The Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application

> I'd say that it would take be about 6 hours

No, it wouldn't. This 6 hours would be after months of negotiating features, looks, wording, legal forms, waivers and endless meetings and rework of a multi-person team.

It you think you can get a straight answer and clear specs from any large bureaucracy in neglectable time, you are delusional.

The government doesn't pay damn well enough to get competent people and they in turn have all the power in choosing how to spend our tax dollars which then goes to private contractors who are adept at gaming the system.

As a society, it absolutely baffles me why we choose to de-incentivize working public sector jobs and encourage things like lowest bidder wins contract mandates which basically encourages the worst possible companies to win because they are cutting corners to get the bid down.

Commentary from the last time it was posted to HN (504 points, 979 days ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3266455

Unfortunately this is nothing new. As a small business owner who does work for and with federal, state, and local governments, it's quite sad how often vendors try to take advantage of the system.