ArriveCan’s $54M price tag ‘outrageous,’ tech leaders say
theglobeandmail.com
theglobeandmail.com
> Nick Van Weerdenburg, CEO and founder of Toronto-based Rangle, said his firm could likely have built the app in less than a month for about $250,000.
> “This is a very simple app,” he said.
Having used ArriveCan I would agree with his quote. It is a very simple app, but what is not simple is writing the specification for it. The contractors weren't given the app and told "how long would it take you to make this?". They were approached to develop "an app to monitor COVID risk at the border", then they had to work with probably several committees, all with different visions and expectations, all trying to get their idea executed.
That's often the part that people forget in favour of easy criticism. ArriveCan is simple, but the process that built it is not, there was no equivalent in the wild that could be used for inspiration, it had a bunch of translation requirements, and needed to interface with existing airport arrival systems.
I'm not saying we should be proud of our government for making a 54M$ CRUD app that, as far as we can tell, did not have much of an impact on COVID being spread, but interviewing a bunch of "IT leaders" and acting as if they would actually sign a contract to build ArriveCan for 250k$ is disingenuous and the Globe and Mail should be ashamed of framing it this way.
Something like ArriveCan requires the collaboration of several branches of government and ties in with a system that monitors over 2M arrivals in our country every month. Even all the doers attitude in the world won't change the fact that they won't just give you access to those databases without some pretty extensive review.
Just think of the QA needed on the arrival machines at the airport, you can't afford to have them all be out of order because they handle much of the incoming traffic, so the "ArriveCan update" has to be thoroughly tested so that it does not cause any significant downtime. This is the exact opposite of the "move fast and break things" environment.
To summarize, I do think that ArriveCan (the program) was a waste of money, but I think the program itself did not waste money. It's the price that comes with building multi-systems applications.
First, I fully agree with everything you said. It wasnt the best use of money, but these people fail to grasp what it takes to build a system integrated with the government. Dealing with any large org requires a lot of back and forth with contracts, legal, etc and the government is worse as they have entire organizations which seem to be created specifically to slow things down.
Second, your points are most likely falling on deaf ears. All they see is "simple CRUD app costs $54M" and can never see past this, have next to zero experience dealign with large orgs or their complexity, requirements, etc.
The fact that doing things in government is much more expensive than people think because you have to go through so many hoops and align so many stakeholders is valid. But in this case, they probably still managed to pay 3-5x more than they should have presumably because of basic incompetence and cronyism. Even though the criticism is imprecise (and you’ve legitimately noted why), it’s still about 80% right.
Also, I saw a social media post from a "founder" yesterday about how his company could have built a CRUD app with the same functionality for much more cheaply. Obviously a lot of people with no government contracting experience armchair quarterbacking the cost angle
US/Canada governments have simply dissolved all in house experience. Which means they have no competent and experienced people who can actually evaluate contract bids. But further, they don't have people in-house with either the experience, competence, or power to make agreed upon changes to contracts on the fly.
And because the contracts are so set in stone, that means even if all the bidders are operating completely ethically, they need to pad their margins significantly to account for anything unexpected. But in reality many bidders are not operating ethically and are able to use a lot of the necessary features of a government bidding process (clearly outlined and transparent contracts with very little subjective input) to maximize their revenue and minimize their output.
It is always odd to read comments like this. Can we assume you will you be challenging this at the supreme court? The government passes laws and so it is odd to state something is "illegal" when it may not be the case. It is also odd because every country has special rules/laws around entry that are NOT the same as the laws inside the country. One of the best examples is our neighbour to the south where the border is considered a "constitutional free zone" - allowing search/seizures which are not permitted elsewhere in the country. Far more likely you disagree with it, but that isn't a legal question.
Many "covid" related actions were challenged, and the supreme court of canada ruled in the governments favour, does that mean the supreme court is also wrong? If so, who do you take your complaint to above this court?
Every country on earth has a legal right to control entry at its borders and while Canada was odd to use ArriveCan, pretty much every country demanded vaccine proof when they reopened their borders. Does this mean they all acted illegally?
The government's job is to protect its citizens, again this is why almost every country enacted some form of border control to try to stop covid, but they are all wrong?
Well the app consisted of users uploading ID and record of vaccination, then without any check, putting a check mark or something on the screen. All of the uploads were stored in a US server and publicly accessible.
But nothing beats the hero in Ontario that made according to local news stations made fool out of the local government by building stairs in a park for $550 when it was going to cost an outrageous $65k (in the end $10k I think). I think about these stairs[1] whenever someone without experience claims they can make things cheaper.
I bet the development effort was small and cheap, and the least expensive part.
Canadian gov't IT is extravagantly expensive and inefficient, regardless of who's in power.
Why did you pay $2 billion for this airport? Most buildings cost less than $1 million!
There is no way you’re going to fix this otherwise.
Or you can install someone at the top who cares and is accountable and can be terminated for such gross mismanagement of funds.
But That’s not gonna happen^