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I recognize the difficulties of attempting a project like this, and the serious ramifications of any bugs you introduce into the project. There are life and dea
by japhyr 12y ago
I recognize the difficulties of attempting a project like this, and the serious ramifications of any bugs you introduce into the project. There are life and death ramifications here as well - contributing to a wrongful imprisonment, or accidentally freeing a dangerous criminal are pretty bad outcomes. But if no one attempts this, those things are going to happen anyway.
I'm not saying I could do a perfect job - just that I imagine I'd have something to show for working on this problem full time for 10 years, with the stated level of funding.
- x0x0 12y agoI don't doubt you would. But the challenge in these projects is generally not technical, which your post focused on. It's all management: management of scope, management of requirements gathering, management of expectations, management of deliverables. Management of having to work with people who, frankly, are dumb, and for whatever reason resent you, but they use the system and you have to figure out what they need anyway. Oh, and the better question in all of this is why is Alaska building such a system? Are they such special snowflakes that not a single other state or country in the world has a similar system that they could buy and minimally to moderately adapt for local needs? Forty-nine other states, plus DC, plus puerto rico, plus the fbi's system, not to mention the provinces in Canada or states in Mexico. Surely someone has a system that could serve as a 90% starting point.
- mlinksva 12y agoWhat is the best guess at answer to the better question? Relatedly, why aren't these systems mandated to be open source? The public ought be able to inspect the algorithms that regulate them, and various parts of government ought be able to collaborate freely.