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Comment by shadowtree | Hacker News Reader

Any project in a heavily regulated environment is not measurable that way.

The cost comes from compliance, audits, paperwork. Trials, PoCs, etc.

You also need to prove security and a long term lifecycle for the solution. Those open source packages - are they being updated? Who validates patches? etc etc.

Those are moats, once you're able to deliver the above, you're set for a long time.

Good luck!

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Oh come on. Not all heavy-handed regulation would pass a cost-benefit analysis. Nor does it cost 80 million to run some POCs and QA on a project like this.

At nearly 400,000 AUD per vehicle, the question should be what better opportunities to help people did the Australian Govt pass up in order to engage this project?

I think the point was that the costs are justified by the burden of meeting regulatory requirements, not the benefit of the regulation.

That is understood. My point was that this kind of spending on a project like this should beg the question, "what better opportunities did govt pass up to engage this project," rather than responding w/ complacency; i.e. 'that's just the cost once you factor in compliance.'

Once you start taking into account audit and recordkeeping requirements, you will quickly run into that figure.

As an aside, the trials and PoCs have already taken place as a separate project worth only $100,000.

You forgot Celebration Dinners!

The government is fairly corrupt. This is a make my friend rich project. See the Myki card for another example.

I don't know about Australia, but this is completely true in Central Europe. An average Joe cannot tell how much an IT project can cost, so IT projects are the best place to "make your friend rich". See the slovensko.sk project (https://spectator.sme.sk/c/20429221/governmental-agency-plan...).

You're very right.

At a quick glance, this thing is going to need power, probably from the car battery. You don't want it to catch fire and kill the occupants, so there's going to be R&D in power supplies, material etc, along with regulation and testing.

Sure, if there never was something before hooked to a car battery. Or if the material would have to be kryptonite. $86 Million is just a way way way to high number for such a project. Of course the 57 lines here won't do it in production and I acknowledge a certain need for R&D but this number is just too high.

Reading plates is likely a small fraction of overall costs. Consider, with 220 people cars in a trial your going to need someone to write a manual / answer help desk questions / etc. which have nothing to do with the actual device but do add costs.

As to the device it needs to do more than just read licence plates. It must compare them with something which means it needs to get over the air updates for a list of licence plates. So, now you need some back end system to get important lists of licence plates from various other systems. As to the device, how much coverage does it get aka does it need multiple cameras.

And on it goes.

Emergency services vehicles run so much equipment they have isolated power from engine power.

I have noticed here in California the the police always leave their patrol cars running when parked. I was entering a restaurant a saw a patrol car running. I saw the officer inside and asked him why they leave the cars running. I asked him if was to be ready to take off fast.

He laughed and said that there is so much electronics inside that the battery would run down during lunch.

I didn't think to ask why they didn't turn off the electronics. I also didn't ask what they do at the end of the day.

Boot up times for the computer(s). That takes a while, though I imagine it is getting faster.

Huh there you go! thanks

Or you know, make the software for smartphone?

So just add 20 bean-counters to your team and you can bid for the other state contracts :-)

Not quite. You'll also need a minority owned business to act a pass through entity.

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