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Census Bureau's American FactFinder software cost taxpayers $33.3 million

wmhartnett.com

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Re: Census Bureau's American FactFinder software cost taxpayers $33.3 million

#41

Post by Mizza »

freehunter wrote: post #36
Mizza wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I'd love to do that, I think casting a broad net in FOIA is very difficult and potentially counterproductive. FOIA offices have very limited resources already, so asking for literally everything at once or as lots of little requests performs a DoS attack on the one office of the government that I really like! It does make a good point philosophically, but practically, I think it might be counterproductive.…

Or a better solution, everything that's eligible for a FOIA request should just be made available on the existing Open Government page [1] rather than making people request it and go through the process. What is the point of this security by obscurity nonsense? If it can be released under FOIA, there's no reason to not release it without a FOIA request. [1] http://www.whitehouse.gov/open

You're preaching to the choir, man! :)

My MuckRock username is 'TransparentByDefault' for a reason! :)

https://www.muckrock.com/foi/list/user/TransparentByDefault/

Re: Census Bureau's American FactFinder software cost taxpayers $33.3 million

#42

Post by wpietri »

aggronn wrote: post #14

This is disgusting. I've had to use it extensively for research, and while it 'gets the job done', its such a pain to use. I've asked myself who put this together, and I always assumed it was a team of interns working across a decade for each version. I can't believe this is the best they could do for $33 million. I just can't. They better have some slick stuff under the hood.

Good UI comes from collaboration and iteration with users. Apple did something like 100 iterations on the first iPod. Typical consumer electronics companies do 3 to 5.

The government RFP and budgeting process is practically designed to prevent iteration and exploration. I can just hear Senator Blowhard of Cornhusk now: "So you want an unknown amount of money to keep building things until users are happy? That's an obvious boondoggle. Come back with a complete specification and put it out for bids from major contractors. We must be responsible with every penny of taxpayer money. Harrumph!"

So of course the software has terrible usability. Anything built like that will be terrible.

Re: Census Bureau's American FactFinder software cost taxpayers $33.3 million

#44

Post by knowtheory »

danso wrote: post #39

On a positive note... I don't know how much it cost to redesign the Federal Register, but federalregister.gov is one of the most usable, data-intensive sites around. Especially compared to what it used to be. GAO.gov is also a hallmark in usability and information-taxonomy.

One of the dudes who developed the Federal Register site (i think as a code for america fellow) is now at AirBnB too. This is a world we can and should get involved in.

Ah i wasn't quite right. You can check out the full story here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2839137 sunlight labs was involved though.

Re: Census Bureau's American FactFinder software cost taxpayers $33.3 million

#45

Post by sharkweek »

danso wrote: post #39

On a positive note... I don't know how much it cost to redesign the Federal Register, but federalregister.gov is one of the most usable, data-intensive sites around. Especially compared to what it used to be. GAO.gov is also a hallmark in usability and information-taxonomy.

several friends took jobs with the GAO out of school (data analysis type gigs) -- they have some of the coolest stuff to talk about; seems like a great branch of government to work for

Re: Census Bureau's American FactFinder software cost taxpayers $33.3 million

#46

Post by smackfu »

debacle wrote: post #24
jevinskie wrote: post #6

I'm curious to see what caliber/capabilities HN thinks software that costs $33 million should offer. I have experience with cycle accurate emulators that cost $100k/floating license but never anything at the $33 million level!

300 man-years of development is crazy huge for almost any software project I can think of.

You don't think Apple or Microsoft or Adobe or Facebook have 300 developers working on their projects? Just saying, 300 man years isn't that much, considering every full time employee working on a project for a year is a man year by definition.

Re: Census Bureau's American FactFinder software cost taxpayers $33.3 million

#47

Post by alexismadrigal »

pcrh wrote: post #7

Interesting use of the gif there. I wonder if there will be a migration of these gifs from meme-based humor sites to more "legitimate" blogs and news sites. They are, after all, the visual equivalent to using quotes by famous people.

Sheeeit. We've had animated gifs on TheAtlantic.com HOMEPAGE since like 2011.

Re: Census Bureau's American FactFinder software cost taxpayers $33.3 million

#48

Post by cdk »

For simplicity let's say that IBM charges $300/hr for a consultant (developer/PM/etc). That would be about 100,000 hours of work. Let's say a consultant bills 2,000 hours a year and it takes them 18-24 months to build this thing. That would be a team of 25-30 (developers, PMs, account managers, etc).

The time frame is realistic considering poor original design, scope creep and federal government counterparts not being particularly quick in gettings things done (getting access/fighting through bureaucracy, etc).

So why would the federal government hire IBM over you; who can build a totally bug free version of this in half the time for half the price? IBM is: - Not likely go out of business anytime soon. - Not be unavailable for support work because you decided to start/join a startup - Not be able to deal with turnover since they have 100k+ employees, steady stream of college recruits and have been around for 100 years.

Re: Census Bureau's American FactFinder software cost taxpayers $33.3 million

#49

Post by wpietri »

crusso wrote: post #33
laironald wrote: post #28

This isn't surprising. I've done work in the federal government. Recently we built some products that did more, looked better and cost far less ($200k) than the other big name consultants. Our risk for further funding is that it didn't cost enough although most people love what we've done. The federal government IT market works on a contracting model, which means the people working under the system do things at a min…

Yet when anyone talks about cutting a dime out of the federal budget, the cries of "You're starving poor people!" and such dominate the political discussions. There isn't even a little bit of common sense or honesty in the way the government spends our money and people wonder why some of us are so adamantly opposed to raising taxes.

Well, that's where a lot of the cuts are going. Nobody is saying, "Let's cut spending by shifting work away from major government contractors to smaller, scrappier companies." Nobody in Washington, anyhow.

And really, there's plenty of common sense and honesty in how governments spend money. Long ago I did a 6-month contract for a state government agency. I came away impressed. They were no more bureaucratic or wasteful than the large companies I've worked for. Like megacorps, many of the employees were clock-punchers who had all initiative beaten out of them. But many were sincere public servants who were getting good stuff done despite the bad incentives.

Re: Census Bureau's American FactFinder software cost taxpayers $33.3 million

#50

Post by crusso »

schwanksta wrote: post #18
slurgfest wrote: post #13

That figure is clearly not for an Android app, that is a clear misrepresentation. Who knows how it breaks down. This exposes a vast amount of queryable census data to the public (something which would normally be regarded as a good thing, particularly if you are a startup which uses data). But, to be sure, we can just punish the government for ever releasing any data unless it had such a high fee attached that only h…

You misread the post. He didn't query data about an Android app. You really think $33 million is a reasonable number for building a web interface to existing data? Please, hire me for your next job. And I'll just leave this here: https://github.com/ireapps/census

> You really think $33 million is a reasonable number for building a web interface to existing data?

Apparently, he/she does.

I really wish I could understand why, though. Government corruption and waste hurts us all. Why do some people blow it off so easily?

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