Another example of extravagant spending by Ottawa

traderal · #1 10-12-2022, 07:59 PM

A programmer duplicated ArriveCan in two days, an app that cost Ottawa $54 million
Given that ArriveCan is a relatively simple text-based screening app, its raw development costs could conceivably have been delivered for under $250,000, some say. https://nationalpost.com/news/canada...awa-54-million

huntinstuff · #2 10-12-2022, 08:14 PM

I always wonder who owns these companies that get such big govt payouts for stuff like this...

For instance...who owns the stationary company that supplied all the paper and printing and envelopes to the Canadian Firearms Centre?????

Bushrat · #3 10-12-2022, 09:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by huntinstuff

I always wonder who owns these companies that get such big govt payouts for stuff like this...

For instance...who owns the stationary company that supplied all the paper and printing and envelopes to the Canadian Firearms Centre?????

It's how tax payers money is laundered into the hands of gov't friends, relatives, family members and gov't 'benefactors' who just happen to have hidden interests in the companies and corporate recipients of gov't spending, grants, etc. Been going on since the inception of taxation

fordtruckin · #4 10-12-2022, 09:29 PM

Been saying it for years. You want to get rich, develop some "thing" and sell it to the government. It may only be worth 10 cents but since it's a government contract its sold for $10.

Drewski Canuck · #5 10-12-2022, 09:53 PM

Gee, can you say Jean Chretien and ADSCAM?

We paid $120000 to copy a report that had been lost by the contracting Government Department.

Liberal Ad Agency went to the Copier and hit copy on the copy they had in the file folder.

Drewski

Fisherdan · #6 10-12-2022, 10:53 PM

I’m sure they paid too much. But in all fairness, developing the basic program is probably way less than 1/100th of the work.

This is more of an advertising stunt, then anything.

The Elkster · #7 10-13-2022, 09:18 AM

Read in Macleans a number of years ago about a contractor guy who worked in Ottawa. I think he was IT. Started on a gov't project and ended up being asked to spend money up to a budget so the dept wouldn't get funding cut. He was successful and ended up getting requests for the same thing by other depts who had money to burn. Ended up having so much money to blow that he didn't know what to do with it all. So he started up a bunch of companies to handle that lol. He ended up going to jail and this was part of his tell all afterwards. Real window in the workings of gov't. The amount of waste is staggering, and I don't even want to think about it or my blood might boil.

I tried to find a link to the article but no luck

Stinky Buffalo · #8 10-13-2022, 09:19 AM

To be fair, a lot of the cost of developing software is in the requirements gathering, building the use cases etc. which this developer didn't have to do.

Not to mention architectural and security issues - determining how to host and scale the solution for demand/availability and protect the data.

Then there's testing, which, especially for an app that can't afford to be "leaky" with privileged data - needs to be really thorough. Not to mention that it needs to be tested on a pile of different devices with different screen sizes/resolutions (there are "farms" for this). So that takes resources and time.

But agreed that when it comes to these kinds of government projects, well, it can definitely be done cheaper. Way too much waste and pocket-padding happening.