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Comment by bamnet | Hacker News Reader

It's a super cool API, but last I chatted with the team who maintains this (~2020?) it was already understaffed and they only had capacity for bug fixes. The roadmap hasn't been updated since 2017 so YMMV.

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All information provided as part of the NPS API roadmap is provided for informational purposes only, is general in nature, and is not intended to and should not be relied upon or construed as a binding commitment. Please do not rely on this information in making decisions, as the development, release, and timing of any products, features, or functionality are subject to change.

Maintenance mode since 2017 is fine. I'm planning to write the interface with Jquery UI.

The alerts is nice, though most of the rest (visitor centers, lesson plans) is static data and doesn't need to be an API, it can just be a static json file.

Campgrounds is also only providing static data. An "API" should show campsite availability and provide endpoints to book campsites to be useful as an API.

I was hoping to have API access to live bear collar tracking or some such. I'd love to create a system that auto-alerts me if a bear's motion path is intersecting my hike.

they have a broader catalog here https://www.nps.gov/subjects/gisandmapping/tools-and-data.ht...

Do you have contact info for that team? The NPS app is one of the best I've ever used and I'd love to know who built it.

Booze Allen

Ol’ Boozy at it again!

this isn't out of 18F -- the really cool tech team at the whitehouse(?)? what happened to all that digital govt funding?

Well, the president who launched all of that left office in 2017; and we had a new president with a bias against national parks… meaning the funding NPS did receive had to be spent on critical work in the parks themselves.

The President does not decide funding for the NPS, Congress does.

have you met congress? they can barely agree on anything so getting more funding for National Parks is an uphill battle.

It’s not like Congress needs to separately pass funding for the NPS. In 2023, the NPS was given a 6% budget increase, even!

Let's say the NSF wanted to give everyone in NSF raises in 2023 to offset inflation from 2022. I believe that would require a 6.5% increase right? I personally believe that the people there deserve more salary than just meeting inflation, though imo.

Whoa no, 100% of their funds don't go to salaries. I'd guess it would be substantially lower than a 6.5% budget increase, even.

Pretending there's no cross-talk or influence across those boundaries is intellectually dishonest.

Seems like you're just nitpicking here. Congress holds the purse strings, but the President and Congress influence each other, and in the cast of the 2016 U.S. election, the president had a lot of influence on the Congress.

A more complete version of your rebuttal could have included the fact that the President typically submits his budget proposal for the year to Congress as an opening bid:

> The executive budget process consists of three main phases: development of the President’s budget proposal, submission and justification of the President’s budget proposal, and execution of enacted annual appropriations and other budgetary legislation.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47092

I just think it's important to remind people whenever possible that the United States President isn't a king, isn't all-powerful, and isn't even a Prime Minister. The role is deliberately separated from the legislative branch, and as such cannot introduce legislation of any form.

However to state that about a President diminishes the reality of what happens on the ground, from party allegiance politik to complete back-room deals. It's about as likely that a President won't sign off on something because it was introduced by the opposing party, than any real conflict with 'values' etc.

That report leaves out the unofficial step 1.5: "Pronouncement by the opposition in Congress that the President's budget is Dead On Arrival".

It's not quite true. They don't want to do all of that work, so they do generally follow the executive branch's requests. But Congress has the ability to cut anything they want -- and to add in items that the department doesn't want. (e.g. https://publicintegrity.org/national-security/congress-funds...)

Thus, the annual ritual of the dead-on-arrival pronouncement. It's especially mandatory when the President and Speaker are of opposing parties.

There are two. THe USDS which works under the office of the President and 18f. Both are subject to the whims of the current president and congress. They can easily be seen as a cost center and while doing great work, are still unable to cover the entire spectrum of federal agency requirements. I am not as familiar with 18F but if the workflow is similar to the USDS, they more like sophisticated consultants to help get government work done.

I’m curious how many HNers would like to add their skills and join an USDS or 18f considering you can make hundreds of thousands more in private practice

"at a senior level at FAANG-level companies" is the last bit of that sentence you left off.

The median software engineer salary in the US is something on the order of $120k/yr. The GS pay scale tops out at just under $160k before locality is taken into account and that's only a small single-digit percentage increase at best, but nobody is getting hired as a GS15 to do development work.

You will make more in the private sector for sure but "hundreds of thousands" is going to be the minority by far.

Agreed - I'm a state-level government employee with 2 YOE and I'm making $100k, projected to make $120k over the next three years and project managers top out at ~$240k. While that's nowhere near a senior-level FAANG engineer, the job security is nice and there's a guaranteed pension if I'm patient enough.

One thing I don't understand is why at the federal there are plenty of employees in the $300k salary range, and several employees (single or low double digits in absolute numbers) make more than POTUS but for some reason 18F pops everyone into the GS pay schedule and it seems puts them at level 12 or 13. So clearly there's no law requiring employees not made something roughly comparable to what they could get in the private sector so it's hard to understand why the 18F folks aren't getting $150-200k/yr.

Edit: After a bit more research there's a separate executive pay schedule (not that different than the private sector after all) but it's not super clear to this outsider what determines which schedule you get on other than probably just defaulting to GS.

I know several people who are GS 15's and in IT - it's not uncommon at all.

Also 18F has special hiring authorities with 2 year appointments that are not restricted to the GS pay scales for the very issues you bring up.

> The 2024 salary cap for all GS employees is $191,900 per year. You cannot be offered more than this under any circumstance.

> https://join.tts.gsa.gov/compensation-and-benefits/

That is the page where you find jobs for 18F, nothing there indicates anyone at 18F is not on the GS scale.

It's important to note that that is GS15, step 10, with the maximum locality adjustment (which I think is just Alaska but California is not far behind). GS15 step 1 is going to be $123k before any locality adjustment so still very likely under $150k/yr unless you're in one of the highest cost areas. Alaska is 32%; most midwest states are 17%.

There are a decent number of people here in academia, which pays the same/worse.

Money is important, obviously, but it's not always the only thing that motivates people.

That sounds about right tbh... funding is not great for these kinds of things :(

do you still have the contact? I have a proof of concept i'd like to share with them.

Good to know! Thanks for sharing.

A healthy diet of steady underfunding leads to humble, stable systems. We should start worrying when a team is temporarily overfunded, building out complexity in excess of their long term maintenance capability.

Emphasis on healthy.

Is it healthy? At one point the team was funded enough to create the api, and now it can only maintain it. What if it was never funded enough to create the api in the first place? I realize there's a risk of building complexity, but don't mistake "healthiness" for "inability".

This is a really interesting point and I see a lot of truth in it. But the language is imprecise- underfunding would lead to a decaying system.

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