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Comment by version_five | Hacker News Reader

Every IT procurement by Canada is a failure, this is not a surprise. The cost is a rounding error though compared to all the other harm this did. We shouldn't get distracted by the easy target of government waste on IT projects, and should focus on the real problems with this app (that it was mandatory, probably illegal, used to police health info, plus caused massive economic damage). These are all bigger problems than the well known cost overruns that happen in this sort of project.

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

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We need our own version of 18F to build technology patterns and in house expertise so that government is less reliant on outsourcing. With more in house work when government does outsource there would be a much better yardstick to determine requirements and measure success.

This is the most obvious reason for why government procurement and contracting costs are so high.

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.

Maybe I'm stretching things a bit, but there is the Canadian Digital Service (CDS)- https://digital.canada.ca/

> probably illegal

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?

I remember when someone like that made a Covid app to show your vaccination status faster and cheaper than Alberta could and the media made him out to be such a hero. One of the hockey teams even required fans to install it to be admitted to the arena.

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.

[1] https://twitter.com/CTVNews/status/888034787834855424

Good on the person for trying, but ya those stairs are a death trap. What’s worse is the replies that have no idea how bad those stairs are. One injury and you have a $100k lawsuit to settle on top of $65k for the new stairs.

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