Whistleblowers: Software keeping inmates in Arizona prisons beyond release dates

Post by kingaillas » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 6:36 PM UTC

dimitrios1 wrote: post #106

frompdx wrote: post #20

This is an outrage. It is also a perfect example of how software is used to create increasingly more elaborate and faceless bureaucracies that force individuals to spend more and more time contending with them. Somehow software has become the ultimate vehicle for bureaucratic violence. Software is simultaneously infallible and the perfect scapegoat. The inmate who lost their phone privileges for 30 days is an example…

We know exactly how to fix it. Our cowardly politicians and toothless regulatory agencies are not up for the challenge. For every piece of software that can directly and materially harm someone's life like this, there should be a chain of responsibility. And within that chain, there should be legal recourse and, in most cases, penal consequences, especially in the case of inadequate software quality/testing/validatio…

Post by dustingetz » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 6:37 PM UTC

frompdx wrote: post #20

This is an outrage. It is also a perfect example of how software is used to create increasingly more elaborate and faceless bureaucracies that force individuals to spend more and more time contending with them. Somehow software has become the ultimate vehicle for bureaucratic violence. Software is simultaneously infallible and the perfect scapegoat. The inmate who lost their phone privileges for 30 days is an example…

Post by ryanong » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 6:38 PM UTC

kingaillas wrote: post #121

dimitrios1 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know exactly how to fix it. Our cowardly politicians and toothless regulatory agencies are not up for the challenge. For every piece of software that can directly and materially harm someone's life like this, there should be a chain of responsibility. And within that chain, there should be legal recourse and, in most cases, penal consequences, especially in the case of inadequate software quality/testing/validatio…

Yeah but the cost of that chain will also rise. If I'm (or my company is) personally on the hook for bugs, then I'm going to adopt a NASA-like software quality regimen, pushing up the cost of the product. Every single part of the software stack below me, from hardware, OS, compiler toolchain, disavows responsibility so if I have to absorb all the risk, the product is going to be mind bogglingly expensive.

Post by kingaillas » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 6:39 PM UTC

opportune wrote: post #17

tantalor wrote: post #6

This isn't a "bug". The problem is the software was not designed to do this and needs to be updated to support a change in requirements Bugs are when software does something it isn't supposed to, or doesn't do something it is supposed to. In this case, it's doing exactly what it was intended to do when it was implemented and put into service. Since then things have changed, so the vendor needs to implement the featur…

This is why I think custom software contracting and vendorization is a “noob-trap”. Software needs to be updated and maintained and you never know when you start writing it what the real requirements are. If I were a taxpayer in this state I’d be angry that my money would be going to a series of middlemen (e.g. a procurement consultant, program manager on the gov side, a contractor manager, the contracting company’s…

Post by whywhywhywhy » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 6:39 PM UTC

blobbers wrote: post #15

toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Show me the incentives, I’ll show you the outcome.” If corrections staff were held personally liable for these failures, or the local jurisdiction faced steep financial penalties, it wouldn’t happen. No liability, no responsibility.

These are prison workers and you're asking them to run a social network (with certain constraints). They wouldn't even know the first thing about how to hire someone capable of doing this. They'd have to hire a consultant to hire another consultant.