I’m shocked (and amused) how little of this is comprehensible to me without more context.
Luca App: CCC calls for a moratorium
141–150 of 169 posts
Re: Luca App: CCC calls for a moratorium
#142Re: Luca App: CCC calls for a moratorium
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's actually "accountability" that's a big part of the problem. Government procurement is so focused on the appearance of fairness and money saving that all other goals, like actually getting something that works, take a back seat. You end up with over-specified requirements that remove the possibility of innovative or creative solutions. Providers are treated like a commodity, where it is assumed that all will do t…
This is exactly it. And to be clear, there's a good reason for it: it's to prevent corruption. If things aren't overspecified and providers aren't treated like a commodity, then it's incredibly hard to prove that a government official actually awarded a contract in a fair process, rather than just sending it over to their best friend's business. Unfortunately, nobody's really come up with any reliable process for hav…
> And to be clear, there's a good reason for it: it's to prevent corruption.
There’s consensus in this thread that this process reinforces corruption, and is controlled by the corrupt, so preventing corruption isn’t the real reason.
If you want to prevent corruption, hire engineers directly at market rate, and promote / retain them based on their ability to deliver projects.
If you want proof that this approach works, just study history. The US government used to work this way (back when our middle class and economic clout were growing) but corrupt politicians decided to outsource everything to increase the supply of kickbacks.
Re: Luca App: CCC calls for a moratorium
#144The Luca app really is a complete train wreck. And what's worse is that the federal governments don't even have any direct control over the app itself, they just bought access to the contact tracing data for 12 months from the company operating the app. Meanwhile the company controls the app and all connected user accounts and can repurpose it in whichever way they see fit (and they already announced they have plans…
> I wasn't a big fan of the Covid tracing app in the beginning Let this be a lesson. If you get something good and still keep complaining and complaining, then what you get in the end is something bad.
Yeah, just bow your head down like a good boy.
Re: Luca App: CCC calls for a moratorium
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is exactly it. And to be clear, there's a good reason for it: it's to prevent corruption. If things aren't overspecified and providers aren't treated like a commodity, then it's incredibly hard to prove that a government official actually awarded a contract in a fair process, rather than just sending it over to their best friend's business. Unfortunately, nobody's really come up with any reliable process for hav…
> And to be clear, there's a good reason for it: it's to prevent corruption. There’s consensus in this thread that this process reinforces corruption, and is controlled by the corrupt, so preventing corruption isn’t the real reason. If you want to prevent corruption, hire engineers directly at market rate, and promote / retain them based on their ability to deliver projects. If you want proof that this approach works…
> There’s consensus in this thread that this process reinforces corruption
There is no such consensus, and the idea that it reinforces corruption is contrary to common sense -- it's self-evident that maximum corruption bypasses specifications and public bidding altogether and just hands a contract to a politician's friend.
> If you want to prevent corruption, hire engineers directly at market rate
It's not feasible for a government to accomplish all its tasks by hiring and never by contracting. It would be incredibly wasteful because many projects are one-off, whether building a new suspension bridge or a huge new IT project. It's like saying a company should have no suppliers and write all its own software from scratch.
> just study history. The US government used to work this way
I've studied quite a bit of history thanks, and government in the US used to be quite corrupt compared to today -- just look up Tammany Hall [1] if you'd like a quick introduction. Corruption in the US has very much decreased over the past 150 years.
Outsourcing has existed as long as government has existed. I think you're confusing outsourcing as a general concept with privatization as a specific issue, which is about one-off decisions to choose to start outsourcing things that were previously done in-house. Which has its own set of pros and cons.
But no government can in-house everything. So hiring in-house is not the answer to corruption.
Re: Luca App: CCC calls for a moratorium
#146This is amazing. There should be hacker clubs in each country double checking all suspicious public procurements.
The CCC is a national treasure.
Re: Luca App: CCC calls for a moratorium
#147Is there any government contact tracing app that is considered successful by tech people? Japan had a similar problem: its contact tracing app, COCOA, was originally developed by volunteers in open source. Then the government "purchased" the app and subsidized it to some medium IT vendor, which further subsidized it to six (!) other companies. The app has been regarded clusterfuck and failed to support the latest version of iOS/Android.
Re: Luca App: CCC calls for a moratorium
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is exactly it. And to be clear, there's a good reason for it: it's to prevent corruption. If things aren't overspecified and providers aren't treated like a commodity, then it's incredibly hard to prove that a government official actually awarded a contract in a fair process, rather than just sending it over to their best friend's business. Unfortunately, nobody's really come up with any reliable process for hav…
> The reason it doesn't exist in the private sector The same problem absolutely does exist in the private sector. Many of the same big government contractors are running almost the same scam on big companies. I think this problem is more a function of the size of the organization than public vs. private.
I was referring to the problem of corruption and kickbacks.
I'm certainly not saying companies can't overpay for things, but there is an inherent pressure from competition to incentivize companies to try to pay less, whereas taxpayer-funded government often doesn't experience similarly direct pressure.
Re: Luca App: CCC calls for a moratorium
#149The Luca app really is a complete train wreck. And what's worse is that the federal governments don't even have any direct control over the app itself, they just bought access to the contact tracing data for 12 months from the company operating the app. Meanwhile the company controls the app and all connected user accounts and can repurpose it in whichever way they see fit (and they already announced they have plans…
> I wasn't a big fan of the Covid tracing app in the beginning Let this be a lesson. If you get something good and still keep complaining and complaining, then what you get in the end is something bad.
I don't think this is a lesson, at all.
Re: Luca App: CCC calls for a moratorium
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I wasn't a big fan of the Covid tracing app in the beginning, but in retrospect the concept of that app seems miles ahead of the current situation with the Luca app. I think the concept behind is really solid and a great example for what is possible w/o invading privacy. The only problem is that development got very very slow after the initial release and a lot of potential was wasted. E.g. adding some kind of chec…
I only have positive things to say about our contact tracing application. It’s open source https://github.com/immuni-app . It’s simple: contact tracing only, easy for non technical people. And has minimal tracking (I only see a periodic ping to get.immuni.gov.it)
Yeah. Too bad nobody downloaded it