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The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application

gun.io

21–30 of 165 posts

Re: The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application

#21
The $200k price tag is unsurprising if you factor in the cost of non-coding work like requirements gathering, travels, expenses, benefits, etc. This seems like a simple app but when you have a design by committee, approvals, etc it can be quite manpower intensive.

The OSHA document is not rendering for me so I can't tell if there's a cost breakdown.

Re: The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application

#22
post #3

I'm curious if this really surprises anyone here that the entire process for the government purchasing three mobile applications (Android, iOS, and BB) was ~200k. This seems pretty ordinary/normal to me.

Actually, me and a team of two other developers recently applied for a government contract for the NIST that would have had us fixing a bug in OpenSceneGraph that was causing it to perform worse when more graphics cards were added. Due to what they were asking for and the amount of time we thought it would take to accomplish it and provide the documentation they were asking for, we bid in at $60,000. We did not get t…

>and provide the documentation they were asking for,

People who've never worked on government contracts cannot conceive of the reporting and documentation projects.

I've been on several (govt) projects where we spent as much time writing as doing.

Re: The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application

#25
I've dealt with some Government agencies before in a few different capacities, and they actually WANT To spend their money. The actual cost doesn't really matter, as they are trying to get as close to their budgets as possible, as to not have them decreased the next year.

This is especially true in the last 30 or 60 days - to the point where you invoice and are paid before the job is done just because it "has" to be in the billing period.

Re: The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application

#26

How does this further the proper mission of the government, which is to protect individual rights? I can't fathom a way that this could have anything to do with the government doing the one essential job it actually has to do! It's not just that it's a badly made app. I think the entire fact that the government making apps like this is absurd. Given what the government actually is (the only agency with the legitimate…

This is an app specifically designed to help protect your life (one of those rights) from unsafe employment. I get the dig you're making but this seems a weak target for it...

Re: The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application

#29
I agree with his point regarding source code. Often I have interacted with web applications supplied by parts of the UK Civil service and they have obvious bugs that I often feel should be fairly easy fixes.

I often feel that I would happily fix them for free as a public service in a fairly short time period, but no doubt it takes months and lots of $ before they are addressed.

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