9 ms·

ArriveCan’s $54M price tag ‘outrageous,’ tech leaders say

35 points by r_singh 4y ago

mooneater 4y ago
So glad our high taxes are being put to good use, merci notre gouvernement fédéral
version_five 4y ago
Every IT procurement by Canada is a failure, this is not a surprise. The cost is a rounding error though compared to all the other harm this did. We shouldn't get distracted by the easy target of government waste on IT projects, and should focus on the real problems with this app (that it was mandatory, probably illegal, used to police health info, plus caused massive economic damage). These are all bigger problems than the well known cost overruns that happen in this sort of project. Also, I saw a social media post from a "founder" yesterday about how his company could have built a CRUD app with the same functionality for much more cheaply. Obviously a lot of people with no government contracting experience armchair quarterbacking the cost angle
- theluketaylor 4y ago
  We need our own version of 18F to build technology patterns and in house expertise so that government is less reliant on outsourcing. With more in house work when government does outsource there would be a much better yardstick to determine requirements and measure success.
  - asdajksah2123 4y ago
    This is the most obvious reason for why government procurement and contracting costs are so high. US/Canada governments have simply dissolved all in house experience. Which means they have no competent and experienced people who can actually evaluate contract bids. But further, they don't have people in-house with either the experience, competence, or power to make agreed upon changes to contracts on the fly. And because the contracts are so set in stone, that means even if all the bidders are operating completely ethically, they need to pad their margins significantly to account for anything unexpected. But in reality many bidders are not operating ethically and are able to use a lot of the necessary features of a government bidding process (clearly outlined and transparent contracts with very little subjective input) to maximize their revenue and minimize their output.
  - wheelinsupial 4y ago
    Maybe I'm stretching things a bit, but there is the Canadian Digital Service (CDS)- https://digital.canada.ca/ https://digital.canada.ca/
- kennend3 4y ago
  > probably illegal It is always odd to read comments like this. Can we assume you will you be challenging this at the supreme court? The government passes laws and so it is odd to state something is "illegal" when it may not be the case. It is also odd because every country has special rules/laws around entry that are NOT the same as the laws inside the country. One of the best examples is our neighbour to the south where the border is considered a "constitutional free zone" - allowing search/seizures which are not permitted elsewhere in the country. Far more likely you disagree with it, but that isn't a legal question. Many "covid" related actions were challenged, and the supreme court of canada ruled in the governments favour, does that mean the supreme court is also wrong? If so, who do you take your complaint to above this court? Every country on earth has a legal right to control entry at its borders and while Canada was odd to use ArriveCan, pretty much every country demanded vaccine proof when they reopened their borders. Does this mean they all acted illegally? The government's job is to protect its citizens, again this is why almost every country enacted some form of border control to try to stop covid, but they are all wrong?
- johnwalkr 4y ago
  I remember when someone like that made a Covid app to show your vaccination status faster and cheaper than Alberta could and the media made him out to be such a hero. One of the hockey teams even required fans to install it to be admitted to the arena. Well the app consisted of users uploading ID and record of vaccination, then without any check, putting a check mark or something on the screen. All of the uploads were stored in a US server and publicly accessible. But nothing beats the hero in Ontario that made according to local news stations made fool out of the local government by building stairs in a park for $550 when it was going to cost an outrageous $65k (in the end $10k I think). I think about these stairs[1] whenever someone without experience claims they can make things cheaper. [1] https://twitter.com/CTVNews/status/888034787834855424 https://twitter.com/CTVNews/status/888034787834855424
  - boopboopbadoop 4y ago
    Good on the person for trying, but ya those stairs are a death trap. What’s worse is the replies that have no idea how bad those stairs are. One injury and you have a $100k lawsuit to settle on top of $65k for the new stairs.
co_dh 4y ago
This is how my money get wasted.
- cobrabyte 4y ago
  Not to fret... we'll just print more.
mutt2016 4y ago
That honestly doesn't seem crazy. Tech leaders forget about the real world sometimes, and everybody thinks they are the hottest thing. I bet the development effort was small and cheap, and the least expensive part.
a_cardboard_box 4y ago
> Canadian tech leaders who have built apps for large corporate clients have described Ottawa’s $54-million price tag for ArriveCan as outrageous, explaining that in their experience, most apps are built for less than $1-million. Why did you pay $2 billion for this airport? Most buildings cost less than $1 million!
- sn0w_crash 4y ago
  ??
- jdmg94 4y ago
  in this analogy we have paid 2 billion for a run down Saskatoon house
sn0w_crash 4y ago
These scenarios are the best argument for starving the government of money. There is no way you’re going to fix this otherwise. Or you can install someone at the top who cares and is accountable and can be terminated for such gross mismanagement of funds. But That’s not gonna happen^
belval 4y ago
I'd be easy to pile-on with more criticism so I'll do the opposite. > Nick Van Weerdenburg, CEO and founder of Toronto-based Rangle, said his firm could likely have built the app in less than a month for about $250,000. > “This is a very simple app,” he said. Having used ArriveCan I would agree with his quote. It is a very simple app, but what is not simple is writing the specification for it. The contractors weren't given the app and told "how long would it take you to make this?". They were approached to develop "an app to monitor COVID risk at the border", then they had to work with probably several committees, all with different visions and expectations, all trying to get their idea executed. That's often the part that people forget in favour of easy criticism. ArriveCan is simple, but the process that built it is not, there was no equivalent in the wild that could be used for inspiration, it had a bunch of translation requirements, and needed to interface with existing airport arrival systems. I'm not saying we should be proud of our government for making a 54M$ CRUD app that, as far as we can tell, did not have much of an impact on COVID being spread, but interviewing a bunch of "IT leaders" and acting as if they would actually sign a contract to build ArriveCan for 250k$ is disingenuous and the Globe and Mail should be ashamed of framing it this way.
- bel_marinaio 4y ago
  so you're saying $250k to build the app once you get specs from the $53,750,000 worth of meetings and planning committees? That sounds much more reasonable and not like $50million worth of tax payer money was stolen /s
  - belval 4y ago
    Wouldn't it be fair to say that once an organization reaches a certain scale it is expected that communications constitute most of its overhead? Something like ArriveCan requires the collaboration of several branches of government and ties in with a system that monitors over 2M arrivals in our country every month. Even all the doers attitude in the world won't change the fact that they won't just give you access to those databases without some pretty extensive review. Just think of the QA needed on the arrival machines at the airport, you can't afford to have them all be out of order because they handle much of the incoming traffic, so the "ArriveCan update" has to be thoroughly tested so that it does not cause any significant downtime. This is the exact opposite of the "move fast and break things" environment. To summarize, I do think that ArriveCan (the program) was a waste of money, but I think the program itself did not waste money. It's the price that comes with building multi-systems applications.
glonq 4y ago
I hope nobody tries to play partisan politics on this one. Canadian gov't IT is extravagantly expensive and inefficient, regardless of who's in power.

35 points by r_singh 4y ago

So glad our high taxes are being put to good use, merci notre gouvernement fédéral

Every IT procurement by Canada is a failure, this is not a surprise. The cost is a rounding error though compared to all the other harm this did. We shouldn't get distracted by the easy target of government waste on IT projects, and should focus on the real problems with this app (that it was mandatory, probably illegal, used to police health info, plus caused massive economic damage). These are all bigger problems than the well known cost overruns that happen in this sort of project. Also, I saw a social media post from a "founder" yesterday about how his company could have built a CRUD app with the same functionality for much more cheaply. Obviously a lot of people with no government contracting experience armchair quarterbacking the cost angle

theluketaylor 4y ago
We need our own version of 18F to build technology patterns and in house expertise so that government is less reliant on outsourcing. With more in house work when government does outsource there would be a much better yardstick to determine requirements and measure success.
- asdajksah2123 4y ago
  This is the most obvious reason for why government procurement and contracting costs are so high. US/Canada governments have simply dissolved all in house experience. Which means they have no competent and experienced people who can actually evaluate contract bids. But further, they don't have people in-house with either the experience, competence, or power to make agreed upon changes to contracts on the fly. And because the contracts are so set in stone, that means even if all the bidders are operating completely ethically, they need to pad their margins significantly to account for anything unexpected. But in reality many bidders are not operating ethically and are able to use a lot of the necessary features of a government bidding process (clearly outlined and transparent contracts with very little subjective input) to maximize their revenue and minimize their output.
- wheelinsupial 4y ago
  Maybe I'm stretching things a bit, but there is the Canadian Digital Service (CDS)- https://digital.canada.ca/ https://digital.canada.ca/
kennend3 4y ago
> probably illegal It is always odd to read comments like this. Can we assume you will you be challenging this at the supreme court? The government passes laws and so it is odd to state something is "illegal" when it may not be the case. It is also odd because every country has special rules/laws around entry that are NOT the same as the laws inside the country. One of the best examples is our neighbour to the south where the border is considered a "constitutional free zone" - allowing search/seizures which are not permitted elsewhere in the country. Far more likely you disagree with it, but that isn't a legal question. Many "covid" related actions were challenged, and the supreme court of canada ruled in the governments favour, does that mean the supreme court is also wrong? If so, who do you take your complaint to above this court? Every country on earth has a legal right to control entry at its borders and while Canada was odd to use ArriveCan, pretty much every country demanded vaccine proof when they reopened their borders. Does this mean they all acted illegally? The government's job is to protect its citizens, again this is why almost every country enacted some form of border control to try to stop covid, but they are all wrong?
johnwalkr 4y ago
I remember when someone like that made a Covid app to show your vaccination status faster and cheaper than Alberta could and the media made him out to be such a hero. One of the hockey teams even required fans to install it to be admitted to the arena. Well the app consisted of users uploading ID and record of vaccination, then without any check, putting a check mark or something on the screen. All of the uploads were stored in a US server and publicly accessible. But nothing beats the hero in Ontario that made according to local news stations made fool out of the local government by building stairs in a park for $550 when it was going to cost an outrageous $65k (in the end $10k I think). I think about these stairs[1] whenever someone without experience claims they can make things cheaper. [1] https://twitter.com/CTVNews/status/888034787834855424 https://twitter.com/CTVNews/status/888034787834855424
- boopboopbadoop 4y ago
  Good on the person for trying, but ya those stairs are a death trap. What’s worse is the replies that have no idea how bad those stairs are. One injury and you have a $100k lawsuit to settle on top of $65k for the new stairs.

co_dh 4y ago

This is how my money get wasted.

cobrabyte 4y ago
Not to fret... we'll just print more.

mutt2016 4y ago

That honestly doesn't seem crazy. Tech leaders forget about the real world sometimes, and everybody thinks they are the hottest thing. I bet the development effort was small and cheap, and the least expensive part.

a_cardboard_box 4y ago

> Canadian tech leaders who have built apps for large corporate clients have described Ottawa’s $54-million price tag for ArriveCan as outrageous, explaining that in their experience, most apps are built for less than $1-million. Why did you pay $2 billion for this airport? Most buildings cost less than $1 million!

sn0w_crash 4y ago
??
jdmg94 4y ago
in this analogy we have paid 2 billion for a run down Saskatoon house

sn0w_crash 4y ago

These scenarios are the best argument for starving the government of money. There is no way you’re going to fix this otherwise. Or you can install someone at the top who cares and is accountable and can be terminated for such gross mismanagement of funds. But That’s not gonna happen^

belval 4y ago

I'd be easy to pile-on with more criticism so I'll do the opposite. > Nick Van Weerdenburg, CEO and founder of Toronto-based Rangle, said his firm could likely have built the app in less than a month for about $250,000. > “This is a very simple app,” he said. Having used ArriveCan I would agree with his quote. It is a very simple app, but what is not simple is writing the specification for it. The contractors weren't given the app and told "how long would it take you to make this?". They were approached to develop "an app to monitor COVID risk at the border", then they had to work with probably several committees, all with different visions and expectations, all trying to get their idea executed. That's often the part that people forget in favour of easy criticism. ArriveCan is simple, but the process that built it is not, there was no equivalent in the wild that could be used for inspiration, it had a bunch of translation requirements, and needed to interface with existing airport arrival systems. I'm not saying we should be proud of our government for making a 54M$ CRUD app that, as far as we can tell, did not have much of an impact on COVID being spread, but interviewing a bunch of "IT leaders" and acting as if they would actually sign a contract to build ArriveCan for 250k$ is disingenuous and the Globe and Mail should be ashamed of framing it this way.

bel_marinaio 4y ago
so you're saying $250k to build the app once you get specs from the $53,750,000 worth of meetings and planning committees? That sounds much more reasonable and not like $50million worth of tax payer money was stolen /s
- belval 4y ago
  Wouldn't it be fair to say that once an organization reaches a certain scale it is expected that communications constitute most of its overhead? Something like ArriveCan requires the collaboration of several branches of government and ties in with a system that monitors over 2M arrivals in our country every month. Even all the doers attitude in the world won't change the fact that they won't just give you access to those databases without some pretty extensive review. Just think of the QA needed on the arrival machines at the airport, you can't afford to have them all be out of order because they handle much of the incoming traffic, so the "ArriveCan update" has to be thoroughly tested so that it does not cause any significant downtime. This is the exact opposite of the "move fast and break things" environment. To summarize, I do think that ArriveCan (the program) was a waste of money, but I think the program itself did not waste money. It's the price that comes with building multi-systems applications.

glonq 4y ago

I hope nobody tries to play partisan politics on this one. Canadian gov't IT is extravagantly expensive and inefficient, regardless of who's in power.