Comment by peterburkimsher | Hacker News Reader

Comment by peterburkimsher | Hacker News Reader

peterburkimsher

The government gives food stamps to poor people (good). The stamps are replaced by an electronic debit card system (good). The government outsources the food stamp/debit card management to a private contractor, Conduent (not inherently bad in a capitalist society). Conduent make an app (good).

The startup, Propel, makes their own app, and uses the Conduent database through an API (good). Many users like Propel's app (good), and it becomes more popular than Conduent's app.

Conduent controls the database, and tries to block Propel from database access (rude, possibly anti-competitive). Their reasoning is that Propel are making too many API requests ("a capacity ambush"). Propel turns to mass media to defend themselves (rude, possibly libellous).

If I trusted the government, I'd recommend that they take back control of their database, and offer it as Open Data. In the meantime, I think Propel should scrape the data from Conduent and run their own servers so they're not vulnerable to API blocks. The Internet is great, but we can't always expect servers to keep working (for political reasons like this, or technical ones), and that's one reason I dislike the shift from the Digital Hub to Cloud Subscription business models.

> rude, possibly libellous

What part of their claims is potentially libelous? The standard to prove libel is pretty high in the United States, at least if the target is a "public figure" (which a large corporation like Conduent presumably would be). The statement has to be factual in nature (not an opinion), it has to be false, and the speaker has to know it's false (or have "reckless disregard" for its truth or falsity, which is hard to prove). I don't see anything in the article that's likely to meet that standard.

> If I trusted the government

I trust the government more than a VC backed corporation.

If you want to offer a card balance, you can't use a cache. Any API query from a real user, even if it come via propel should be honored. Of course this fair market for EBT data has to be imposed and regulated by the government.

Got one thing wrong. The Conduent app came after Propel made an app.

I don't know if in the first place they had the idea to make an app for their downstream data flow, or they realized they can drink from their own juice and profit from it.

Looks like Proper beat them to the punch on this one, but hey, the have the cake, they have the knife, looks like they can pick who is getting which slice.

Was it an public API, or scraping Conduent's website?

I'm not sure Conduent is really the "bad guy" here. The states should supply the API.

Looks like when they started out the drain was drawing some MB per day:

> "On average, users check their balances seven times a month")

Now that they have scaled, and added more content, making the app more attractive and visited more often, this may go up. And perhaps Conduent is the first who reacts on the jump on the requests ("capacity ambush").

Giving away one glass of water per day, for free, is acceptable.

Giving away 50 buckets of water per day is just to much to be free.

Isn't the better response to start charging for API access at that point? Not revoke access and go silent?

No the states should require it as part of their contract with Conduent that Conduent provide it for free to the End User.

Conduent makes more then enough money of EBT to run an API for the data, this idea that the propel app is some kind of "burden" on their severs is ridiculous

Yes, but now Conduent is paying for keeping a database up, which Propel is using to build a competitive business. That's not fair.

The database should be run (or at least paid for) by an independent third party (e.g. government).

But if Conduent is a contractor working for the government, isn't the government then already funding the hosting?

Not necessarily. If someone pays you to do something, it doesn't mean they own what you buy with that money. E.g., your boss doesn't own your home computer.

Conduent entered the business under a certain contract and with certain expectations, and hosting a database for others might not have been part of that.

> If someone pays you to do something, it doesn't mean they own what you buy with that money. E.g., your boss doesn't own your home computer.

In all of my years doing government contracting there has always been money explicitly earmarked for hosting in project estimates and the government had to pay for it. When hosting became more than expected we sent the government the bill anyway and explained it and it would still end up getting paid (though something else may get scaled back).

I mean it's certainly possible it wasn't contracted out this way I would just be surprised.

Propel is not building a competitive business here, they're at best an overlay. There's no indication that Propel wants to muscle in on the state contracting and EBT management business.

The fact that Conduent has created a limited app in response to Propel's app doesn't make Propel a competitor.

Could they not just offer to pay a premium for a larger API quota and additional support?

I think they prefer this "freemium" model. It works better when it's free data than having to pay a little something for the same data. As for the idea that DB is moved to Open Data, yes, it is a great idea, I can only think of people shouting "socialism!! communism!! don't kill the private sector!!"

Maintaining their own data center (cloning the data once every 24h) would also mean they need to build a compliance capacity. Currently they don't own any data, they just pave the highway and sniffing the traffic (injecting ads).

> "It does not store or sell users’ personal information, the company said."

This is a big game changer and would require far greater Security/Compliance efforts.

And if the full company is the 9 people appearing in the first photo, then they will need to double that.

With only 7 lookups per user per month, cloning the database likely doesn't make sense. The data will be stale, and the contractor would likely never permit a daily dump of the database either.

Fair point. It looks like the free-meal is over for Propel (heh, pun!) and they will have to start paying a little something.

If a company provides a service on behalf of the government then really open data should be a basic requirement with default arrangements for high use, like a standard payment across all government open data per 100k accesses.

Government enabled private monopoly is surely anti-capitalist too (ie as well as anti-communist, etc.).

> Government enabled private monopoly is surely anti-capitalist

Capitalism is defined by government maintaining a system of property rights defined to enable private monopoly, though this particular form does clash with the defensive propaganda developed by defenders of the system in response to the criticism of it for doing just that.

OTOH, that propaganda has never really aligned with the reality of capitalism.

Hmm, there are monopolisations of property like copyright, or land ownership, but we're talking monopolisation of a market - AIUI competition is fundamental to Western Capitalism as without it there is no market optimisation. The justification for allowing functions of the state to be performed by private enterprise is that competition in the markets leads to optimised systems that can't be achieved through centralisation; without that justification you're simply stealing from the demos to provide private profits.

Its a simple query of 2 values, current EBT Food Benefit and current EBT Cash balance. There isn't terribly much to support, and the "service" itself is a simple database lookup that is near zero cost to perform. API access for this should be free, its a public good.

Unpopular opinion the US Post office should offer minimal banking services and SS, Unemployment, and EBT transfers should be always to those accounts.

If that were the case, I'm not sure how helpful it would be. Have you tried to get into a post office lately? Frigging places are never open during hours that people who work could get in. But I suppose that wouldn't be as much of a problem for social security and unemployment...

I haven't needed to physically go to my bank in a very long time.

I can go before or after work, lunchtime, or Saturday morning.

It's not a very radical idea either! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_savings_system

It's only really radical in the US.

More recently I've thought considering that we now only have 4-5 large banks it makes more sense than ever since after 40 years of mergers that are 4-5 banks left and they are abusing their monopoly power.

In the EU, all banks are required to provide basic banking services, including a debit card, to anybody who does not currently have a bank account. This practically killed cheque-cashing shops in the UK, and provided a significantly higher quality of life for workers, as well as simplifying payroll - direct debit can now be provided to all workers, there's no need to provide a cheque option.

The issue, of course, is that the US Visa/Mastercard system is an often-offline, pull-based system - meaning that a card set up to always require online transactions may be unusable, preventing banks from providing accounts with a debit card without the potential for an overdraft.

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