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

washingtonpost.com

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

#121

Post by 234dd57d2c8db »

ajju wrote: post #4
nowarninglabel wrote: post #2

This is disappointing to read, given I love what 18F has done. No matter whether we think they should be breaking even or not, they shouldn't be creating wildly inaccurate revenue projections and then falling drastically short of them. That looks like something is going drastically wrong with management there, especially considering greater macroeconomic conditions have not changed drastically enough in a way that wo…

How many fast growing startups have accurate financial projections?

The difference is, I can choose to buy a startup's product, or I can not and watch them go bust with someone else's money. This is the government, they take your money by force and you are forced to "purchase" the "product". Because you have no choice, it would be amoral to treat the government like a startup and compel citizens to fund this "product".

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

#122

Post by Naritai »

Anasufovic wrote: post #116
wpietri wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still do not understand why people pay so much attention to these things. Quite a lot of people who respond as you do actively don't want to understand. But in case you're one of the ones who is actually curious: Historically, sexism has been a problem. For millennia, women were basically property. The last couple hundred years, we've been unwinding that. E.g. less than 100 years ago, women finally got to vote. T…

What is your solution for gendered languages?

Regardless of what speakers of those languages do, we can do everything we can to remove gender bias from English. We don't have to keep doing something just because others are doing it.

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

#123

Post by SoreGums »

mdasen wrote: post #82
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…

Ultimately, the issue is whether 18F is more effective than other means and accurate accounting is important to that end. Let's say that the VA gets bids to create a new system for something. 18F says they can do it for $900k and ContractorX says they can do it for $1M. 18F gets the contract and produces a system that cost the VA $900k. Let's say the system cost taxpayers an additional $1M that isn't billed to the VA…

The biggest issue with this is when contractor x bids $1m to get in the door and then says oh yeah, we need an extra $5m to do it properly since we had more meetings and scope has changed.

None of that is able to be specced up front because people are involved that have "connections" and "back rubbing"...

It's not to say that the extra scope and cost of $5m is worthless, just simply bidding for work and coming in the cheapest is not an accurate view of the work once the project is finished. This is where 18F should be creating value because they are on the Gov't side as were.

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

#125

Post by blowski »

mmanfrin wrote: post #64
protomyth wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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.

$32mil is 10 cents a person for a year to fund. It's worth it.

Saying "it's an acceptable cost because the $32 million loss is balanced by gains in other areas" is potentially winning argument.

Saying "it's nothing" is a losing argument in every town hall meeting that ever takes place. $32 million is a lot of parks, operations, libraries, and whatever else you like.

We should focus on the value bought by that money, not on waving it away as "nothing".

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

#126

Post by newjersey »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #117
setpatchaddress wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do tell. What do you think about paying the salary of FBI agents who interfere in presidential elections?

It depends, will they use private email servers?

I don't have any credibility or knowledge to talk about the exact current issue at hand but don't we at hn pine over the beautiful past where email was distributed instead of going between Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and Google? A private email server isn't bad by definition, is it? Perhaps we should try to help the "ordinary" person keep their servers secure?

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

#127

Post by icantdrive55 »

protomyth wrote: post #40
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.

32 million is a senator's pet project. A "build my bridge, and I'll sign your bill." It happens in every bill.

I first realized how much money is wasted is when I read the grants in The Stimulus Recovery Act of 2009. I was looking at the money that went to my county.

Just in my county, I was shocked. The nonprofit I used to work for got close to a million for the founder's "I won't say, because I don't want any scrutiny, but the money was wasted."

And I won't even bring up the 200+ defense contractors--that bleed the tax payers yearly.

I'm a liberal guy. I don't believe in waste.

I could care less about 32 million.

Plus, the hit piece didn't have a way of accounting for any Goodwill 18F created.

What scares me is Obama is going. He knew enough about technology to fear it. In an interview, someone asked him, "What keeps you up at night?" He immediately said, "Hackers". (I will never forget that look he had. It was honest concern.). He then caught himself. He had the look like, I was just too honest. I think we are all going to miss his leadership in a few months from now.

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

#128

Post by rambos »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #120

I love 18F! A few months back they published a set of web design standard [0] that I really liked. Accessibility is among their top concerns, so it's legible in all devices and there's a lot of contrast. I used their color suggestions for my blog [1] (still haven't updating syntax highlighting, terribly sorry about that). The two things I changed were typography sizes and fonts. I decided it would be best to use prei…

Doesn't it seem wasteful that 18f spent all that time on the standards, instead of maybe a guide/theme on how Gov't sites should adapt, already open-sourced (bootstrap), frameworks?

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

#129

Post by thwarted »

chrissnell wrote: post #49
jacobsenscott wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!"

What business does a government agency have spending nearly 800 hours (plus inevitable expenses on stationery, biz cards, signage, etc) on a logo? How does this benefit the taxpayer? Why do they need this logo? This logo changes nothing for anybody except the people who worked on it. This is not good stewardship of our tax dollars and you can bet your lunch that this won't be the only FW&A problem found at 18F.

What business does a government agency have spending nearly 800 hours (plus inevitable expenses on stationery, biz cards, signage, etc) on a logo? How does this benefit the taxpayer? Why do they need this logo?

One thing that bothers me about government websites is the boosterism of whoever is in office. Secretary of State websites are particularly bad in this regard. Usually you go to the SoS website to do something related to licensing, like the DMV. Both Illinois and California have had headshots of the Secretary of State displayed prominently in the header. It is labeled/named something long winded like "Secretary of State Joe Blow's Department of Motor Vehicles Website". Is it on a .com or a .gov or a .(state).us domain for any given state? The generic "(welcome and platform) message from the Secretary of State" is often front and center.

Really, who the Secretary of State is is so secondary to the actual services being provided, all this does is serve to tell everyone who is responsible for this crap website.

If there was consistent branding, and that branding was strong and recognizable, citizens would be better served. You wanna toot your horn, put some metrics up like the last 6 months of turn-around time on license approval, website and phone service response time, help topics researched, costs to provide the services, etc, and show me how access to state services are improving over time, which is the SoS's actual job. Government agencies usually have weak branding because it gets upset based on term lengths (except for services like the IRS, which has pretty consistent branding and methodologies).

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

#130

Post by barney54 »

rmason wrote: post #105
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…

I smell a hit piece from a mile away. 18F has done a lot of good but in trying to change how government IT does business but they've also made powerful enemies who view them as a threat to their power base.. Find something that can be spun negatively and sell the story to a friendly journalist. That it what appears to have been done here. Next get the head of a budget committee to question 18F spending. It is all don…

The story is reporting on a report from GSA's Inspector General. It's straight reporting. Not a hit piece.
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