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The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application

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

#41

Post by sehugg »

pavlov wrote: post #16

In the European Union, governments are legally required to open public works and supplying contracts to competition through an open tendering process. I'm surprised that this doesn't happen in the US. There's a fair bit of criticism levelled against the EU tendering processes, though. Many feel that the process emphasizes price at the expense of quality, resulting in a "race to the bottom" as another poster mentioned…

We do theoretically have such a thing in the US, for instance: http://www.findrfp.com/service/search.aspx?s=iphone&t=FE...

You can also go here and see contracts already awarded (search for "iphone" for instance): http://www.usaspending.gov/

The US allows "no bid" or "sole source" contracts, which have several problems, not the least of which is rampant cronyism. Note that even the President failed to stop this gravy train: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/pr...

Also, you'd be surprised on how many hours get billed visiting the stakeholders for "face time" and to ensure follow-on work.

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

#42

Post by gte910h »

sumukh1 wrote: post #33
gte910h wrote: post #11

The problem with the government trying to do something is that anyone who's really really qualified will find the paperwork, compliance, and bidding procedures way too complicated for the sums of money involved. The Android app cost 106k btw. So looking at this guys hourly rate, it would take approximately 6 months of 40 hour weeks for him to cost that much to do the app. So if he: Learned out to submit the forms tha…

The app itself was outsourced. Someone else did the development, a company that caters to the government put in the work to do the bidding. Money just happened to fall between the crack. BTW I looked at the code, and there's nothing that an average iOS (and probably Android) developer couldn't do in 4-6 hours.

And finding out exactly what they want done, and documenting it could have taken weeks.

Also, where is the code?

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

#43

Post by sumukh1 »

gte910h wrote: post #42
sumukh1 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The app itself was outsourced. Someone else did the development, a company that caters to the government put in the work to do the bidding. Money just happened to fall between the crack. BTW I looked at the code, and there's nothing that an average iOS (and probably Android) developer couldn't do in 4-6 hours.

And finding out exactly what they want done, and documenting it could have taken weeks. Also, where is the code?

That is true, but in an ideal world, it shouldn't.

You can get it from MuckRock or from OSHA's own site. http://www.muckrock.com/foi/view/united-states-of-america/so...

They provided it 20 days ago, so no idea why the author mentioned that it wasn't available.

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

#44

Post by danso »

cdk wrote: post #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.

I highly doubt there was design by committee. More like:

1) Dev gets contract, builds app 2) Person who was arbitrarily moved to dept. of mobile-app development reviews app, figures it's good because it works on a phone, forwards the results to his/her boss. 3) Repeat step 2 at a higher level 4) Done.

There is a more stringent audit trail, perhaps. But I doubt there's a committee of people who sat aorund a whiteboard and designed this puppy. I hope there wasn't, at least.

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

#45

Post by kevinalexbrown »

Whoever runs ERG is getting very rich by making crap that doesn't even work. It's like a negative programmer. Except we're all paying for it.

And this is the 'obvious' case, in which it's easy to tell it's crap. What about those times when I'm relying on the experts at these agencies to find solutions to difficult problems without a clear indicator of success? I'm not anti-government by any stretch, but man. The legalese sounded so good: "critical, real-time hot weather information"...

Sure, I know that's BS, but what about when I'm not qualified to judge it (i.e. military decisions in Afghanistan based on intel that I'm not privy to).

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

#46

Post by danso »

gte910h wrote: post #22
cobrausn wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But what's the quality expectation on the reporting and documentation? Is it likely that your audience (the gov't managers) have lower standards?

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

#47

Post by pavel_lishin »

Tichy wrote: post #34
gte910h wrote: post #11

The problem with the government trying to do something is that anyone who's really really qualified will find the paperwork, compliance, and bidding procedures way too complicated for the sums of money involved. The Android app cost 106k btw. So looking at this guys hourly rate, it would take approximately 6 months of 40 hour weeks for him to cost that much to do the app. So if he: Learned out to submit the forms tha…

Maybe they should have created a competition for finished apps instead. If the app is as simple as it sounds (not sure what it actually does), maybe some high school kids would have entered a better version and raked in 5000$ as the first price.

What test would they use to check whether an app is simple or not? At a certain point, you put out a bid for a complicated monstrocity, and the only entrant is some RentACoder who claims he can re-write Windows in Python in two weeks for $50.

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

#48

Post by javert »

dangrossman wrote: post #26
maxharris wrote: post #14

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...

The government's duty to protect your life does not extend beyond protecting it from the use of force by other people.

If you choose to work in a place, that's your choice. Even if you fail to make sure it's safe before you work there, or decide to work there despite the risk.

Anyway, even if OSHA were legitime, this app is not effective at achieving anything, even if executed well.

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

#49

Post by quanticle »

I have worked for one of these "green energy"/"smart grid" companies. My conclusion about that company (after about six months of working there) was that its core competency wasn't writing software. The software was a shoddy pile of half-working crap written in a proprietary programming language made by another company that didn't exist any more. No, their core competency was 1) navigating government bureaucracy and 2) filling out government forms. These two competencies ensured that there was never a need to actually produce good software because few competitors would have the time and contacts to even bid on the contract, much less secure it and write good software.

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

#50

Post by mattmanser »

pavlov wrote: post #16

In the European Union, governments are legally required to open public works and supplying contracts to competition through an open tendering process. I'm surprised that this doesn't happen in the US. There's a fair bit of criticism levelled against the EU tendering processes, though. Many feel that the process emphasizes price at the expense of quality, resulting in a "race to the bottom" as another poster mentioned…

I was surprised by this and decided to check it out, and it looks like they're not really.

the implementation of EU government law by national governments is far from uniform and sometimes weak – in 2002, for instance, only 16% of governmental calls to tender were published – government procurement has been called "the weakest link in the common market".[2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_procurement_in_the_E...

Also check the minimum amounts this applies to, this probably wouldn't have been necessary to put through the process anyway.

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