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They Said It Would Cost $54M. We Said "No Thanks."

nateglubish.substack.com

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Re: They Said It Would Cost $54M. We Said "No Thanks."

#31

Post by goodcanadian »

The shortlist came down to four major consulting firms.

This is the problem in a nutshell. Those firms are structured to extract money from their customers, not to produce useful work. The fact that anyone is signing contracts with them any more blows my mind.

Re: They Said It Would Cost $54M. We Said "No Thanks."

#32

Post by kspacewalk2 »

deskamess wrote: post #17

"On the client side, this project would not have been possible without the exceptional support of Deputy Minister Mark Kleefeld and his team at the Ministry of Infrastructure. From the very beginning, Infrastructure’s leadership understood what we were trying to accomplish and backed it fully. That kind of top-down support from the client ministry is rare, and it made all the difference." That's kind of amazing. Albe…

Deputy ministers are supposed to be the top non-political/bureaucrat position in a ministry, so theoretically it wouldn't matter if the government is conservative. The elected minister sets the goals and gives general directives, the professional deputy is in charge of execution. In reality this neat distinction is often broken, some governments politicize appointments even below the minister level, etc.

Re: They Said It Would Cost $54M. We Said "No Thanks."

#33

Post by vessenes »

kwertyoowiyop wrote: post #8

Great idea, and hopefully great results. But it’s written like LinkedIn “broetry” and that AI image at the top promises a fluffy article. Maybe expand a bit on some of the impressive tech described in the body?

The tech isn't the big news. It's the process opportunity for governments. That said, I did really like what they reported on a use case of Gemini -- they got a bunch of people to video every single process in the old systems, and then got Gemini to watch the video and write full specs for the new systems. Niiice.

What you have in civil government is a lot of people and a lot of time -- turning that into inputs for acceptance on the new codebase is super smart -- and using only their expertise (legacy system screen caps), but relying on the AI to do all the tech spec work feels super smart.

Re: They Said It Would Cost $54M. We Said "No Thanks."

#34

Post by vessenes »

pwatsonwailes wrote: post #13
sokka_h2otribe wrote: post #4

Writing quality was distracting. Very breathey. Hard to understand if I was getting important information or not -- but it's ok, some people will defend this style.

It's written by an AI. That's why it's a bit shit.

I'd put my money on "edited by an AI". Some of it feels info-dense enough to be a person.

Re: They Said It Would Cost $54M. We Said "No Thanks."

#35

Post by stabbles »

sokka_h2otribe wrote: post #4

Writing quality was distracting. Very breathey. Hard to understand if I was getting important information or not -- but it's ok, some people will defend this style.

You can look at a histogram of number of words per sentence, and you'll find immediately that it's written by an AI.

    When?
    Today.
    Minutes.
    Four years.
    $54 million.
    Collect feedback.
    Delivered faster.
    Not days.
    Not weeks.
    It's free.
    ...
    No $19 million in upfront costs.
    They're now doing meaningful work.
    Let me put that in context.
    That's a 95% cost reduction.
    But think about what that represents.
    And we can show you how.

Re: They Said It Would Cost $54M. We Said "No Thanks."

#36

Post by vessenes »

chrisjj wrote: post #2

I searched this report for "test". Result: none found. > what if a small team of public servants, equipped with modern AI development tools, built the replacement systems themselves? Next: bridges and brain surgery.

Mm, did you read the part where they have hundreds of people in and reporting bugs and feature requests every week? Testing is probably too granular a concept for the target audience of this blog post.

Re: They Said It Would Cost $54M. We Said "No Thanks."

#37

Post by fblp »

I wonder how much of the needs satisfied by this software in Alberta is also needed by other states? Yes, it's great that they saved money and built what they need so quickly, but a catch with govt is that they build out these proprietary processes that need more bespoke software.

Re: They Said It Would Cost $54M. We Said "No Thanks."

#39

Post by hallway_monitor »

stabbles wrote: post #35
sokka_h2otribe wrote: post #4

Writing quality was distracting. Very breathey. Hard to understand if I was getting important information or not -- but it's ok, some people will defend this style.

You can look at a histogram of number of words per sentence, and you'll find immediately that it's written by an AI. When? Today. Minutes. Four years. $54 million. Collect feedback. Delivered faster. Not days. Not weeks. It's free. ... No $19 million in upfront costs. They're now doing meaningful work. Let me put that in context. That's a 95% cost reduction. But think about what that represents. And we can show you h…

The only time I want to read something written by AI is when I am interacting with an LLM directly. I don’t know who these people are that think others want to read their slop. Even if the content is good, I can’t stand reading it.

Re: They Said It Would Cost $54M. We Said "No Thanks."

#40

Post by m-i-l »

I think the use of AI is really missing the point here. The point is that small in-house teams can deliver a lot more quickly and to a higher quality and at a lower cost than large outsourced teams from the big consultancy companies. I've seen this over and over again (the problem is that large organisations often prefer to go the slow and expensive route with the big consultancy companies for a complex variety of reasons). So it would be like an article saying "our small inhouse team using VS Code did a much better job than a big outsourced consultancy using MS Visual Studio - isn't VS Code awesome".
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