Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser • Hacker News Board

Re: Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

#31

Post by JBReefer » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:42 AM UTC

justinsaccount wrote: post #13

FTA: > “Since its launch in March 2014, 18F has struggled financially,” says GSA’s Office of Inspector General (IG), citing loses every year, now totally over $31.6 million. And from a random site that seems to agree with a few others: > In fiscal year 2015, military spending is projected to account for 54 percent of all federal discretionary spending, a total of $598.5 billion In 3 years 18F has spent 31.6 million.…

I don't get your point at all, I'd say the US's ability to project force is worth 19,000x a year more to me than what 18F does.

Re: Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

#32

Post by ikeboy » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:44 AM UTC

tyre wrote: post #25

I don't care if 18F makes money, and in some cases it may make sense for them not to. In a perfect market, they would be able to sell their services at the same price as the value of those services. So if they build a system for the Veterans Administration (VA) that saves $1 million, they should get $1 million for it. Their EOY revenue would reflect their value created. But they are actually selling to themselves. Th…

>In a perfect market, they would be able to sell their services at the same price as the value of those services.

Uh nope. A perfect market means the price is equal to their costs, not the value provided. A monopoly is when you can extract the value provided as rent.

Re: Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

#33

Post by guessmyname » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:44 AM UTC

lsmarigo wrote: post #10

Activities that can’t be billed to other agencies are another drain. One example is staff time totaling 727 hours on a logo change. The old logo was a blue square with 18F in the lower-right-hand corner. The new logo, a black square with 18F centered and a different font, wasn’t worth the time and doesn’t look as good. for anyone else curious: (new) Black Logo: https://18f.gsa.gov/assets/img/logos/18f-logo.svg (old)…

This reminds me a time when I used to work closely with a design team in a web agency, it was very frustrating to work with them because every little modification to things like colors, sizes, buttons and the like would be accompanied with several hours of "design strategy", time that the designers would waste thinking and prototyping new ideas for the corporate image of any of our clients, I say "waste" because most of the time they would end up with a design similar if not equal to the original.

Their GitHub organization [1] shows significant activity, it is sad to see people spending their time, energy and resources on things that are ultimately not supported by their financial funds.

[1] https://github.com/18f

Re: Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

#34

Post by jonstewart » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:44 AM UTC

Hi Silicon Valley! Thanks for visiting our nation's capitol!

kisses,

DC

--

Seriously, this shouldn't be surprising. It's a noble effort, the work is probably worth the so-called "losses", but the reason the government is the government and not Silicon Valley is that in government, there are a bajillion rules to keep you from screwing up too badly.

There's been a fetishization in DC of Silicon Valley techniques, but 1) it's not at all clear that the current Silicon Valley ethos really is worth replicating, and 2) the conditions aren't right here, it can't be replicated without fundamentally changing the conditions. One of the conditions is that there's oversight over everything, and there's the press.

One little article in the federal section of the Post isn't going to kill off anything alone, but it will be interesting to see what happens to 18F after the presidential transition. If there isn't high level cover for it, it will be ground to dust.

Re: Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

#35

Post by Radim » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:45 AM UTC

justinsaccount wrote: post #13

FTA: > “Since its launch in March 2014, 18F has struggled financially,” says GSA’s Office of Inspector General (IG), citing loses every year, now totally over $31.6 million. And from a random site that seems to agree with a few others: > In fiscal year 2015, military spending is projected to account for 54 percent of all federal discretionary spending, a total of $598.5 billion In 3 years 18F has spent 31.6 million.…

You mean, imagine another government agency receiving a budget of $600B a year? shudders

If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

Re: Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

#36

Post by winter_blue » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:46 AM UTC

They could've created feature/bug bounties and/or grants for open source contributors, and tried to build an open source community around what they're building. This would naturally attract/increase volunteer contributions, but they might also be able to control costs better with such a model.

18F is an uniquely special position since they are building software for the general public, and so are in a great position to attract OSS contributors, as contributing to 18F would be a way of helping your community/country, and would make people feel better.

Re: Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

#37

Post by jacobsenscott » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:47 AM UTC

lsmarigo wrote: post #10

Activities that can’t be billed to other agencies are another drain. One example is staff time totaling 727 hours on a logo change. The old logo was a blue square with 18F in the lower-right-hand corner. The new logo, a black square with 18F centered and a different font, wasn’t worth the time and doesn’t look as good. for anyone else curious: (new) Black Logo: https://18f.gsa.gov/assets/img/logos/18f-logo.svg (old)…

Meh. I'm sure google spent millions on their logo change, and it was just a font tweak. Hackernews was gushing. God knows what they spend per week on google doodles.

There's no winning here for 18f. Either their sites are archaic disasters and they are criticized for not being up to par with the top tier consumer sites. Or they spend some money to bring them up to par and its "OMG! An $800 toilet seat!"

Re: Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

#38

Post by easychewie » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:48 AM UTC

JBReefer wrote: post #12

18F gives me the creeps because of https://18f.gsa.gov/2016/01/12/hacking-inclusion-by-customiz... Something about government robots and goodspeak speech correction feels Orwellian, even if it's really tiny.

Even though many people see "guys" as a harmless, genderless word, not everybody does. You can think of the opposite word to guys (for example: gals or girls) and wonder if a group of men would feel comfortable being referred to as girls. When someone refers to you using a word that you don’t identify with, it's easy to feel excluded from conversation or misidentified.

Good grief. What a bunch of girls.

Re: Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

#39

Post by debaserab2 » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:49 AM UTC

jacobsenscott wrote: post #37

lsmarigo wrote: post #10

Activities that can’t be billed to other agencies are another drain. One example is staff time totaling 727 hours on a logo change. The old logo was a blue square with 18F in the lower-right-hand corner. The new logo, a black square with 18F centered and a different font, wasn’t worth the time and doesn’t look as good. for anyone else curious: (new) Black Logo: https://18f.gsa.gov/assets/img/logos/18f-logo.svg (old)…

Meh. I'm sure google spent millions on their logo change, and it was just a font tweak. Hackernews was gushing. God knows what they spend per week on google doodles. There's no winning here for 18f. Either their sites are archaic disasters and they are criticized for not being up to par with the top tier consumer sites. Or they spend some money to bring them up to par and its "OMG! An $800 toilet seat!"

The difference being, of course, that Google is a massively profitable company that can afford that kind of expense.

Re: Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

#40

Post by protomyth » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:50 AM UTC

tyre wrote: post #25

I don't care if 18F makes money, and in some cases it may make sense for them not to. In a perfect market, they would be able to sell their services at the same price as the value of those services. So if they build a system for the Veterans Administration (VA) that saves $1 million, they should get $1 million for it. Their EOY revenue would reflect their value created. But they are actually selling to themselves. Th…

$32m is not nothing, it would pay for a big chunk of a lot of programs. The federal government could actually pay the amount of educational money promised in the original legislation to the tribal colleges for many years. It would pay our tribal college's general fund for well over a decade.