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Comment by intopieces | Hacker News Reader

The weird thing is they don't even have a solid plan for what to do with the money. Or a plan at all, it seems.

The least they could do is create some kind of MassTrans App that shows a user options for navigating the state (uber/lyft/cabs/transit/greyhound etc). Otherwise it seems like collection for the sake of it.

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I've never seen a successful government app, certainly there must be one.

Does anyone know of a reasonably useful government app? It's hard enough for normal tech to create useful apps, let alone the over expensive bogged down government.

I can provide an example. I live in Seattle, and use "One Bus Away" everyday. It provides a map showing of all the public bus stops, and real time estimates for bus arrivals at each stop.

One Bus Away was developed by University of Washington students, not government bureaucrats.

How do you believe University of Washington students know the location of each bus in the Metro Seattle area, in "real time"?

Also, to play devil's advocate, isn't UW technically government funded, at least subsidized for "in state" students?

Simple. they pushed and pushed until they could get wheel arch counters installed on the buses.

That's not really relevant to the GGP comment, though. The government can take the tax money and contract out the development work on an app. Or use cheap student labor.

Of course it's relevant. The "government" doesn't make apps directly ever.

The difference is who speced the project, or came up with the ideas.

Sorry, but GGP said they'd never seen a successful government app. GP replied with an example of one. Parent discounted that example because it wasn't coded by a government employee (in effect moving the goalposts). My point is that it's irrelevant whether a government employee or an outside party created the app. It's still a government app, providing access and information about government-provided services. Unless you think the Seattle mass transit system is a private-sector company.

But they can't contract the work out to anyone they want. There are strong regulations on how the government can contract work, which are often a proximate cause of poor quality.

Yeah, it's a shame there aren't any technically inclined universities in Massachusetts that the government bureaucrats could turn to. Would make it a lot easier.

The government bureaucrats will probably end up taxing those technically inclined universities to support the teaching of intelligent design.

Transport for London's real time API makes lots of third party apps possible. Their own route planner website is good too.

The TFL route-planner website is powered by Open Trip Planner.

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