If your response is that websites are so hard to build that our government can’t spec out its requirements and get it built — and therefore just need to overpay by 10,000x for the privilege of having a decent user experience, then maybe we (technologists) need to go have a long look in the mirror and ask what we’ve done to make things so terrible.
But they have all the latitude in the world to sign "portion of the ticket price" contracts, and so they did.
It's not Booz's fault; it's the situation that lead this to (apparently) be the best option for the agency.
(This same crowd here wouldn't even turn over in their sleep if the same agency had contracted out building the site and ran it themselves on AWS and paid Amazon 3-5x what Booz is getting, mind you.)
I don't blame Booz for that (entirely). Somebody else had to sign that contract, too.
But if I'm going to lay into Booz, I have to look in the mirror myself. I have worked for employers that charge as much as they can get away with in a market that wasn't exactly fair. When incumbents spend almost unbelievable amounts to build a functioning legislative mote, then exploit that for all it's worth, you could call that "good business." And you can rationalize by saying, "If I don't, somebody else will, so it might as well be me who benefits." But the excuses seem pretty flimsy when historians catalog the damages.
Still, the biggest blame goes to the other signature on the contract.
Still a problem.
Many of these agencies are forced into uncompetitive compensation structures which means contracting out most, if not all, of their technical work.
A major part of the issue is the government contracting system. In an attempt at fairness, it has massive amounts of oversight burden. That is, in turn, a barrier to additional competition for the work.
Dangerous words on a forum that's focused on the nouveau middlemen of Surveillance Valley.
So what's the acceptable upper limit of rent we should be charged to use a website that's already built to use lands our taxes already paid to buy to a company who provides little-to-no ongoing service to us?
There are storage systems, databases, app servers, etc. that all need some degree of constant care. I don't know what the scale or structure of those systems are, so it is difficult to say what that cost should be. Perhaps it qualifies as "little". It almost certainly does not qualify as "none".
Of course, the hardware and the labor might already be included in the taxes I pay. I don't know that either. I wonder how much work it would take to sort out all the different sources of revenue Booz has from this.
You could have this entire setup managed by AWS / GCP for < 1k a month. It's not a complicated site.
And then maybe 1/2 devs for ongoing maintenance.
For most of Hacker News, it's easier to avoid the emotions that would come with actually looking at the horrible things corporations are doing to our society. You'll defend corporations no matter what, pretending to take the "rational" approach, because you benefit from corporations that are doing many of the same harms.
But being unemotional in the face of constant corporate destructive behaviors isn't rational or normal, it's effectively sociopathic. Yes, I'm emotional, because I have a conscience and I listen to it. You don't get to dismiss what I'm saying because it's emotional. Not being emotional when companies do shite like this is the problem. It's not my emotions that are the problem, it's your lack of emotions that's the problem. Where is your conscience? Why aren't you emotional when corporations do harmful things and profit?
> But when I try to be fair, I acknowledge that "little-to-no ongoing service" is probably not completely accurate.
Bro, I'm a freelance full stack web developer, and I've been the part-time sole developer for sites that serve millions of customers, because you don't need even one full-time dev to maintain a system to which you're not adding new features. There's literally nothing you have said I'm not aware of, and I'm saying "little-to-none" because that's accurate.
The largest costs here are hosting fees. If the system is at all efficient, that can easily be handled for <$10k/year, but let's just say $100k/year because even that amount is literally irrelevant. Millions of people book with the NPS yearly and pay a $6 fee. There is no way the money here comes even close to being reasonable.
You aren't trying to be fair. You're trying to defend corporations at any cost, like many folks on Hacker News. Your ideology is one of the most harmful forces in our society today.
'Exactly how much Booz Allen reaps from Recreation.gov is not publicly known, nor is how much it costs to operate Recreation.gov on an annual basis. The lawsuit contends that Recreation.gov handled 9 million transactions in 2021 and generates “tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars of revenue every year for Booz Allen, constituting a complete windfall.”' [1]
I'd be surprised if that revenue were below 100 million. A team of a couple dozen competent developers could certainly operate it for a fraction of that.
[1]: https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2023/02/update-lawsuit...
"Nice pension you've got there, be a shame if something happened to it."
I, for instance, live in the Helsinki region in Finland, which is a metropolitan area tightly nestled between two modest national parks, both within a reasonable distance by public transport, and both of which I can simply stroll into without any such restrictions or bureocracy. The US could, if there was willingness for it, strive to offer similar opportunities near its major cities. It's simply a matter of willingness.
The other issue is probably that some of your national parks are so iconic (e.g. yosemite) that they'd probably have too much demand even if the country was filled to the brim with alternatives, but you probably can't do much about that issue.
The issue isn't that there are few parks for people to visit, the issue is that these parks are unique and highly popular. There are thousands of parks in the United States, there just aren't thousands of grand canyons, thermal geysers, or mountain ranges.
USA, population 300 million
60x people in 29x area
Scale works differently here.
It is not my experience that the USA lacks in this respect.
But if you want to visit the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, or Zions, or many of these other places, your last paragraph is spot on. The policy of the State of Nevada has been that you cannot reserve campsites in state parks. I think that just changed within the last year for the two most popular state parks. If you want to camp in the Valley of Fire among the red rocks or petrified forest you now need a reservation. If you want to camp just outside the boundaries, there is no reservation required and no fee. Oh, yeah, and no potable water or restrooms, etc.
Note: the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, and Zions are not Nevada State Parks. And you'll have to wait another year now to catch Gold Fever at Buckland Station State Park[0].
0. https://parks.nv.gov/events/gold-fever-12
Edit: Amusingly, the headline of the page at that link proclaims "Nevada State Parks Launches New Reservation System". sigh
It feels a lot like economic rent, with Booz Allen positioning themselves between you and your land. You pay their fee not because the user experience was great, but because it’s the only way to camp at your favorite park.