[HN Gopher] Why Is Booz Allen Renting Us Back Our Own National P... ___________________________________________________________________ Why Is Booz Allen Renting Us Back Our Own National Parks? Author : PaulHoule Score : 149 points Date : 2022-12-02 19:46 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (mattstoller.substack.com) (TXT) w3m dump (mattstoller.substack.com) | 0xbadcafebee wrote: | Can somebody explain to me why this got upvoted so much even | though the writer doesn't have a brain? | | Booz Allen is not renting us a park, because they don't own it, | hence they cannot rent it out. Booz Allen is running a website | and we are paying them fees because that's the money they use to | run the website. He quotes them as saying as much in the article. | | Then he goes on to basically state he has no clue what they were | paid to run the website, and yet the entire article claims that | the fees are "junk", regardless of the fact that he has no | evidence to support this. | | Despite this, in the linked article on Booze's website it states: | _" With more than 45 million users in FY21, the site has | generated more than $270 million in revenue for the federal | government"_. Compare that to the 182 Million to be invested in | Booze over 10 years (18.2 Million/year averaged). | | It's not stated how payment takes place, but Booze's wording | suggests that the government did not have to front the capital | and instead Booze will recoup it over time, which takes the risk | off the government of another $400M boondoggle. | | Clearly the government is making more money than it is spending, | which is what you want, rather than a botched government job | spending $400 Million and having jack shit to show for it. Not | only that, but Booze's site was completed in only a year, and was | the first major government site made in the cloud. It has | continued to expand and has not failed. This is an amazing | achievement for government work. | | Pay them your fees and stop whining, or we'll end up with the | government failing to make a basic website for 10x the amount of | taxpayer money. People love to whine when they have to personally | pay a fee, but they don't care at all when their taxpayer dollars | are flushed down the toilet in the millions to billions. Out of | sight, out of mind. | csours wrote: | Because Americans will accept fees before they accept taxes. They | will pay local taxes before they pay state or federal taxes. | gnicholas wrote: | I understand why people would prefer user fees to nationally- | distributed taxes. What rubs me the wrong way is the lottery | application fees. Charging the people who visit a park is one | thing. Charging people who want to visit a park, apply to do so | on a govt website, and are denied, is another. If this was an | account setup fee I might be able to understand. But charging | it every time you throw your hat in the ring seems inefficient | and exploitative. | em500 wrote: | It's probably an effective way to prevent bots (or even | humans) from spamming the lottery if entry to the lottery was | free or gated by a one-off fee. The exploitative part is | mostly that these per-application fees are pocketed by a | private company. | PaulHoule wrote: | See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimation_Crisis_(book) | | Would a constitutional against this sort of thing help keep the | country governable? | carom wrote: | Kind of a duplicate? | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33834006 | phnofive wrote: | Sorta - I noted this in that thread, since this came second: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33834783 | black_puppydog wrote: | Doctorow actually cites the BIG substack, but adds a bunch of | other stuff. Unclear... | cpt1138 wrote: | Doctorow says "But there's something we can do about this! | The part of the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act that | authorizes agencies to assess fees runs out in Oct 2023, and | when Congress renews it, they could add an amendment to block | Booz's junk fees." | | What exactly are "we" supposed to do about it? | PaulHoule wrote: | This is an interesting problem. | | The normal state of news is that a story breaks and there are | 300 near identical articles about it in 24 hours. Google News | wouldn't have been successful if they hadn't developed a | clustering algorithm that handles this. | | Ordinary clustering algorithms don't work well for documents | period in my experience and I am not sure if that's the right | approach to topic identification. But if we're going to get | past RSS readers having the same failing interface that has | been failing since 1999 and get past the idea that social | media is bad because "algorithms = bad" we need some | algorithm to tame the many "me too" blog posts that come | whenever a blog post breaks onto the front of HN. | em500 wrote: | The article answers it's own question. On the website developed | for Obamacare: | | > The government had spent $400 million over four years - more | time than it took the U.S. to enter and win World War II - and | yet, the dozens of contractors couldn't set up a website to take | sign-ups. | | So the answer to the headline question (and also the broader | problem) is: because the government probably can't develop the | project successfully in-house. | | This is not a particularly American problem. Every few years I | read about some super costly government IT disaster here in the | Netherlands. I'm sure locals from most other countries will have | similar stories to share. So the broader question would be: what | makes governments apparently unable to get big IT projects done | right? (I'm aware that there is a big selection/reporting bias in | the disaster stories.) | | According to the article, Booz Allen got a 10 year contract. What | would it take, when it expires, for the BLM to develop and run | this successfully in-house? | tstrimple wrote: | > what makes governments apparently unable to get big IT | projects done right? | | I wonder why this sentiment is never applied to big IT projects | in the private sector. | | https://faethcoaching.com/it-project-failure-rates-facts-and... | * According to the Standish Group's Annual CHAOS 2020 report, | 66% of technology projects (based on the analysis of 50,000 | projects globally) end in partial or total failure. While | larger projects are more prone to encountering challenges or | failing altogether, even the smallest software projects fail | one in ten times. Large projects are successful less than 10% | of the time. * Standish also found that 31% of | US IT projects were canceled outright and the performance of | 53% 'was so worrying that they were challenged.' * | Research from McKinsey in 2020 found that 17% of large IT | projects go so badly, they threaten the very existence of the | company. * BCG (2020) estimated that 70% of | digital transformation efforts fall short of meeting targets. A | 2020 CISQ report found the total cost of unsuccessful | development projects among US firms is an estimated $260B, | while the total cost of operational failures caused by poor | quality software is estimated at $1.56 trillion. | | I'm in the consulting world and I've been brought in at the | tail end of multiple BILLION dollar boondoggle modernization | efforts. These are fortune 100 companies that built their | fortunes through acquisition and consolidation who have no idea | how to steer their ship in any sort of effective way. In a lot | of cases, we're cleaning up after other top 5 consulting firms | who lead the client on while pissing away hundreds of millions | of dollars. It turns out damn near everyone is bad at building | large systems but only the government seems to be derided for | it consistently. | gnicholas wrote: | But the failed Obamacare website was also farmed out to a third | party contractor. TFA says this, and links to an investigative | piece on the debacle: | https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/10/16/meet-... | panzagl wrote: | Big IT projects fail. The US federal government for the most | part only deals in big projects. There's more to it than that, | but they're mostly details compared to this basic truth. | gamegoblin wrote: | I think it's a combination of a few things. | | - Government jobs don't pay well relative to the private | sector, _especially_ in software, so the government talent pool | is lower quality than industry. | | - For most government activities, government essentially has a | monopoly on their implementation, e.g. infrastructure building. | So people don't have as much of a comparison to know how good | or badly government is doing. With software, people use | government software and use privately developed software and | the difference is obvious. | | - Software, perhaps even more than many endeavors, benefits | from having a single decision-maker in charge of the project | who has a clear vision of what needs to be done and strong | conviction on how to do it. Design-by-committee is not a great | way to design good software. Most government projects wind up | being some form of design-by-committee, either implicitly or | explicitly. Even when the government has software built by | private contractors, the requirements are written by committee, | the contractors chosen by committee, etc. Very few of the best | of anything is designed by committee, but the effects are much | more obvious with software than say, a park. | mjhay wrote: | Healthcare.gov was farmed out to well-connected contractors, | much like most other similar boondoggles (SLS, F-34, Bradley | fighting vehicle, delayed road projects, etc). | | It says a lot more about corrupt and inefficient procurement | (e.g. cost-plus) than it does about rank-and-file government | employees. Using many contractors in many different | congressional districts, all of whom have little incentive to | deliver on time and on budget, or cooperate effectively with | each other. | gamegoblin wrote: | Fundamentally you're talking about the problem I alluded to | in the 3rd point: Software projects work best with a single | (or small group of closely knit) decision-makers at the top | who bear ultimate responsibility for the implementation of | the project. | | The problem with governmental design-by-committee is that | it spreads out the responsibility such that the failure of | the project does not fall on any individual or small group. | | The lack of concentrated responsibility breeds an | environment that incentivizes grift rather than delivering | value. | | If the iPhone bombed, it was going to be Steve Jobs' fault. | He had final say in all design decisions. If Healthcare.gov | bombed... whose head rolled? Excerpt from the wiki article | of Todd Park, CTO in the Obama administration: | | ''' | | The initial version of HealthCare.gov, which was deployed | on July 1, 2010, was built in 90 days by Park and his team | at HHS. The first HealthCare.gov was cited by the Kaiser | Family Foundation as one of the early highlights in the | implementation of the healthcare reform implementation | progress. HealthCare.gov was also the first website ever | "demoed" by a sitting president | | The following two versions, from the relaunch of the front | end in May 2013 to the badly flawed marketplace that went | live in October 2013, were developed by contractors and | overseen by officials at the Centers for Medicare and | Medicaid Services, outside of his purview within the White | House Office of Science and Technology Policy. When the | extent of the problems with Healthcare.gov became clear, | Park was tasked by President Obama to work on a "trauma | team" that addressed the "technological disaster". Park, | along with Jeffrey Zients, led the "tech surge" that | ultimately repaired Healthcare.gov over the winter, | eventually fixing the marketplace sufficiently to enable | millions of Americans to find plans and purchase health | insurance. | | ''' | | How many of those unnamed officials at the Centers for | Medicare and Medicaid services got fired for a multi- | billion dollar boondoggle? The reason bureaucracies (both | government and private) love process, documentation, | committees, etc., is because the primary goal of any | bureaucracy, far and above its nominal mission, is to | continue existing, and a primary part of continuing to | exist is to avoid blame for anything. Delegating decision | making to committees and process is a key way to avoid | blame. | | "Who is responsible for this mess?" | | "Nobody is responsible, we followed the process. But don't | worry, we've started the process of forming a committee to | update our process manual to prevent this mess in the | future." | crooked-v wrote: | I feel it still says something about government employees | because one can pretty much take it as a given that the | standard employee pool is basically incapable of building | relatively basic e-commerce websites. | mjhay wrote: | Well yeah, what do you expect when Congress and the GSA | sets pay for pay for developers at levels far below the | private sector? I've worked for two different federal | agencies in the past, and both were more efficient and | lower BS than most private-sector jobs I've worked at. | This wasn't IT or development, of course. | | It's just taken as a truism that government is always | inefficient and bureaucratic, but the average ossified | corporation such as Google is wildly inefficient and | bureaucratic just the same. | | They also aren't necessarily that bad to interact with. | I'd much rather go to the DMV than interact with Comcast. | giaour wrote: | The standard government employee is a project manager | whose main job is overseeing contractor work. Funding | cycles make it nearly impossible to hire in house staff | to actually do work, and there is firm political | opposition to the federal government doing anything on | its own. | medellin wrote: | Being someone who just happened into a government job for | my first one out of college that holds true in my | experience. No good employee stayed in the job more than | two years and most only one before they got so sick of | the politics and bike shedding. | | The government gets good employees it just loses them all | very quickly when it fails to compensate them as well as | provide them with meaningful work. | Klonoar wrote: | _> - Government jobs don't pay well relative to the private | sector, especially in software, so the government talent pool | is lower quality than industry._ | | If we're discussing the USA, sure. If we're discussing other | countries this isn't always necessarily true, and as the | person you responded to has noted, this happens worldwide. | gamegoblin wrote: | That is just one of the three points I made (and I | personally think the final point is the most salient here). | Though I'm curious, do you know of any countries where | government software jobs pay market rate? I would be | interested to see if their government websites are decent. | chrisseaton wrote: | > So the broader question would be: what makes governments | apparently unable to get big IT projects done right? | | Signals intelligence people must be building some of the most | powerful computer systems in the world. They also historically | have innovated and led the industry in areas like crypto. How | come they get it right but the rest of the civil service can't? | Rebelgecko wrote: | It probably helps if your successes _and_ fuck-ups are | classified for decades | chrisseaton wrote: | The rest of the civil service seems almost entirely unable | to get _anything_ done in computing though. Signals | intelligence in the UK and US seem to ship quite a lot of | success, from all the history, leaks, and things you can | physically see like Bumblehive. Definitely something | they're doing differently than the rest of the civil | service. | gnicholas wrote: | > _For instance, as one camper noted, in just one lottery to hike | Mount Whitney, more than 16,000 people applied, and only a third | got in. Yet everyone paid the $6 registration fee, which means | the gross income for that single location is over $100,000._ | | Wow, it's like those scummy all-pay auction sites you see | advertised, where you can buy/win a TV for just $4.29. Incredible | that this is allowed. | | It sounds like there's still no answer as to whether Booz Allen | was paid cash upfront to build the sites, and it is possible that | the amount being paid is "fair" in some sense. But if they're | making six-figures of profit on one lottery for Mount Whitney, | that seems exceedingly unlikely. | warbler73 wrote: | recreation.gov is a .gov site. Which is supposed to mean it is | owned by the government and not a private run site collecting | fees for a for-profit defense contractor. | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | Where is this meaning of ".gov" to be found? | jonnybgood wrote: | https://home.dotgov.gov/ | stonogo wrote: | Here: https://home.dotgov.gov Operated by CISA care of the | GSA. | | Specifically: https://home.dotgov.gov/registration/requirem | ents/#eligibili... | | See also RFC 920: | https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc920 Section | "Initial Set of Top Level Domains" | biftek wrote: | I previously had little issue with the fees because I assumed | they went back to the parks due to the .gov domain. Now that | I know it's just a private 3rd party collecting them and our | parks and public lands are still underfunded is infuriating. | thaumasiotes wrote: | >> _For instance, as one camper noted, in just one lottery to | hike Mount Whitney, more than 16,000 people applied, and only a | third got in. Yet everyone paid the $6 registration fee, which | means the gross income for that single location is over | $100,000._ | | > Wow, it's like those scummy all-pay auction sites you see | advertised, where you can buy/win a TV for just $4.29. | Incredible that this is allowed. | | My impression was that those sites use a much scummier model, | in which whoever buys the last ticket wins. Tickets are cheap, | but the priority system ("last guy wins") means people buy a | large number of tickets. | | A true lottery in which you buy a ticket for $6 and then either | win or lose at random is a very different thing. You can't | spend more than $6 on that. | pmulard wrote: | Slightly off topic, but I feel like there are so many conflicting | parties involved with the US national parks system. On one hand, | we have groups of people who want to preserve the land as much as | possible. But often these same people have no problems building | new roads and swanky new amenities like hotels and restaurants in | the middle of these parks. Yellowstone has some of the most wild | and rugged terrain in the lower 48, yet some parts of it feel | like DisneyWorld. | | Which is it? Do we actually care about having natural land we can | all enjoy, or are we just trying to add a few extra billion in | our national budget? It all just comes off like a huge grift and | way to exploit the land. | | Then there are parks like Glacier, home to some of the most | stunning natural beauty in the country, right next to Tribal Land | with some of the most rampant poverty in the country. Suburban | families cruise around in their brand new Subarus, while eating | $30 bison burgers. They barely notice indigenous people, and the | results of the land exploitation, on the way out. | intrepidhero wrote: | How are most people going to enjoy (and therefore care about) | this natural land without at least some roads, hotels and | restaurants? | | Even in designated wilderness areas, somebody has to build | roads and cut trail in order for anyone to enjoy it and | scientists to study the effects of conservation. I think it's a | tough balance and we need lands all across the spectrum of | development. | LeifCarrotson wrote: | Roads? You walk, ride an MTB, or (especially for park service | moving construction materials for trail maintenance) use | horses. | | Hotels? I hear they've developed this innovation known as a | "tent". Thanks to space-age fabrics, you can be warm and dry | with little more than a bag and some sticks. | | Restaurants? Food is fuel, not a social activity. It's not | that hard to carry your calories on your back. In many parks, | if there aren't too many roads, hotels, and restaurants | upstream, you can get drinkable water straight from the | stream, or run it through a filter. If you don't have to | carry water in, most parties can pack in enough calories in | to go for a week or more. | | You're not going to get octogenarians and the obese to the | middle of Yellowstone or the peak of Denali, no, but that's | OK. | haswell wrote: | I recently finished a road trip that took me through 7 national | parks, and it was interesting seeing the large degree of | variation in amenities in various parks, and how that changed | the experience. | | By far, my favorite experiences were at parks that had minimal | amenities, and far fewer people as a result. These places felt | wild, and to me, that's how they should feel. | | The ones that were equipped with paved walking paths, shuttle | systems (looking at you, Zion), and top tier camping amenities | (Bryce) were absolutely mobbed with people, making them feel | like theme parks. | | I'm all for ensuring parks are accessible for more people, and | I'm sensitive to the fact that parks need routes that can be | accessed via wheelchair, not everyone has physical strength for | difficult unpaved paths, etc. | | But to your point, the experience at those "Disney-ified" | locations felt very...counterintuitive. Combine this with the | huge rise in vandalism, rule breaking, and general destruction | in many parks, and I can't help but feel that a slightly higher | barrier to entry is a good thing. | | If it's challenging (but achievable) to visit a location, I | feel like there may more inherent respect by the folks who care | enough to make sure they're prepared for the experience. | | Lowering the bar too far has been detrimental, IMO. | chrisseaton wrote: | > yet some parts of it feel like DisneyWorld | | Says it in the name, doesn't it? It's a managed 'park' for | people's enjoyment, not a wilderness. So it has DisneyWorld- | like infrastructure. | 015a wrote: | You see a scene like this [1] and you wouldn't be blamed for | thinking that its just some normal highway in the western US. | Its actually _inside_ Yellowstone; zoom in on the sign and you | 'll see that its the _exit ramp_ to Old Faithful. | | [1] | https://www.google.com/maps/@44.4608402,-110.8437926,3a,75y,... | blululu wrote: | If you are trying to root out corruption and waste in the | Federal Government I would suggest looking beyond the Park | Service. They are asked to do a lot (more each year) with a | very small budget (that does not keep pace with inflation or | the amount of places they need to run). The park service needs | to cater to a wide variety of people who expect different | things from their recreation. | | Personally I think that personal cars should be banned from all | national parks. The roads are expensive to maintain, and a | traffic jam to a giant parking lot ruins the park. Denali or | Rocky Mountain National park have excellent shuttle services | that really help thin the crowd. But some people really like to | have their road trips, and having some handicap accessible | sections is also important. The contradictions stem from the | very nature of democratic compromise. | panzagl wrote: | It's something the NPS has struggled with from the beginning- | there is a book called "Engineering Eden" that goes into just | how 'controlled' Yellowstone is and how the objectives have | changed over the last century. | briantakita wrote: | > It all just comes off like a huge grift and way to exploit | the land. | | Bingo. It comes off that way because it is that way. With | centralized power comes centralized corruption...This article | is another outrage piece. At best we can expect some token | gesture as a response but in the end, the powerful & well | connected get their way by cynically fixing the errors of their | ways with some new form of corruption. | | > They barely notice indigenous people, and the results of the | land exploitation, on the way out. | | Our ancestors were indigenous and at some point we became | assimilated subjects. I'll give it to the Native American & | Hawaiian cultures in remembering their heritage. If the public | outrage is notable enough, I'll wager that Booz Allen will have | some sort of Native American committee so they can claim that | they care about the land & people. | luckylion wrote: | Do you preserve the land, completely removing humans from it, | and only allow humans to marvel at it from satellites? How do | you get the population to care for your lofty goals? Do you | make it accessible to humans so they can enjoy nature? How do | they get there if not via roads? | quickthrower2 wrote: | Tongue in cheek: Walk! But I get your point. Usually isn't | the road accessible parts just a tiny fraction of it all | anyway? | blululu wrote: | Taking this comment seriously I would actually really | support a more walking centered park system. You are | correct that a lot of most parks are situated very far from | roads, but in a lot of parks the best places are close to | the roads. Personally really dislike having a traffic jam | in a natural park, or people demanding yet more parking | spaces in Yosemite valley. The shuttle bus services that | exist in several national parks are generally really nice. | They ease up the footprint and maintenance costs of roads | and parking lots. They make it easy to do some of the more | interesting through hikes. Obviously I am not saying that | we should scrap all the roads but I do think that | emphasizing walking would be a good idea. | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-12-02 23:00 UTC)