx.PDF via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_index http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_index reference 8
Omnipresent 15y ago
I've been on a govt project for the last four years and can't begin to tell you how much money is wasted on IT projects during the entire year. Hearing in the News that the administration is trying to save money by cutting on office supplies makes me laugh! The "Supercommittee" could have at least put a dent in the savings by literally just reviewing the IT projects that the Govt contracts out and the process they follow to manage those contracts. In the agency I work in, there are 9 IT systems that go to production twice in a year. For the entire year the total development time provided (when environments are open for programmers to develop) is about 2 months. Yet the govt is paying the developers and complete IT teams for the entire year. It really is ridiculous. Big boys like BAH, SAIC, CSC, CACI etc. etc. are milking the system and taking advantage of incompetent and gullible govt employees.
mkramlich 15y ago
This kind of nauseus bloat is a big factor why I'm trying to stay away from iOS and Android development. So many projects out there could be much more quickly, cheaply and freedomly (my word) done as a simple web app or even as pure static HTML website in some cases. So much foolishness, hype and hipstering going on.
- absconditus 15y ago
  You are staying away from iOS and Android because the government overpays for low quality software?
- 1010101111001 15y ago
  I agree with this, although I'd go even further. If this app's sole purpose is to retrieve a couple of numbers (surface temperature and relative humidity) why do we need graphics? What purpose is achieved? Given the extremely basic task at hand, as an end user my main concern is that it's fast (even over slow connections), reliable and simple. If it breaks I can fix it. My preference would be to retrieve the numbers into a non-graphical console via a few keypunches. All I want is a couple of numbers and I'm done. This could be done with a TCP client like netcat and a shell script that uses basic UNIX utilities. And I could teach an 11 year old how to do it. If a "smart" phone OS does not allow something so simple by default, then to me it's not very useful. It's been dumbed down. "Smart" is the wrong word.
absconditus 15y ago
Years ago my employer was given a much larger grant from NASA to throw a few web pages on a Windows tablet computer and use Dragon Naturally Speaking to navigate between them. We received this grant because of political connections.
canterburry 15y ago
I think the author is also forgetting that any programming work done for the government/state is always contractually bound by a multi-year code guarantee. This means that if any bugs are uncovered within that time period, the vendor must at no cost to the government fix them. That leads to drawn out negotiations over if something is a bug or enhancement. These code guarantees typically range between 2 - 5 years during which you can't charge a dime for anything related to fixing actual bugs.
niels_olson 15y ago
I would like to point out that SAIC more or less stole VisTA source code from the VA under FOIA and then sold the same code to the Department of Defense for billions. We still can't get the source code they've modified. Why is it that if a government employee writes the software, it's FOIA'ble, but if the government pays someone else for it, it's not? The government is just stuck with some crappy binaries?
- simc 15y ago
  SAIC also screwed up the FBI's Virtual Case File, NSA's Trailblazer, New York's CityTime (with a extra helping of fraud thrown in). It would be interesting to hear of any software project they did do which was not a multi hundred million dollar software engineering disaster.
taylorbuley 15y ago
Great FOIA work. Putting all the re-blogging "journalists" to shame.
nazgulnarsil 15y ago
I strongly recommend Yes, Minister. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister
adnam 15y ago
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock The meat it feeds on; that cuckold lives in bliss
philipashlock 15y ago
We hope the traditional procurement story will be improved with the help of Civic Commons, an organization which is very much aimed at leveling the playing field for government software. We want to make it easier for more developers and smart spry development shops to work on software projects for government. We want to give open source the same exposure as proprietary software and generally facilitate software co-creation and reuse across government to make sure things don't get paid for more times than they need to. You can learn more about us at http://civiccommons.org http://civiccommons.org The Civic Commons marketplace is currently still in closed beta, but it will be opening up very soon. Please sign-up: http://marketplace.civiccommon.. http://marketplace.civiccommon...
hat1 15y ago
Amidst all of the government-bashing comments, I note that no one has remarked on a few things: * we don't have any actual evidence to support the author's claim that this sort of bloat is routine (remember, plural of anecdote isn't data) * we don't know what kind of wasted money gets tossed around in major corporations (assumptions about how corporations must be lean do not constitute actual evidence) * we don't even have a way to find out what sort of bloat and waste takes place in corporate america - the government at least lets us find out so it maybe doesn't make a lot of sense, in an observable-evidence sort of way, to make with the government-bashing..
philipashlock 15y ago
It's also worth noting that Congress is threatening to cut the budget for the project that tracks overspending on IT projects - the IT Dashboard. While the IT Dashboard tool was properly open sourced and the codebase is doing well out in the wild, the continued use of it for the Federal Government isn't totally free, but the very small budget required to keep something like this running can prevent spending hundreds of millions of dollars on excessive IT projects. For more info on budget cuts that could effect projects like the IT Dashboard, see: http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2011/11/16/crunch-time-in-senate-for-flagship-transparency-programs/ http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2011/11/16/crunch-time-in... For information on the open source IT Dashboard project, see: http://civiccommons.org/2011/05/it-dashboard-six-weeks-in/ http://civiccommons.org/2011/05/it-dashboard-six-weeks-in/
DanielBMarkham 15y ago
This is definitely hacker-bait. Cue up all the folks complaining about wasteful government, then cue up the hotshot programmer folks who will tell us they can code this in 2 hours while drunk, then cue up the FOIA folks, then the folks who feel any critique at all of government is indicative of right-wing extremism, and so on. I remember when the IRS spent 4 Billion on a new computer system and had nothing to show for it. The joke I used for a week was "Hell, they could have paid me $2 Billion and still not had anything to show for it -- and saved half their money." The problem those of us with lots of internal government experience is that most "normal" folks have literally no idea how much waste there is. Yes, it's like a big university. Yes, it's like BigCorp. But no, it's so far beyond those concepts that if that's the only frame of reference you have, you've missed it. I love my country and love paying taxes for it to do useful things. But there simply is no system in place for shutting things down. It just keeps growing. In the private sector the measurement is "does it do something that folks will pay us for?" because if it doesn't, folks eventually stop paying, and the company goes away (although it might take decades). In the public sector the metric is "does it make a politician look bad?" There's a reason Congress delegates all these powers to all these agencies. It's the same reason we have so many "Tsars". Nobody is directly accountable. It's all set up so that if there is a problem, some poor schmuck gets hauled before an investigative committee to get the riot act read to them. That way the guys who are supposed to be really responsible -- the Congressmen -- get to play the part of the person looking to fix things. Politics. It's a beautiful thing. So at the end of the day I'm not really sure this is newsworthy. I could tell similar stories involving tens of millions of dollars, and I bet we could come up with a list of hundreds of these things. Anybody remember the FBI case file system? This is just way small peanuts. Perhaps the "Android app" part of it is enough to be newsworthy, but in my mind that's a benefit: today there are a lot of people pleading to move away from COBOL systems in some government agency -- and losing. I feel really sorry for those guys.
- wisty 15y ago
  Also, this $200k app is probably an example of good government spending. Arguably, it's UK style Fabian socialism, in which government spending is making it impossible for better private solutions to flourish. Libertarian fanboys will whinge no matter what the government does, unless it does nothing. 200k is a small amount (for any big org), and it's actually going to something public facing, unlike 90% of government work which is simply faceless men putting obtuse reports in each other's pigeon holes. Do we really want to attack one of the few times the government actually tries to make their work relevant to the public? You could equally argue that the 1% is wasting billions on stupid sock puppet ads for online pet shops, photo sharing apps, and AOL. Or on stock options for chefs and masseuses. Or on million dollar teams that do nothing more than re-invent wheels, badly. It's arguable that the government should be doing this at all. But I certainly believe that if government should be doing anything, they should be making their work available to the general public. I don't think they got screwed - 200k for an app is not a giant rip-off. They might have been able to do it cheaper, but it's not totally out of line with the sort of crap industry does.
cleaver 15y ago
In my experience (over a decade consulting to government in Canada), not charging enough can sometime put you at a competitive disadvantage. The purchasing decisions are often made by someone who doesn't understand the technology and their prime concern is risk. They don't want to be "the guy who chose the vendor who screwed up". In government, as often as not, you may not get promoted for doing something great so much as by not doing anything bad. A lot of cost can be added through management of non-technical aspects. The wording may have to go through rounds of approval, goals and features may shift, etc. The cost of writing endless detailed RFP's and the long sales cycles increase the cost. That said, there are also a lot of "consultants" who really are just crap. It made me embarrassed to be in the same business and that is part of the reason I don't work for government clients anymore.
deleted 15y ago
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apage8 15y ago
I guess none of us should be surprised by this...But the real question is how do I get a government contract? What a joke...
kaze 15y ago
Apart from bureaucratic tangles, process overheads and bidding issues, is it possible the artists' fees for illustrations and health related research and verification played a role in the bloat up?
5teev 15y ago
So it's been more than 6 hours since this was posted. There must be a few clones of the Android version by now. Links, anyone?
- 5teev 15y ago
  Six hours later: yeah, didn't think so.
suprgeek 15y ago
Please get this off the front page: 1) $200K is for Android +iOS + BB apps 2) Source code is available 3) App works as advertised and does not Crash (installed) 4) Selling to big Gov. is expensive (not 10X but surely 2-3X) 5) The poster wildly underestimates the total project cost and puts in some arbitrary coding estimate Linkbaity title + Misleading facts + Moral outrage at big Gov != HNews Frontpage

504 points by Mizza 15y ago

I'm curious if this really surprises anyone here that the entire process for the government purchasing three mobile applications (Android, iOS, and BB) was ~200k. This seems pretty ordinary/normal to me.

altrego99 15y ago
Great... how can be one to help the government with such requirements?
altrego99 15y ago
Great... how can I be one to help the government with such requirements?
cobrausn 15y ago
Actually, me and a team of two other developers recently applied for a government contract for the NIST that would have had us fixing a bug in OpenSceneGraph that was causing it to perform worse when more graphics cards were added. Due to what they were asking for and the amount of time we thought it would take to accomplish it and provide the documentation they were asking for, we bid in at $60,000. We did not get the bid. I believe it was given to a university in Florida (damn grad students!) for a bid of $42,000. In regards to the Android app in question, I think they just didn't have enough bidders. It's also possible they bogged them down in paperwork and status reports / updates (tends to happen with government contracts) which drove up the cost. I am a bit bothered that the bidding system does not favor companies based in the US that are not owned by foreign companies.
- gte910h 15y ago
  >and provide the documentation they were asking for, People who've never worked on government contracts cannot conceive of the reporting and documentation projects. I've been on several (govt) projects where we spent as much time writing as doing.
  - danso 15y ago
    But what's the quality expectation on the reporting and documentation? Is it likely that your audience (the gov't managers) have lower standards?
    - gte910h 15y ago
      They not only expected very high quality with lots of thoroughness, they also wanted very specific formatting and types of sections, etc. Because they're the government, they often overspecify to not get taken advantage of.
bambax 15y ago
Yes. Doing business with the Government means you have to spend endless hours in meetings and produce endless piles of paperwork. In small projects such as this one, overhead is probably around 90% of total cost. Incidentally, that's why auctioning small pieces of a larger project independently is probably not a good idea. Costs could in fact skyrocket: each part would have its own contract, negotiation process, meetings, forms, etc.
- seanalltogether 15y ago
  Precisely, I wouldn't try to get involved in a government contract for less then $100k, even if the final result was to produce a single document, because you're going to spend so much of your budget just navigating the waters.
AJ007 15y ago
In the governments defense, I think big corporations routinely overpay for web development and marketing expenses. Aanecdotally, a girl I know who works for a pharmaceutical company said they spent $60,000 on a three page web site. Then I sit in Starbucks and listen to some freelancer get reamed for charging $1,000 to build and manage some guy's website. One would think that the price discrepancies for the same product among different buyers would not be so extreme in a capitalist marketplace.
- gcv 15y ago
  Neither the government nor large corporations qualify as the kind of free and ideal market you're referring to.
  - AJ007 15y ago
    How does the term "capitalist marketplace" infer "free and ideal market?" The purchase and sale of cocaine occurs in a market where virtually all sellers are capitalists. It is neither free nor ideal.
- VMG 15y ago
  > In the governments defense, I think big corporations routinely overpay for web development and marketing expenses. In the big corporations defense, they don't use tax dollars.
  - com 15y ago
    Yep - they use excess revenues from us, their customers, and don't even translate that into excess profits for us, their owners. Instead they use excess costs to reward us, their executives and us, their contractors. The difference between big business and big government are sometimes difficult for me to see.

davedx 15y ago

The problems with opening up big government contracts to multiple bidders is there is then a race to the bottom. However, outsourcing it one component at a time is definitely an interesting idea. Deliverables!

mquander 15y ago
Isn't a race to the bottom on price the desired outcome? The presence of a race to the bottom on functionality is independent of whether or not the contract is open. If they don't have anyone competent who is vetting the proposals or evaluating the progress and deliverables, then they will wind up with shit no matter how they arrange the contracting. But if it's open to normal software shops, then at least they probably won't wind up with $200,000 shit.
- gte910h 15y ago
  >Isn't a race to the bottom on price the desired outcome Cheap yet sufficient is the desired outcome in government work. I'm guessing 'sufficient' was defined too broadly or too specifically, and therefore was not correctly tested for on delivery.
AerieC 15y ago
Yeah, but if each component is outsourced, there's the potential that the entire system becomes a huge, disorganized, unmaintainable mess with no consistency in coding standards or even technologies. When something breaks, who debugs the system? Who do you call to fix it? Then again, just look at this app. How could it get any worse? lol
tomjen3 15y ago
That is an easy problem to get around - make the bidding for 30 day coding with an option to have in extended for another 30 days until the government is no longer happy with the progress. Then do it Scrum style.
mousa 15y ago
Probably the whole process of bidding for any of these reduces the pool of potential contractors to a couple of these giant government contractors who have bidding down. I know there are bidding procedures for everything to fight corruption but for little projects like this they should come up with a procedure to use odesk or similar services.

jxcole 15y ago

And people wonder why the US has a deficit problem.

danso 15y ago

Brilliant article. Couple of key takeaways: 1. "The shocking part about this isn't even that it happened, but rather that it is incredibly routine. This is just one FOIA request to one tiny department for one tiny, single use application that will perhaps be used by, at most, five hundred people.. and it cost as much as a house. You can imagine what the waste must be like in other government run sectors..." 2. "The other issue is the source code. In my opinion, since we taxpayers paid for the development of this piece of shit, we should at least be able to modify and redistrubute the code. Apparently though, the Government doesn't have to supply any information which it considers to be a "trade secret," and OSHA has determined that this crappy source code is somehow a privileged secret. " I wonder if the denial of showing source code was because they really DO think it is a trade secret. Or they are too embarrassed to show it?

jellicle 15y ago
> The shocking part about this isn't even that it happened, but rather that it is incredibly routine. This is just one FOIA request to one tiny department for one tiny, single use application You realize that these two sentences oppose each other, right?
- danso 15y ago
  You have to click-through to read the entire paragraph (sorry, wanted to abide by fair use). The sentiment is that if this kind of low-standards wasteful spending happened in one small department, then imagine what happens at the Dept of Defense.

gte910h 15y ago

The problem with the government trying to do something is that anyone who's really really qualified will find the paperwork, compliance, and bidding procedures way too complicated for the sums of money involved. The Android app cost 106k btw. So looking at this guys hourly rate, it would take approximately 6 months of 40 hour weeks for him to cost that much to do the app. So if he: Learned out to submit the forms that got him into the bidding Made changes to his company required to make it seem a valid bid target Filed the correct forms to put in his bid Factored in correctly the amount of oversight and travel that would be required to get even a simple app done according to the whims of the people hired to get it made Used server technologies compliant with government desires, including ones he may never really willingly touch with a 10 foot pole Then MAYBE, just MAYBE, he'd be able to go as low as say, 60k or so. And that's for a small indie dev. Now look at a bigger company doing this app (as the government likes support, unlike a single freelancer can necessarily provide), and you easily hit the 106k range. Does it not work well? Sounds like it works like crap. But complicated crap still can be expensive to make.

sumukh1 15y ago
The app itself was outsourced. Someone else did the development, a company that caters to the government put in the work to do the bidding. Money just happened to fall between the crack. BTW I looked at the code, and there's nothing that an average iOS (and probably Android) developer couldn't do in 4-6 hours.
- gte910h 15y ago
  And finding out exactly what they want done, and documenting it could have taken weeks. Also, where is the code?
  - sumukh1 15y ago
    That is true, but in an ideal world, it shouldn't. You can get it from MuckRock or from OSHA's own site. http://www.muckrock.com/foi/view/united-states-of-america/source-code-of-heat-safety-tool/766/ http://www.muckrock.com/foi/view/united-states-of-america/so... They provided it 20 days ago, so no idea why the author mentioned that it wasn't available.

GiraffeNecktie 15y ago

In the government agency where I work, $200k would actually be considered very reasonable for a steaming pile of shit. We've paid many times that amount and sometimes the shit wasn't even lukewarm, let alone steaming. Believe it or not, we often spend $150 to $200k or more just to make the decision about whether or not we're going to invest in a particular pile of shit.

thirsteh 15y ago
This is double-plus not good.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- spodek 15y ago
  Watch your newspeak, citizen. You meant doubleplusungood, right? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak
  - thirsteh 15y ago
    Doubleplussorry!
jmspring 15y ago
A lot of government agencies, as well as groups within large companies, want to keep their budgets (or increase them), so there isn't an incentive to be cost effective -- as you mentioned. But, as another person commented, the overhead around government projects (documentation, reports, meetings, etc) will bloat things beyond a simple time/materials development contract. The FBO has a site listing the contacts, but there are actually some pretty interesting projects that pop up to be bid upon. Only downside for someone new to the process (or a small shop) is that the big boys (SAIC, etc) have this part pretty streamlined as well as sometimes having in's with the agency requesting the proposal. Edit: The site -- https://www.fbo.gov/ https://www.fbo.gov/

maxharris 15y ago

How does this further the proper mission of the government, which is to protect individual rights? I can't fathom a way that this could have anything to do with the government doing the one essential job it actually has to do! It's not just that it's a badly made app. I think the entire fact that the government making apps like this is absurd. Given what the government actually is (the only agency with the legitimate, legal monopoly on the use of force), it is no wonder that it fails so miserably at doing stuff like this.

dangrossman 15y ago
This is an app specifically designed to help protect your life (one of those rights) from unsafe employment. I get the dig you're making but this seems a weak target for it...
- javert 15y ago
  The government's duty to protect your life does not extend beyond protecting it from the use of force by other people. If you choose to work in a place, that's your choice. Even if you fail to make sure it's safe before you work there, or decide to work there despite the risk. Anyway, even if OSHA were legitime, this app is not effective at achieving anything, even if executed well.
  - jellicle 15y ago
    Because you've tested it?
  - pndmnm 15y ago
    Your definition of "government's duty" is not universally agreed upon, and it's intellectually dishonest to predicate an argument on the presumption that it is.
    - javert 15y ago
      I didn't present any argument. I just made a statement, without presenting (here) any supporting evidence. Yes, I realize most people won't agree with the statement. My hope is that by providing it as food for thought, some people may thinking about it and decide that they agree, or may at least be more open to the idea when it comes up in some other context. Isn't it intellectually dishonest for you to call someone intellectually dishonest, when you don't know all the relevant causal factors? (Answer: no, it's just a mistake.)

pavlov 15y ago

In the European Union, governments are legally required to open public works and supplying contracts to competition through an open tendering process. I'm surprised that this doesn't happen in the US. There's a fair bit of criticism levelled against the EU tendering processes, though. Many feel that the process emphasizes price at the expense of quality, resulting in a "race to the bottom" as another poster mentioned. Public contracts currently open in the EU can be found on a website: http://ted.europa.eu http://ted.europa.eu Looking quickly through the site, the contracts seem to have a huge range -- everything from large architectural projects to supplying a small Swedish town with photocopier paper...

sehugg 15y ago
We do theoretically have such a thing in the US, for instance: http://www.findrfp.com/service/search.aspx?s=iphone&t=FE&x=0&y=0 http://www.findrfp.com/service/search.aspx?s=iphone&t=FE... You can also go here and see contracts already awarded (search for "iphone" for instance): http://www.usaspending.gov/ http://www.usaspending.gov/ The US allows "no bid" or "sole source" contracts, which have several problems, not the least of which is rampant cronyism. Note that even the President failed to stop this gravy train: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/30/end-no-bid-contracts-above-25000/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/pr... Also, you'd be surprised on how many hours get billed visiting the stakeholders for "face time" and to ensure follow-on work.
mattmanser 15y ago
I was surprised by this and decided to check it out, and it looks like they're not really. the implementation of EU government law by national governments is far from uniform and sometimes weak – in 2002, for instance, only 16% of governmental calls to tender were published – government procurement has been called "the weakest link in the common market".[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_procurement_in_the_European_Union http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_procurement_in_the_E... Also check the minimum amounts this applies to, this probably wouldn't have been necessary to put through the process anyway.
- 15y ago

aresant 15y ago

Outstanding piece of marketing on Gun.io's part with a clear "here's how my biz solves this" at the end. #1 on Hacker News is a feat, but this thing has legs on every political and general fluff channel - HuffPo, FoxNews, Conservative Radio, CNN, wire services, etc. I learned from our own blogging efforts when you have a winner, take it to the bank. EG - Hit every PR angle you can think of to get redistribution while you've got the momentum. Any PR gurus out there that would comment on the top handful of ways to fan the flames on PR for a story like this? I'd love to understand the process when you've got this ripe of content.

captainaj 15y ago
Right, was thinking that the writer could file a petition on change.org, great way to build the buzz (aside from the main purpose)
- gravitronic 15y ago
  The irony would be that whatever legislated change the government would make to publicly "fix" this problem would in reality just add another step with another form to the process.
taylorbuley 15y ago
Go upstream and send it to Drudge. This has sensationalist anti-gov headline written all over it.

cdk 15y ago

The $200k price tag is unsurprising if you factor in the cost of non-coding work like requirements gathering, travels, expenses, benefits, etc. This seems like a simple app but when you have a design by committee, approvals, etc it can be quite manpower intensive. The OSHA document is not rendering for me so I can't tell if there's a cost breakdown.

fennecfoxen 15y ago
The sad thing is the amount of non-coding work that exists. But that's government. Still want to move more things under their purview?
danso 15y ago
I highly doubt there was design by committee. More like: 1) Dev gets contract, builds app 2) Person who was arbitrarily moved to dept. of mobile-app development reviews app, figures it's good because it works on a phone, forwards the results to his/her boss. 3) Repeat step 2 at a higher level 4) Done. There is a more stringent audit trail, perhaps. But I doubt there's a committee of people who sat aorund a whiteboard and designed this puppy. I hope there wasn't, at least.

ck2 15y ago

What's really sad is the money went to a foreign company (aeat.co.uk) It didn't even stay in the American economy which should be a minimum requirement these days if a US solution is available.

Jacquass12321 15y ago

I can't help but get warm fuzzy job security feelings when I see something like this, someone actually paid money for that. Well specifically I paid money for that, warm fuzzies taken care of.

matdwyer 15y ago

I've dealt with some Government agencies before in a few different capacities, and they actually WANT To spend their money. The actual cost doesn't really matter, as they are trying to get as close to their budgets as possible, as to not have them decreased the next year. This is especially true in the last 30 or 60 days - to the point where you invoice and are paid before the job is done just because it "has" to be in the billing period.

kennethologist 15y ago

Thank you for the info on MuckRock! Never knew about the site. hopefully one day my country will pass the freedom of information act and we the citizenry can request this kind of information.

npaquin 15y ago

Govt = epic fail.

jiggy2011 15y ago

I agree with his point regarding source code. Often I have interacted with web applications supplied by parts of the UK Civil service and they have obvious bugs that I often feel should be fairly easy fixes. I often feel that I would happily fix them for free as a public service in a fairly short time period, but no doubt it takes months and lots of $ before they are addressed.

nextparadigms 15y ago

The title should be edited. It's 200,000 for all versions Android, iPhone and Blackberry. The Android one was 100,000.

deleted 15y ago
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sumukh1 15y ago

I've looked at the source code for the application (which is available), the claim that this can be done in 6 hours is absolutely right. Another thing. It seems like the company outsourced the development as well to these guys pixelbitcreative. The entire application contains ~1400 lines of code. I wonder how the money got eaten as we went up the chart.

mcknz 15y ago

Is this really much different than outsourced projects for huge corporations? Seems like large organizations get charged a premium for the same amount of work. Government can hire technical people who can do the work in house, or who are qualified to evaluate the work. But because of the pressure to keep government small, qualified tech people go to the private sector and overcharge the government. Seems like one can't win here.

karmajunkie 15y ago
No, its not. Its also worth pointing out that sometimes, just sometimes, it works out the other way. I was the lead on a team that took $150k in funding and produced an open-source implementation of some CDC specifications (https://github.com/talho/openphin https://github.com/talho/openphin), and became the first software in the country to be certified with it. We developed it in about 12 weeks, and the first milestone certifications were actually complete-able (meaning we had the features, though the paperwork took longer) within 2 weeks. We were up against companies used in other states like Northrup and SAIC that literally spent millions on the implementations (and don't even get me started on how much those same companies spent coming up with the standards in the first place, which is a whole 'nother problem) and beat them handily at their own game. We did use private contractors as additional assets starting out and while they were more expensive than hiring additional developers, they had two great attributes: temporary, and good at what they did. Its worth it to pay for competence, every single time. And when its a one-time expense for a project, its much, much easier to deal with than something that incurs year-over-year expenditures.

101001010111 15y ago

"broken proprietary software which the public isn't even allowed to fix." This is recurring theme that traces back at least as early as the 1990's. What's different now is that there is historical evidence that open source projects can produce higher quality software than proprietary ones.

rbarooah 15y ago
Really? It's clear that open source projects can produce excellent quality software. It's also clear that proprietary software can be excellent quality. Both can also produce garbage. If you have evidence that open source can produce generally better quality software, or is consistently better for the same kinds of problem, I would like to see it presented.
- 101001010111 15y ago
  Thanks for the reply. Did you notice my choice to use the words "can produce" (as in "sometimes") not the word "produce" (as in "always")? I would never make the later statement: open projects always produce higher quality software than proprietary ones. That's not my belief. As such, you are asking me in your last sentence if I have evidence to support a statement I would never make. Of course, the answer is no, because I would not bother to look for it. But I would be interested to know why you would like to see such evidence if it exists? I could take a guess as to the reason(s) but I do not want to make assumptions.
  - rbarooah 15y ago
    I did notice. I don't think you're claiming that open source software is always better. I do think you're claiming that overall open source software is systematically better in some way than proprietary software, obviously not in every instance and subject to noise and variance. Feel free to correct me if you not making any such claim. I'm asking for evidence because you stated catgorically that evidence exists but I have personally never come across it. What is the evidence you referred to in your original comment?

kevinalexbrown 15y ago

Whoever runs ERG is getting very rich by making crap that doesn't even work. It's like a negative programmer. Except we're all paying for it. And this is the 'obvious' case, in which it's easy to tell it's crap. What about those times when I'm relying on the experts at these agencies to find solutions to difficult problems without a clear indicator of success? I'm not anti-government by any stretch, but man. The legalese sounded so good: "critical, real-time hot weather information"... Sure, I know that's BS, but what about when I'm not qualified to judge it (i.e. military decisions in Afghanistan based on intel that I'm not privy to).

quanticle 15y ago

I have worked for one of these "green energy"/"smart grid" companies. My conclusion about that company (after about six months of working there) was that its core competency wasn't writing software. The software was a shoddy pile of half-working crap written in a proprietary programming language made by another company that didn't exist any more. No, their core competency was 1) navigating government bureaucracy and 2) filling out government forms. These two competencies ensured that there was never a need to actually produce good software because few competitors would have the time and contacts to even bid on the contract, much less secure it and write good software.

jwallaceparker 15y ago

I am not the least surprised. My girlfriend works for the Health Department in my home state. They paid two consultants $100,000 to convert paper documents to digital form. The contract lasted one week. The consultants literally put documents into a scanner and converted them to PDF. At the end of the week they took their money and left, leaving the bulk of the documents unscanned. An intern could've done this work for $10 an hour. And he/she would've actually finished the job.

rgarcia 15y ago

The code was actually released November 2nd: http://www.muckrock.com/foi/view/united-states-of-america/source-code-of-heat-safety-tool/766/ http://www.muckrock.com/foi/view/united-states-of-america/so...

Jacquass12321 15y ago
Good find! I need go find the dailywtf submission form. I've only glanced at the code but my favorite part so far is using integers 0/1 as booleans and putting "myValid1 == 1" everywhere they want to check if it is true. Didn't they list in the billing that they internationalized this? it's full of hardcoded english strings and nothing is done with the resource files.

yahelc 15y ago

There's probably a good startup to be had in managing the government procurement bidding process for small developers, and thus lowering the barrier to bidding, and reducing the likelihood that contracts will go to folks like this.

ullrich 15y ago

There's a Thumbs.db file in the iOS Sources... scared

deleted 15y ago

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Omnipresent 15y ago

Check out this RFI from IRS for JAVA Open Source. It makes no sense why they would want a team to consolidate all the open source libraries they want rather than just going out and getting those libraries. https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=a479da77b849e4946272d9bf0aa1bfb3&tab=core&_cview=0 https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id...

jellicle 15y ago

Fine. "6 hours maximum", says the author, for an app translated into English and Spanish that interfaces with a remote database and performs some user-initiated calculations, and also has a bunch of static pages. Before starting you must consult with at least a dozen people who know very little about Android and succinctly describe the capabilities of the smartphone and what sorts of applications are even possible. Finally you must provide documentation. Ready? Go! Keep track of your hours... I installed the app. It works fine. Responsive, fast, no problems. I have two minor quibbles with the design, but they are minor. Does what it says on the box. Not an exciting piece of software, but... Has even one person commenting on this thread installed it except me? No? Didn't think so. "It's a piece of crap" says a highly self-interested blogger, and Hacker News jumps on that like starving dogs on Alpo.

rweba 15y ago
It seems this guy doesn't account for "bureaucratic overhead" that is involved in dealing with any large client: You already mentioned the need for lots and lots of meetings and doing the translations, there is also writing up a proposal and some reports, drawing up contracts and sub-contracts, doing usability testing and ensuring compliance with applicable federal regulations. And there is probably a lot of other stuff involved that I don't know about. And lets not forget some overhead to pay for the office and some profit. It probably ends up being a few hundred man hours once you account for everything. So yeah - it could most likely be cheaper or better, but the pitchfork attitude is probably going too far.
- balsam 15y ago
  Looks to me like there's room for someone to come in and make a buck off "AIs" that can handle the regulations, reports and meetings efficiently.
  - civilian 15y ago
    Do you really want to be managed by an AI?

feralchimp 15y ago

These guys are clearly elite: <code> - (float)getHeatIndex:(float)temp:(float)humidity { NSLog(@"[getHeatIndex] temp: %f, humidity: %f", temp, humidity); float hIndex = -42.379 + 2.04901523 * temp + 10.14333127 * humidity - 0.22475541 * temp * humidity - 6.83783 * pow(10, -3) * temp * temp - 5.481717 * pow(10, -2) * humidity * humidity + 1.22874 * pow(10, -3) * temp * temp * humidity + 8.5282 * pow(10, -4) * temp * humidity * humidity - 1.99 * pow(10, -6) * temp * temp * humidity * humidity; //hIndex = round(hIndex); NSLog(@"-Heat Index: %f", hIndex); return hIndex; } </code>

jlev 15y ago
Snark aside, that is the correct NWS formula for Heat Index given temperature in farenheight and percent humidity. Sure it's un ugly regression, but it's accurate within +- 1.3˚F http://www.srh.noaa.gov/images/ffc/pdf/ta_htindx.PDF http://www.srh.noaa.gov/images/ffc/pdf/ta_htindx.PDF via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_index http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_index reference 8

Omnipresent 15y ago

I've been on a govt project for the last four years and can't begin to tell you how much money is wasted on IT projects during the entire year. Hearing in the News that the administration is trying to save money by cutting on office supplies makes me laugh! The "Supercommittee" could have at least put a dent in the savings by literally just reviewing the IT projects that the Govt contracts out and the process they follow to manage those contracts. In the agency I work in, there are 9 IT systems that go to production twice in a year. For the entire year the total development time provided (when environments are open for programmers to develop) is about 2 months. Yet the govt is paying the developers and complete IT teams for the entire year. It really is ridiculous. Big boys like BAH, SAIC, CSC, CACI etc. etc. are milking the system and taking advantage of incompetent and gullible govt employees.

mkramlich 15y ago

This kind of nauseus bloat is a big factor why I'm trying to stay away from iOS and Android development. So many projects out there could be much more quickly, cheaply and freedomly (my word) done as a simple web app or even as pure static HTML website in some cases. So much foolishness, hype and hipstering going on.

absconditus 15y ago
You are staying away from iOS and Android because the government overpays for low quality software?
1010101111001 15y ago
I agree with this, although I'd go even further. If this app's sole purpose is to retrieve a couple of numbers (surface temperature and relative humidity) why do we need graphics? What purpose is achieved? Given the extremely basic task at hand, as an end user my main concern is that it's fast (even over slow connections), reliable and simple. If it breaks I can fix it. My preference would be to retrieve the numbers into a non-graphical console via a few keypunches. All I want is a couple of numbers and I'm done. This could be done with a TCP client like netcat and a shell script that uses basic UNIX utilities. And I could teach an 11 year old how to do it. If a "smart" phone OS does not allow something so simple by default, then to me it's not very useful. It's been dumbed down. "Smart" is the wrong word.

absconditus 15y ago

Years ago my employer was given a much larger grant from NASA to throw a few web pages on a Windows tablet computer and use Dragon Naturally Speaking to navigate between them. We received this grant because of political connections.

canterburry 15y ago

I think the author is also forgetting that any programming work done for the government/state is always contractually bound by a multi-year code guarantee. This means that if any bugs are uncovered within that time period, the vendor must at no cost to the government fix them. That leads to drawn out negotiations over if something is a bug or enhancement. These code guarantees typically range between 2 - 5 years during which you can't charge a dime for anything related to fixing actual bugs.

niels_olson 15y ago

I would like to point out that SAIC more or less stole VisTA source code from the VA under FOIA and then sold the same code to the Department of Defense for billions. We still can't get the source code they've modified. Why is it that if a government employee writes the software, it's FOIA'ble, but if the government pays someone else for it, it's not? The government is just stuck with some crappy binaries?

simc 15y ago
SAIC also screwed up the FBI's Virtual Case File, NSA's Trailblazer, New York's CityTime (with a extra helping of fraud thrown in). It would be interesting to hear of any software project they did do which was not a multi hundred million dollar software engineering disaster.

taylorbuley 15y ago

Great FOIA work. Putting all the re-blogging "journalists" to shame.

nazgulnarsil 15y ago

I strongly recommend Yes, Minister. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister

adnam 15y ago

It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock The meat it feeds on; that cuckold lives in bliss

philipashlock 15y ago

We hope the traditional procurement story will be improved with the help of Civic Commons, an organization which is very much aimed at leveling the playing field for government software. We want to make it easier for more developers and smart spry development shops to work on software projects for government. We want to give open source the same exposure as proprietary software and generally facilitate software co-creation and reuse across government to make sure things don't get paid for more times than they need to. You can learn more about us at http://civiccommons.org http://civiccommons.org The Civic Commons marketplace is currently still in closed beta, but it will be opening up very soon. Please sign-up: http://marketplace.civiccommon.. http://marketplace.civiccommon...

hat1 15y ago

Amidst all of the government-bashing comments, I note that no one has remarked on a few things: * we don't have any actual evidence to support the author's claim that this sort of bloat is routine (remember, plural of anecdote isn't data) * we don't know what kind of wasted money gets tossed around in major corporations (assumptions about how corporations must be lean do not constitute actual evidence) * we don't even have a way to find out what sort of bloat and waste takes place in corporate america - the government at least lets us find out so it maybe doesn't make a lot of sense, in an observable-evidence sort of way, to make with the government-bashing..

philipashlock 15y ago

It's also worth noting that Congress is threatening to cut the budget for the project that tracks overspending on IT projects - the IT Dashboard. While the IT Dashboard tool was properly open sourced and the codebase is doing well out in the wild, the continued use of it for the Federal Government isn't totally free, but the very small budget required to keep something like this running can prevent spending hundreds of millions of dollars on excessive IT projects. For more info on budget cuts that could effect projects like the IT Dashboard, see: http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2011/11/16/crunch-time-in-senate-for-flagship-transparency-programs/ http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2011/11/16/crunch-time-in... For information on the open source IT Dashboard project, see: http://civiccommons.org/2011/05/it-dashboard-six-weeks-in/ http://civiccommons.org/2011/05/it-dashboard-six-weeks-in/

DanielBMarkham 15y ago

This is definitely hacker-bait. Cue up all the folks complaining about wasteful government, then cue up the hotshot programmer folks who will tell us they can code this in 2 hours while drunk, then cue up the FOIA folks, then the folks who feel any critique at all of government is indicative of right-wing extremism, and so on. I remember when the IRS spent 4 Billion on a new computer system and had nothing to show for it. The joke I used for a week was "Hell, they could have paid me $2 Billion and still not had anything to show for it -- and saved half their money." The problem those of us with lots of internal government experience is that most "normal" folks have literally no idea how much waste there is. Yes, it's like a big university. Yes, it's like BigCorp. But no, it's so far beyond those concepts that if that's the only frame of reference you have, you've missed it. I love my country and love paying taxes for it to do useful things. But there simply is no system in place for shutting things down. It just keeps growing. In the private sector the measurement is "does it do something that folks will pay us for?" because if it doesn't, folks eventually stop paying, and the company goes away (although it might take decades). In the public sector the metric is "does it make a politician look bad?" There's a reason Congress delegates all these powers to all these agencies. It's the same reason we have so many "Tsars". Nobody is directly accountable. It's all set up so that if there is a problem, some poor schmuck gets hauled before an investigative committee to get the riot act read to them. That way the guys who are supposed to be really responsible -- the Congressmen -- get to play the part of the person looking to fix things. Politics. It's a beautiful thing. So at the end of the day I'm not really sure this is newsworthy. I could tell similar stories involving tens of millions of dollars, and I bet we could come up with a list of hundreds of these things. Anybody remember the FBI case file system? This is just way small peanuts. Perhaps the "Android app" part of it is enough to be newsworthy, but in my mind that's a benefit: today there are a lot of people pleading to move away from COBOL systems in some government agency -- and losing. I feel really sorry for those guys.

wisty 15y ago
Also, this $200k app is probably an example of good government spending. Arguably, it's UK style Fabian socialism, in which government spending is making it impossible for better private solutions to flourish. Libertarian fanboys will whinge no matter what the government does, unless it does nothing. 200k is a small amount (for any big org), and it's actually going to something public facing, unlike 90% of government work which is simply faceless men putting obtuse reports in each other's pigeon holes. Do we really want to attack one of the few times the government actually tries to make their work relevant to the public? You could equally argue that the 1% is wasting billions on stupid sock puppet ads for online pet shops, photo sharing apps, and AOL. Or on stock options for chefs and masseuses. Or on million dollar teams that do nothing more than re-invent wheels, badly. It's arguable that the government should be doing this at all. But I certainly believe that if government should be doing anything, they should be making their work available to the general public. I don't think they got screwed - 200k for an app is not a giant rip-off. They might have been able to do it cheaper, but it's not totally out of line with the sort of crap industry does.

cleaver 15y ago

In my experience (over a decade consulting to government in Canada), not charging enough can sometime put you at a competitive disadvantage. The purchasing decisions are often made by someone who doesn't understand the technology and their prime concern is risk. They don't want to be "the guy who chose the vendor who screwed up". In government, as often as not, you may not get promoted for doing something great so much as by not doing anything bad. A lot of cost can be added through management of non-technical aspects. The wording may have to go through rounds of approval, goals and features may shift, etc. The cost of writing endless detailed RFP's and the long sales cycles increase the cost. That said, there are also a lot of "consultants" who really are just crap. It made me embarrassed to be in the same business and that is part of the reason I don't work for government clients anymore.

deleted 15y ago

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apage8 15y ago

I guess none of us should be surprised by this...But the real question is how do I get a government contract? What a joke...

kaze 15y ago

Apart from bureaucratic tangles, process overheads and bidding issues, is it possible the artists' fees for illustrations and health related research and verification played a role in the bloat up?

5teev 15y ago

So it's been more than 6 hours since this was posted. There must be a few clones of the Android version by now. Links, anyone?

5teev 15y ago
Six hours later: yeah, didn't think so.

suprgeek 15y ago

Please get this off the front page: 1) $200K is for Android +iOS + BB apps 2) Source code is available 3) App works as advertised and does not Crash (installed) 4) Selling to big Gov. is expensive (not 10X but surely 2-3X) 5) The poster wildly underestimates the total project cost and puts in some arbitrary coding estimate Linkbaity title + Misleading facts + Moral outrage at big Gov != HNews Frontpage