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It's not that hard is the basic answer. They have plenty of people with IT experience capable of managing the project to develop and in house implementation. Ev

It's not that hard is the basic answer. They have plenty of people with IT experience capable of managing the project to develop and in house implementation. Even outsourcing what they need to will be cheaper than going with what a company like Cubic offers, where the price is significantly marked up over the actual cost of developing. It's a better use of tax payer money with the bonus that the city is not dependent on a third party for-profit entity.

fastball 2y ago
Difficulty has almost nothing to do with it. It's about volume. Baking a loaf of bread is not particularly difficult either. But unless you plan to bake many loaves of bread, it is almost certainly neither cheaper nor faster to do so yourself, even if you have experience baking bread. Bakeries also have profit margins, and that changes nothing. All companies make a profit. That doesn't mean they are fleecing you. Do you make your own clothes? Certainly it must be cheaper to do it yourself rather than buy a shirt from a company, right? Because they have their profits to worry about. Does every city have its own manhole cover factory? Why not? Certainly it must be cheaper to build your own manhole cover factory (forging manhole covers is not a hard problem, after all) rather than pay a company to do it. After all, the manhole cover company is burdened by profit motive, and the city is not. Repeat ad nauseam.
- ruthmarx 2y ago
  > it is almost certainly neither cheaper nor faster to do so yourself, even if you have experience baking bread. You are severely underestimating how much a company will mark up the cost to make a profit. > Do you make your own clothes? Certainly it must be cheaper to do it yourself rather than buy a shirt from a company, right? Poor analogy. The fare system being talked about is a big investment that doesn't need to be replaced every year. A closer equivalent would be building your own computer, and yes many people do. The parts they manufacturer they still buy or have made. > Repeat ad nauseam. Except your analogy doesn't apply across the board and you know this. If we extrapolate from your reasoning a city shouldn't do anything themselves.
  - chii 2y ago
    > If we extrapolate from your reasoning a city shouldn't do anything themselves. exactly correct. A city should be a bureaucratic, administrative organization that collects taxes, and funds projects. These projects should be done by professional project doers - such as construction companies, or IT companies, or bakers. There ought to be many project doers, all competing for the city's funding. The city's job is to find the lowest cost, highest value project doer to give them the project. The people of the city chooses what projects to fund, and the city takes care of the administrative work of allocating the tax dollars. Nowhere in this loop should a city be keeping employees on hand in the expectation of projects that need doing.
    - 082349872349872 2y ago
      One year my city put the sidewalk snow-clearing out on contract to a private company, but then the sidewalks didn't get cleared between Christmas and New Year, because the company was on holiday during that period. Someone wrote an editorial that would not pass HN's comment policy, basically to the effect of "who would ever have guessed that it might snow in between Christmas and New Year?" and sidewalk-clearing went back to being a public task.
      - fastball 2y ago
        In my experience public workers are more likely to have public holidays off than private workers.
    - ruthmarx 2y ago
      > exactly correct. No it isn't. What nonsense. Cities have been doing things themselves all around the world for decades because it generally makes more sense. > Nowhere in this loop should a city be keeping employees on hand in the expectation of projects that need doing. They already do that, look at just IT for example, they maintain websites, databases, etc. They don't outsource everything, that's ridiculous.

fastball 2y ago

Difficulty has almost nothing to do with it. It's about volume. Baking a loaf of bread is not particularly difficult either. But unless you plan to bake many loaves of bread, it is almost certainly neither cheaper nor faster to do so yourself, even if you have experience baking bread. Bakeries also have profit margins, and that changes nothing. All companies make a profit. That doesn't mean they are fleecing you. Do you make your own clothes? Certainly it must be cheaper to do it yourself rather than buy a shirt from a company, right? Because they have their profits to worry about. Does every city have its own manhole cover factory? Why not? Certainly it must be cheaper to build your own manhole cover factory (forging manhole covers is not a hard problem, after all) rather than pay a company to do it. After all, the manhole cover company is burdened by profit motive, and the city is not. Repeat ad nauseam.

ruthmarx 2y ago
> it is almost certainly neither cheaper nor faster to do so yourself, even if you have experience baking bread. You are severely underestimating how much a company will mark up the cost to make a profit. > Do you make your own clothes? Certainly it must be cheaper to do it yourself rather than buy a shirt from a company, right? Poor analogy. The fare system being talked about is a big investment that doesn't need to be replaced every year. A closer equivalent would be building your own computer, and yes many people do. The parts they manufacturer they still buy or have made. > Repeat ad nauseam. Except your analogy doesn't apply across the board and you know this. If we extrapolate from your reasoning a city shouldn't do anything themselves.
- chii 2y ago
  > If we extrapolate from your reasoning a city shouldn't do anything themselves. exactly correct. A city should be a bureaucratic, administrative organization that collects taxes, and funds projects. These projects should be done by professional project doers - such as construction companies, or IT companies, or bakers. There ought to be many project doers, all competing for the city's funding. The city's job is to find the lowest cost, highest value project doer to give them the project. The people of the city chooses what projects to fund, and the city takes care of the administrative work of allocating the tax dollars. Nowhere in this loop should a city be keeping employees on hand in the expectation of projects that need doing.
  - 082349872349872 2y ago
    One year my city put the sidewalk snow-clearing out on contract to a private company, but then the sidewalks didn't get cleared between Christmas and New Year, because the company was on holiday during that period. Someone wrote an editorial that would not pass HN's comment policy, basically to the effect of "who would ever have guessed that it might snow in between Christmas and New Year?" and sidewalk-clearing went back to being a public task.
    - fastball 2y ago
      In my experience public workers are more likely to have public holidays off than private workers.
  - ruthmarx 2y ago
    > exactly correct. No it isn't. What nonsense. Cities have been doing things themselves all around the world for decades because it generally makes more sense. > Nowhere in this loop should a city be keeping employees on hand in the expectation of projects that need doing. They already do that, look at just IT for example, they maintain websites, databases, etc. They don't outsource everything, that's ridiculous.