Friam

I am accepting wagers

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Prof David West

I am accepting wagers

Biden promised a Federal Website to give citizens easy an accurate access to vaccination appointments. Fully operational May 1, date that all Americans wishing a vaccine/vaccination will be able to obtain one.

Assume 50,000 vaccination sites, 50, 15-minute, time slots per day and, at that time, a maximum of 150 million clients.

There are several people on this list who, I believe, could build this Website over the course of a weekend, including UE (user experience) elements like Google Maps for site locations, and install it on a cloud server for volume scaling/descaling. Allow a month to collect data - the only thing really problematic is a list of sites, addresses, and operational hours (to constrain the daily calendar slots).

Total cost: < $25,000 ($500 hr - you folks deserve this pay rate - for 40-50 hours)

Now the wager: I bet that the feds will contract with a major software development corporation for development. Contract will be in the range of 5 and 10 million dollars; there is a 50% chance the site will be late or deployed with partial functionality; there is a 20% chance that it will be as dramatic a failure upon debut as was the healthcare.gov site.

Risk is two beverages of your/my choice — payable when next we can share a physical presence.

davew

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Gary Schiltz-4

Re: I am accepting wagers

I don't agree with your premise that someone on this list could build the website over a weekend. I do agree with the wager, that the federal government will hire some large contracting firm and spend millions of dollars, and it will still suck. I have the feeling that that is simply the nature of the beast that is government.

On Sat, Mar 13, 2021 at 1:06 PM Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:

Biden promised a Federal Website to give citizens easy an accurate access to vaccination appointments. Fully operational May 1, date that all Americans wishing a vaccine/vaccination will be able to obtain one.

Assume 50,000 vaccination sites, 50, 15-minute, time slots per day and, at that time, a maximum of 150 million clients.

There are several people on this list who, I believe, could build this Website over the course of a weekend, including UE (user experience) elements like Google Maps for site locations, and install it on a cloud server for volume scaling/descaling. Allow a month to collect data - the only thing really problematic is a list of sites, addresses, and operational hours (to constrain the daily calendar slots).

Total cost: < $25,000 ($500 hr - you folks deserve this pay rate - for 40-50 hours)

Now the wager: I bet that the feds will contract with a major software development corporation for development. Contract will be in the range of 5 and 10 million dollars; there is a 50% chance the site will be late or deployed with partial functionality; there is a 20% chance that it will be as dramatic a failure upon debut as was the healthcare.gov site.

Risk is two beverages of your/my choice — payable when next we can share a physical presence.

davew

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
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Roger Critchlow-2

Re: I am accepting wagers

Or the nature of the firms that compete for government contracts, or the nature of software development.

Google classified this thread as spam.

-- rec --

On Sat, Mar 13, 2021 at 1:19 PM Gary Schiltz <[hidden email]> wrote:

I don't agree with your premise that someone on this list could build the website over a weekend. I do agree with the wager, that the federal government will hire some large contracting firm and spend millions of dollars, and it will still suck. I have the feeling that that is simply the nature of the beast that is government.

On Sat, Mar 13, 2021 at 1:06 PM Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:
Biden promised a Federal Website to give citizens easy an accurate access to vaccination appointments. Fully operational May 1, date that all Americans wishing a vaccine/vaccination will be able to obtain one.

Assume 50,000 vaccination sites, 50, 15-minute, time slots per day and, at that time, a maximum of 150 million clients.

There are several people on this list who, I believe, could build this Website over the course of a weekend, including UE (user experience) elements like Google Maps for site locations, and install it on a cloud server for volume scaling/descaling. Allow a month to collect data - the only thing really problematic is a list of sites, addresses, and operational hours (to constrain the daily calendar slots).

Total cost: < $25,000 ($500 hr - you folks deserve this pay rate - for 40-50 hours)

Now the wager: I bet that the feds will contract with a major software development corporation for development. Contract will be in the range of 5 and 10 million dollars; there is a 50% chance the site will be late or deployed with partial functionality; there is a 20% chance that it will be as dramatic a failure upon debut as was the healthcare.gov site.

Risk is two beverages of your/my choice — payable when next we can share a physical presence.

davew

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
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- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
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Tom Johnson

Re: I am accepting wagers

In reply to this post by Prof David West

Hay, Brother Dave, how about telling this to Santa Fe City Hall, the Santa Fe County Clerk, county commissioners and even the Pet Licensing division of the Sheriff's Office.

============================================
Tom Johnson - tom@...
Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h)
NM Foundation for Open Government
Check out It's The People's Data

============================================

On Sat, Mar 13, 2021 at 11:05 AM Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:

Biden promised a Federal Website to give citizens easy an accurate access to vaccination appointments. Fully operational May 1, date that all Americans wishing a vaccine/vaccination will be able to obtain one.

Assume 50,000 vaccination sites, 50, 15-minute, time slots per day and, at that time, a maximum of 150 million clients.

There are several people on this list who, I believe, could build this Website over the course of a weekend, including UE (user experience) elements like Google Maps for site locations, and install it on a cloud server for volume scaling/descaling. Allow a month to collect data - the only thing really problematic is a list of sites, addresses, and operational hours (to constrain the daily calendar slots).

Total cost: < $25,000 ($500 hr - you folks deserve this pay rate - for 40-50 hours)

Now the wager: I bet that the feds will contract with a major software development corporation for development. Contract will be in the range of 5 and 10 million dollars; there is a 50% chance the site will be late or deployed with partial functionality; there is a 20% chance that it will be as dramatic a failure upon debut as was the healthcare.gov site.

Risk is two beverages of your/my choice — payable when next we can share a physical presence.

davew

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
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thompnickson2

Re: I am accepting wagers

Surely, we have the ability to Fix Dave Up with the Pet Licensing Board, and vice versa.

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Tom Johnson
Sent: Saturday, March 13, 2021 1:26 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] I am accepting wagers

Hay, Brother Dave, how about telling this to Santa Fe City Hall, the Santa Fe County Clerk, county commissioners and even the Pet Licensing division of the Sheriff's Office.

============================================

On Sat, Mar 13, 2021 at 11:05 AM Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:

Biden promised a Federal Website to give citizens easy an accurate access to vaccination appointments. Fully operational May 1, date that all Americans wishing a vaccine/vaccination will be able to obtain one.

Assume 50,000 vaccination sites, 50, 15-minute, time slots per day and, at that time, a maximum of 150 million clients.

There are several people on this list who, I believe, could build this Website over the course of a weekend, including UE (user experience) elements like Google Maps for site locations, and install it on a cloud server for volume scaling/descaling. Allow a month to collect data - the only thing really problematic is a list of sites, addresses, and operational hours (to constrain the daily calendar slots).

Total cost: < $25,000 ($500 hr - you folks deserve this pay rate - for 40-50 hours)

Now the wager: I bet that the feds will contract with a major software development corporation for development. Contract will be in the range of 5 and 10 million dollars; there is a 50% chance the site will be late or deployed with partial functionality; there is a 20% chance that it will be as dramatic a failure upon debut as was the healthcare.gov site.

Risk is two beverages of your/my choice — payable when next we can share a physical presence.

davew

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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Tom Johnson

Re: I am accepting wagers

Good luck in trying to find it/them.

If you want to go on a real scavenger hunt, try searching for contemporary crime data for your Santa Fe neighborhood.

============================================

On Sat, Mar 13, 2021 at 12:45 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Surely, we have the ability to Fix Dave Up with the Pet Licensing Board, and vice versa.

N

Nick Thompson
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Tom Johnson
Sent: Saturday, March 13, 2021 1:26 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] I am accepting wagers

Hay, Brother Dave, how about telling this to Santa Fe City Hall, the Santa Fe County Clerk, county commissioners and even the Pet Licensing division of the Sheriff's Office.
TJ

============================================
Tom Johnson - tom@...
Institute for Analytic Journalism   --     Santa Fe, NM USA
505.577.6482(c)               505.473.9646(h)
NM Foundation for Open Government
Check out It's The People's Data
============================================

On Sat, Mar 13, 2021 at 11:05 AM Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:
Biden promised a Federal Website to give citizens easy an accurate access to vaccination appointments. Fully operational May 1, date that all Americans wishing a vaccine/vaccination will be able to obtain one.

Assume 50,000 vaccination sites, 50, 15-minute, time slots per day and, at that time, a maximum of 150 million clients.

There are several people on this list who, I believe, could build this Website over the course of a weekend, including UE (user experience) elements like Google Maps for site locations, and install it on a cloud server for volume scaling/descaling. Allow a month to collect data - the only thing really problematic is a list of sites, addresses, and operational hours (to constrain the daily calendar slots).

Total cost: < $25,000 ($500 hr - you folks deserve this pay rate - for 40-50 hours)

Now the wager: I bet that the feds will contract with a major software development corporation for development. Contract will be in the range of 5 and 10 million dollars; there is a 50% chance the site will be late or deployed with partial functionality; there is a 20% chance that it will be as dramatic a failure upon debut as was the healthcare.gov site.

Risk is two beverages of your/my choice — payable when next we can share a physical presence.

davew

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
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- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
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Prof David West

Re: I am accepting wagers

In reply to this post by Tom Johnson

I did. At great length and in intricate detail. Also DMV — who went on to hire a company with a track record of failure/cost overruns, and lawsuits from 8 other states— and to unemployment office. The only agency that listened to me was the state engineer and my students fixed a failed outsourcing project for tracking water rights management documentation.

Davew

On Sat, Mar 13, 2021, at 12:25 PM, Tom Johnson wrote:

Hay, Brother Dave, how about telling this to Santa Fe City Hall, the Santa Fe County Clerk, county commissioners and even the Pet Licensing division of the Sheriff's Office.
TJ

============================================
Tom Johnson - tom@...
Institute for Analytic Journalism   --     Santa Fe, NM USA
505.577.6482(c)               505.473.9646(h)
NM Foundation for Open Government
Check out It's The People's Data
============================================

On Sat, Mar 13, 2021 at 11:05 AM Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:
Biden promised a Federal Website to give citizens easy an accurate access to vaccination appointments. Fully operational May 1, date that all Americans wishing a vaccine/vaccination will be able to obtain one.

Assume 50,000 vaccination sites, 50, 15-minute, time slots per day and, at that time, a maximum of 150 million clients.

There are several people on this list who, I believe, could build this Website over the course of a weekend, including UE (user experience) elements like Google Maps for site locations, and install it on a cloud server for volume scaling/descaling. Allow a month to collect data - the only thing really problematic is a list of sites, addresses, and operational hours (to constrain the daily calendar slots).

Total cost: < $25,000 ($500 hr - you folks deserve this pay rate - for 40-50 hours)

Now the wager: I bet that the feds will contract with a major software development corporation for development. Contract will be in the range of 5 and 10 million dollars; there is a 50% chance the site will be late or deployed with partial functionality; there is a 20% chance that it will be as dramatic a failure upon debut as was the healthcare.gov site.

Risk is two beverages of your/my choice — payable when next we can share a physical presence.

davew

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
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Tom Johnson

Re: I am accepting wagers

When did you do this?
If you're interested, I can add you to the It's The People's Data free, monthly newsletter.

Some FRIAM-ers might be interested in what's been going on in NYC this past week, where it is Open Data Week 2021. See https://www.open-data.nyc/ and scroll down.

Tom

============================================

On Sat, Mar 13, 2021 at 1:39 PM Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:

I did. At great length and in intricate detail. Also DMV — who went on to hire a company with a track record of failure/cost overruns, and lawsuits from 8 other states— and to unemployment office. The only agency that listened to me was the state engineer and my students fixed a failed outsourcing project for tracking water rights management documentation.

Davew

On Sat, Mar 13, 2021, at 12:25 PM, Tom Johnson wrote:
Hay, Brother Dave, how about telling this to Santa Fe City Hall, the Santa Fe County Clerk, county commissioners and even the Pet Licensing division of the Sheriff's Office.
TJ

============================================
Tom Johnson - tom@...
Institute for Analytic Journalism   --     Santa Fe, NM USA
505.577.6482(c)               505.473.9646(h)
NM Foundation for Open Government
Check out It's The People's Data
============================================

On Sat, Mar 13, 2021 at 11:05 AM Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:
Biden promised a Federal Website to give citizens easy an accurate access to vaccination appointments. Fully operational May 1, date that all Americans wishing a vaccine/vaccination will be able to obtain one.

Assume 50,000 vaccination sites, 50, 15-minute, time slots per day and, at that time, a maximum of 150 million clients.

There are several people on this list who, I believe, could build this Website over the course of a weekend, including UE (user experience) elements like Google Maps for site locations, and install it on a cloud server for volume scaling/descaling. Allow a month to collect data - the only thing really problematic is a list of sites, addresses, and operational hours (to constrain the daily calendar slots).

Total cost: < $25,000 ($500 hr - you folks deserve this pay rate - for 40-50 hours)

Now the wager: I bet that the feds will contract with a major software development corporation for development. Contract will be in the range of 5 and 10 million dollars; there is a 50% chance the site will be late or deployed with partial functionality; there is a 20% chance that it will be as dramatic a failure upon debut as was the healthcare.gov site.

Risk is two beverages of your/my choice — payable when next we can share a physical presence.

davew

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
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Barry MacKichan

Re: I am accepting wagers

In reply to this post by Prof David West

When the healthcare.gov fiasco was going on, I was trying repeatedly to refill my Starbucks card using their web site. I thought it would be interesting to see which site would be running correctly first. I don’t know which was first but it was close — it wasn’t a slam dunk win for private enterprise over government.

I remember when building an online store with a shopping cart was a big deal in the ‘90s. Now building these sites is like playing with tinker toys.

I can see a lot more work needed that will never be seen from the public’s side of the system. The 50,000 sites will not be constant. Some new ones will come, and some will go. Hospitals, public health departments, independent as well as chain pharmacies have to feed information into the system. How do they pass that information? How do they prove they are not a hacker and have the authority to change hours, capacity, availability of vaccine, location, etc. Are there mechanisms for weeding out defunct and out-of-date vaccination sites? The problems getting up-to-date and accurate numbers for COVID tests, deaths, ICU usage, etc., demonstrate this is not trivial.

The system for entering the data has to be built, has to be secure, and thousands of people (eg, pharmacy staff) who want to do something else will have to be trained and the technical support team for the vaccinator entities as well as for the general public needs to be up to speed.

Also, it is easy for us to assume computer literacy which may not exist for some parts of the population. Back in the ‘80s, our support people had conversations (with mathematicians, economists, and their students!) like:

Support person: “Now copy the highlighted text to the clipboard”
Support person: <long pause> Hello?
User: “I’ve looked all over. My computer doesn’t have a clipboard!”

My guess is that about 20% of the population is still at that level, and the need to be supported.

And Murphy will be in the wings, watching carefully.

Sent from my iPa

> On Mar 13, 2021, at 1:06 PM, Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> Biden promised a Federal Website to give citizens easy an accurate access to vaccination appointments. Fully operational May 1, date that all Americans wishing a vaccine/vaccination will be able to obtain one.
>
> Assume 50,000 vaccination sites, 50, 15-minute, time slots per day and, at that time, a maximum of 150 million clients.
>
> There are several people on this list who, I believe, could build this Website over the course of a weekend, including UE (user experience) elements like Google Maps for site locations, and install it on a cloud server for volume scaling/descaling. Allow a month to collect data - the only thing really problematic is a list of sites, addresses, and operational hours (to constrain the daily calendar slots).
>
> Total cost: < $25,000 ($500 hr - you folks deserve this pay rate - for 40-50 hours)
>
> Now the wager: I bet that the feds will contract with a major software development corporation for development. Contract will be in the range of 5 and 10 million dollars; there is a 50% chance the site will be late or deployed with partial functionality; there is a 20% chance that it will be as dramatic a failure upon debut as was the healthcare.gov site.
>
> Risk is two beverages of your/my choice — payable when next we can share a physical presence.
>
> davew
>
>
>
> - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
> un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

Prof David West

Re: I am accepting wagers

In reply to this post by Tom Johnson

Circa 2012 - 2015, when I was at Highlands.

On Sat, Mar 13, 2021, at 2:37 PM, Tom Johnson wrote:

When did you do this?
If you're interested, I can add you to the It's The People's Data free, monthly newsletter.

Some FRIAM-ers might be interested in what's been going on in NYC this past week, where it is Open Data Week 2021. See https://www.open-data.nyc/ and scroll down.
Tom

============================================
Tom Johnson - tom@...
Institute for Analytic Journalism   --     Santa Fe, NM USA
505.577.6482(c)               505.473.9646(h)
NM Foundation for Open Government
Check out It's The People's Data
============================================

On Sat, Mar 13, 2021 at 1:39 PM Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:

I did. At great length and in intricate detail. Also DMV — who went on to hire a company with a track record of failure/cost overruns, and lawsuits from 8 other states— and to unemployment office. The only agency that listened to me was the state engineer and my students fixed a failed outsourcing project for tracking water rights management documentation.

Davew

On Sat, Mar 13, 2021, at 12:25 PM, Tom Johnson wrote:
Hay, Brother Dave, how about telling this to Santa Fe City Hall, the Santa Fe County Clerk, county commissioners and even the Pet Licensing division of the Sheriff's Office.
TJ

============================================
Tom Johnson - tom@...
Institute for Analytic Journalism   --     Santa Fe, NM USA
505.577.6482(c)               505.473.9646(h)
NM Foundation for Open Government
Check out It's The People's Data
============================================

On Sat, Mar 13, 2021 at 11:05 AM Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:
Biden promised a Federal Website to give citizens easy an accurate access to vaccination appointments. Fully operational May 1, date that all Americans wishing a vaccine/vaccination will be able to obtain one.

Assume 50,000 vaccination sites, 50, 15-minute, time slots per day and, at that time, a maximum of 150 million clients.

There are several people on this list who, I believe, could build this Website over the course of a weekend, including UE (user experience) elements like Google Maps for site locations, and install it on a cloud server for volume scaling/descaling. Allow a month to collect data - the only thing really problematic is a list of sites, addresses, and operational hours (to constrain the daily calendar slots).

Total cost: < $25,000 ($500 hr - you folks deserve this pay rate - for 40-50 hours)

Now the wager: I bet that the feds will contract with a major software development corporation for development. Contract will be in the range of 5 and 10 million dollars; there is a 50% chance the site will be late or deployed with partial functionality; there is a 20% chance that it will be as dramatic a failure upon debut as was the healthcare.gov site.

Risk is two beverages of your/my choice — payable when next we can share a physical presence.

davew

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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Gary Schiltz-4

Re: I am accepting wagers

In reply to this post by Barry MacKichan

Rather tangential, but I wonder what percent of people in the USA are computer literate? Here in the "third world" (Ecuador), many, many people who use the internet almost constantly have never touched a "computer". For them, a computer is an Android phone.

On Sat, Mar 13, 2021 at 6:35 PM Barry MacKichan <[hidden email]> wrote:

When the healthcare.gov fiasco was going on, I was trying repeatedly to refill my Starbucks card using their web site. I thought it would be interesting to see which site would be running correctly first. I don’t know which was first but it was close — it wasn’t a slam dunk win for private enterprise over government.

I remember when building an online store with a shopping cart was a big deal in the ‘90s. Now building these sites is like playing with tinker toys.

I can see a lot more work needed that will never be seen from the public’s side of the system. The 50,000 sites will not be constant. Some new ones will come, and some will go. Hospitals, public health departments, independent as well as chain pharmacies have to feed information into the system. How do they pass that information? How do they prove they are not a hacker and have the authority to change hours, capacity, availability of vaccine, location, etc. Are there mechanisms for weeding out defunct and out-of-date vaccination sites? The problems getting up-to-date and accurate numbers for COVID tests, deaths, ICU usage, etc., demonstrate this is not trivial.

The system for entering the data has to be built, has to be secure, and thousands of people (eg, pharmacy staff) who want to do something else will have to be trained and the technical support team for the vaccinator entities as well as for the general public needs to be up to speed.

Also, it is easy for us to assume computer literacy which may not exist for some parts of the population. Back in the ‘80s, our support people had conversations (with mathematicians, economists, and their students!) like:

Support person: “Now copy the highlighted text to the clipboard”
Support person: <long pause> Hello?
User: “I’ve looked all over. My computer doesn’t have a clipboard!”

My guess is that about 20% of the population is still at that level, and the need to be supported.

And Murphy will be in the wings, watching carefully.

Sent from my iPa

> On Mar 13, 2021, at 1:06 PM, Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> Biden promised a Federal Website to give citizens easy an accurate access to vaccination appointments. Fully operational May 1, date that all Americans wishing a vaccine/vaccination will be able to obtain one.
>
> Assume 50,000 vaccination sites, 50, 15-minute, time slots per day and, at that time, a maximum of 150 million clients.
>
> There are several people on this list who, I believe, could build this Website over the course of a weekend, including UE (user experience) elements like Google Maps for site locations, and install it on a cloud server for volume scaling/descaling. Allow a month to collect data - the only thing really problematic is a list of sites, addresses, and operational hours (to constrain the daily calendar slots).
>
> Total cost: < $25,000 ($500 hr - you folks deserve this pay rate - for 40-50 hours)
>
> Now the wager: I bet that the feds will contract with a major software development corporation for development. Contract will be in the range of 5 and 10 million dollars; there is a 50% chance the site will be late or deployed with partial functionality; there is a 20% chance that it will be as dramatic a failure upon debut as was the healthcare.gov site.
>
> Risk is two beverages of your/my choice — payable when next we can share a physical presence.
>
> davew
>
>
>
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jon zingale

Re: I am accepting wagers

In reply to this post by Barry MacKichan

"""
I can see a lot more work needed that will never be seen from the public’s side of the system. The 50,000 sites will not be constant. Some new ones will come, and some will go. Hospitals, public health departments, independent as well as chain pharmacies have to feed information into the system. How do they pass that information? How do they prove they are not a hacker and have the authority to change hours, capacity, availability of vaccine, location, etc. Are there mechanisms for weeding out defunct and out-of-date vaccination sites? The problems getting up-to-date and accurate numbers for COVID tests, deaths, ICU usage, etc., demonstrate this is not trivial.
"""

Not trivial, but also tinker toys. Industry-level authentication of RESTful services is a pattern that many of us on this list ought to be able to implement while skimming Instagram or playing online go. A small team of Friammers and/or a few interested parties could have something up in a month that would be considerably better than healthcare.gov or the New Mexico Unemployment app. Some on this list are pretty bright and could write or implement formal verification software for proving the correctness of the code.

It is so easy to point to software that doesn't do as advertised that it is easy to miss out on what the present state of the art actually is. The anecdotal cases are click-bait. But hey, I have spilled enough ink on this subject already. Yes, we can have nice things.

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Prof David West

Re: I am accepting wagers

At the peak of the healthcare.gov fiasco, Sixty Minutes, did a segment on a small company in San Francisco — five people — built site with all the capabilities, including calculating subsidies (supposedly the most difficult feature), of the official site. It took them a weekend (supposedly) — but definitely some very short time span as they did not begin the effort until the bad publicity became prominent and the episode aired less than two weeks after the initial debut/failure of the official site.

Of course they did not have access to real databases, nor did they have to solve problems of data reconciliation among those disparate databases. This kind of infrastructure, as was pointed out, would have added significant time for them to complete a 'full function' app. And, of course, because they were not the government nor the government approved contractor they would never have been allowed access.

davew

On Sat, Mar 13, 2021, at 7:59 PM, jon zingale wrote:

"""
I can see a lot more work needed that will never be seen from the public’s side of the system. The 50,000 sites will not be constant. Some new ones will come, and some will go. Hospitals, public health departments, independent as well as chain pharmacies have to feed information into the system. How do they pass that information? How do they prove they are not a hacker and have the authority to change hours, capacity, availability of vaccine, location, etc. Are there mechanisms for weeding out defunct and out-of-date vaccination sites? The problems getting up-to-date and accurate numbers for COVID tests, deaths, ICU usage, etc., demonstrate this is not trivial.
"""
Not trivial, but also tinker toys. Industry-level authentication of RESTful services is a pattern that many of us on this list ought to be able to implement while skimming Instagram or playing online go. A small team of Friammers and/or a few interested parties could have something up in a month that would be considerably better than healthcare.gov or the New Mexico Unemployment app. Some on this list are pretty bright and could write or implement formal verification software for proving the correctness of the code.
It is so easy to point to software that doesn't do as advertised that it is easy to miss out on what the present state of the art actually is. The anecdotal cases are click-bait. But hey, I have spilled enough ink on this subject already. Yes, we can have nice things.
Sent from the Friam mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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Marcus G. Daniels

Re: I am accepting wagers

These kind of turf issues arise in other large organizations. It is not just government.

On Mar 14, 2021, at 7:45 AM, Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:

At the peak of the healthcare.gov fiasco, Sixty Minutes, did a segment on a small company in San Francisco — five people — built site with all the capabilities, including calculating subsidies (supposedly the most difficult feature), of the official site. It took them a weekend (supposedly) — but definitely some very short time span as they did not begin the effort until the bad publicity became prominent and the episode aired less than two weeks after the initial debut/failure of the official site.

Of course they did not have access to real databases, nor did they have to solve problems of data reconciliation among those disparate databases. This kind of infrastructure, as was pointed out, would have added significant time for them to complete a 'full function' app. And, of course, because they were not the government nor the government approved contractor they would never have been allowed access.

davew

On Sat, Mar 13, 2021, at 7:59 PM, jon zingale wrote:

"""

I can see a lot more work needed that will never be seen from the public’s side of the system. The 50,000 sites will not be constant. Some new ones will come, and some will go. Hospitals, public health departments, independent as well as chain pharmacies have to feed information into the system. How do they pass that information? How do they prove they are not a hacker and have the authority to change hours, capacity, availability of vaccine, location, etc. Are there mechanisms for weeding out defunct and out-of-date vaccination sites? The problems getting up-to-date and accurate numbers for COVID tests, deaths, ICU usage, etc., demonstrate this is not trivial.

"""

Not trivial, but also tinker toys. Industry-level authentication of RESTful services is a pattern that many of us on this list ought to be able to implement while skimming Instagram or playing online go. A small team of Friammers and/or a few interested parties could have something up in a month that would be considerably better than healthcare.gov or the New Mexico Unemployment app. Some on this list are pretty bright and could write or implement formal verification software for proving the correctness of the code.

It is so easy to point to software that doesn't do as advertised that it is easy to miss out on what the present state of the art actually is. The anecdotal cases are click-bait. But hey, I have spilled enough ink on this subject already. Yes, we can have nice things.

Sent from the Friam mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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Barry MacKichan

Re: I am accepting wagers

In reply to this post by jon zingale

What you describe probably could be done approximately as fast as Dave says. But we are not talking simply about a system with an elegant web interface for the public and a static database on the back end. The compexity of the back end depends a lot on the requirements. Localities have to keep up to date about hours, capacities, etc. Presumably this system is required to: reject people signing up bogus names to scalp the appointments, check that second shots are taken, etc. There are databases currently handling all this, very competently in our county, but I bet you’ll find everything in the wild from spreadsheets to modern systems. It’s not that its hard to get data into the system, but the entropy out there is huge, so feeding data into the system from the existing systems could get really messy.

The general principal is that a simple problem repeated in a thousand different variations is no longer a simple problem.

--Barry

On 13 Mar 2021, at 21:59, jon zingale wrote:

"""
I can see a lot more work needed that will never be seen from the public’s side of the system. The 50,000 sites will not be constant. Some new ones will come, and some will go. Hospitals, public health departments, independent as well as chain pharmacies have to feed information into the system. How do they pass that information? How do they prove they are not a hacker and have the authority to change hours, capacity, availability of vaccine, location, etc. Are there mechanisms for weeding out defunct and out-of-date vaccination sites? The problems getting up-to-date and accurate numbers for COVID tests, deaths, ICU usage, etc., demonstrate this is not trivial.
"""
Not trivial, but also tinker toys. Industry-level authentication of RESTful services is a pattern that many of us on this list ought to be able to implement while skimming Instagram or playing online go. A small team of Friammers and/or a few interested parties could have something up in a month that would be considerably better than healthcare.gov or the New Mexico Unemployment app. Some on this list are pretty bright and could write or implement formal verification software for proving the correctness of the code.
It is so easy to point to software that doesn't do as advertised that it is easy to miss out on what the present state of the art actually is. The anecdotal cases are click-bait. But hey, I have spilled enough ink on this subject already. Yes, we can have nice things.
Sent from the Friam mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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cjf

Re: I am accepting wagers

In reply to this post by Prof David West

“Of course they did not have access to real databases, nor did they have to solve problems of data reconciliation among those disparate databases. This kind of infrastructure, as was pointed out, would have added significant time for them to complete a 'full function' app.”

This reminds me of the old Monty Python sketch How To Do It-How To Play The Flute: Well, you blow in one end and move your fingers up and down so the right notes come out. ANYONE could have built the site in a week or two if they didn’t have to connect it to the legacy databases. Features are easy, and preexisting ones– how long have companies been selling insurance online? – are stupid easy.

Data is hard. Integration is really, really hard.

Here’s just one problem: Take a look at, say, your Amazon account. How many shipping and billing addresses are there? How many are duplicates-say, where the shipping and billing address are the same?

Now, the user changes a zip code. Do you update any of the other addresses? If so, which ones?

That ONE problem is called Master Data Management, and companies spent $11.3 BILLION trying to solve it in 2020.

Sorry for the rant. Just an old CIO venting.

Cjf

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: [hidden email]
Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2021 9:45 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] I am accepting wagers

davew

On Sat, Mar 13, 2021, at 7:59 PM, jon zingale wrote:

"""

I can see a lot more work needed that will never be seen from the public’s side of the system. The 50,000 sites will not be constant. Some new ones will come, and some will go. Hospitals, public health departments, independent as well as chain pharmacies have to feed information into the system. How do they pass that information? How do they prove they are not a hacker and have the authority to change hours, capacity, availability of vaccine, location, etc. Are there mechanisms for weeding out defunct and out-of-date vaccination sites? The problems getting up-to-date and accurate numbers for COVID tests, deaths, ICU usage, etc., demonstrate this is not trivial.

"""

Not trivial, but also tinker toys. Industry-level authentication of RESTful services is a pattern that many of us on this list ought to be able to implement while skimming Instagram or playing online go. A small team of Friammers and/or a few interested parties could have something up in a month that would be considerably better than healthcare.gov or the New Mexico Unemployment app. Some on this list are pretty bright and could write or implement formal verification software for proving the correctness of the code.

It is so easy to point to software that doesn't do as advertised that it is easy to miss out on what the present state of the art actually is. The anecdotal cases are click-bait. But hey, I have spilled enough ink on this subject already. Yes, we can have nice things.

Sent from the Friam mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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Gary Schiltz-4

Re: I am accepting wagers

Thanks for bringing some more reality into this discussion. I’ve never been a CIO, but having been a software engineer in the real world for 25 years, it triggers something in me when someone dismissively claims that a small group of developers / hackers could turn out software for a gargantuan user base and thousands of disparate clinics in a weekend. I have no patience for such hyperbole.

On Sun, Mar 14, 2021 at 10:46 PM Chris Feola <[hidden email]> wrote:

“Of course they did not have access to real databases, nor did they have to solve problems of data reconciliation among those disparate databases. This kind of infrastructure, as was pointed out, would have added significant time for them to complete a 'full function' app.”

This reminds me of the old Monty Python sketch How To Do It-How To Play The Flute: Well, you blow in one end and move your fingers up and down so the right notes come out. ANYONE could have built the site in a week or two if they didn’t have to connect it to the legacy databases. Features are easy, and preexisting ones– how long have companies been selling insurance online? – are stupid easy.

Data is hard. Integration is really, really hard.

Here’s just one problem: Take a look at, say, your Amazon account. How many shipping and billing addresses are there? How many are duplicates-say, where the shipping and billing address are the same?

Now, the user changes a zip code. Do you update any of the other addresses? If so, which ones?

That ONE problem is called Master Data Management, and companies spent $11.3 BILLION trying to solve it in 2020.

Sorry for the rant. Just an old CIO venting.

Cjf

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: [hidden email]
Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2021 9:45 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] I am accepting wagers

At the peak of the healthcare.gov fiasco, Sixty Minutes, did a segment on a small company in San Francisco — five people — built site with all the capabilities, including calculating subsidies (supposedly the most difficult feature), of the official site. It took them a weekend (supposedly) — but definitely some very short time span as they did not begin the effort until the bad publicity became prominent and the episode aired less than two weeks after the initial debut/failure of the official site.

Of course they did not have access to real databases, nor did they have to solve problems of data reconciliation among those disparate databases. This kind of infrastructure, as was pointed out, would have added significant time for them to complete a 'full function' app. And, of course, because they were not the government nor the government approved contractor they would never have been allowed access.

davew

On Sat, Mar 13, 2021, at 7:59 PM, jon zingale wrote:

"""

I can see a lot more work needed that will never be seen from the public’s side of the system. The 50,000 sites will not be constant. Some new ones will come, and some will go. Hospitals, public health departments, independent as well as chain pharmacies have to feed information into the system. How do they pass that information? How do they prove they are not a hacker and have the authority to change hours, capacity, availability of vaccine, location, etc. Are there mechanisms for weeding out defunct and out-of-date vaccination sites? The problems getting up-to-date and accurate numbers for COVID tests, deaths, ICU usage, etc., demonstrate this is not trivial.

"""

Not trivial, but also tinker toys. Industry-level authentication of RESTful services is a pattern that many of us on this list ought to be able to implement while skimming Instagram or playing online go. A small team of Friammers and/or a few interested parties could have something up in a month that would be considerably better than healthcare.gov or the New Mexico Unemployment app. Some on this list are pretty bright and could write or implement formal verification software for proving the correctness of the code.

It is so easy to point to software that doesn't do as advertised that it is easy to miss out on what the present state of the art actually is. The anecdotal cases are click-bait. But hey, I have spilled enough ink on this subject already. Yes, we can have nice things.

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jon zingale

Re: I am accepting wagers

This post was updated on .

Ha, *bringing some more reality* is what I listen for to know when I have
some naysayers on the ropes. Much of the last decade of my career has been
working to reconcile data whose interfaces radically vary. Claiming it to be
an 11 billion dollar problem is a rhetorical move that smells of
*abstraction* rather than *reality* to me. Barry states the problem clearly,
but it isn't IMO an insurmountable problem, just an intensional one with
lots of particularities. At least one small start-up that I wrote for
managed a similar problem surprisingly well (up to Google's data standards,
for instance), and sold for orders of magnitudes less than the number above.
Stating the problem is great, working the problem is best, but the rest is
simply whining.

--
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Tom Johnson

Re: I am accepting wagers

In reply to this post by cjf

Welcome to FRIAM, pal.

Tom

On Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 9:46 PM Chris Feola <[hidden email]> wrote:

“Of course they did not have access to real databases, nor did they have to solve problems of data reconciliation among those disparate databases. This kind of infrastructure, as was pointed out, would have added significant time for them to complete a 'full function' app.”

This reminds me of the old Monty Python sketch How To Do It-How To Play The Flute: Well, you blow in one end and move your fingers up and down so the right notes come out. ANYONE could have built the site in a week or two if they didn’t have to connect it to the legacy databases. Features are easy, and preexisting ones– how long have companies been selling insurance online? – are stupid easy.

Data is hard. Integration is really, really hard.

Here’s just one problem: Take a look at, say, your Amazon account. How many shipping and billing addresses are there? How many are duplicates-say, where the shipping and billing address are the same?

Now, the user changes a zip code. Do you update any of the other addresses? If so, which ones?

That ONE problem is called Master Data Management, and companies spent $11.3 BILLION trying to solve it in 2020.

Sorry for the rant. Just an old CIO venting.

Cjf

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: [hidden email]
Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2021 9:45 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] I am accepting wagers

At the peak of the healthcare.gov fiasco, Sixty Minutes, did a segment on a small company in San Francisco — five people — built site with all the capabilities, including calculating subsidies (supposedly the most difficult feature), of the official site. It took them a weekend (supposedly) — but definitely some very short time span as they did not begin the effort until the bad publicity became prominent and the episode aired less than two weeks after the initial debut/failure of the official site.

Of course they did not have access to real databases, nor did they have to solve problems of data reconciliation among those disparate databases. This kind of infrastructure, as was pointed out, would have added significant time for them to complete a 'full function' app. And, of course, because they were not the government nor the government approved contractor they would never have been allowed access.

davew

On Sat, Mar 13, 2021, at 7:59 PM, jon zingale wrote:

"""

I can see a lot more work needed that will never be seen from the public’s side of the system. The 50,000 sites will not be constant. Some new ones will come, and some will go. Hospitals, public health departments, independent as well as chain pharmacies have to feed information into the system. How do they pass that information? How do they prove they are not a hacker and have the authority to change hours, capacity, availability of vaccine, location, etc. Are there mechanisms for weeding out defunct and out-of-date vaccination sites? The problems getting up-to-date and accurate numbers for COVID tests, deaths, ICU usage, etc., demonstrate this is not trivial.

"""

Not trivial, but also tinker toys. Industry-level authentication of RESTful services is a pattern that many of us on this list ought to be able to implement while skimming Instagram or playing online go. A small team of Friammers and/or a few interested parties could have something up in a month that would be considerably better than healthcare.gov or the New Mexico Unemployment app. Some on this list are pretty bright and could write or implement formal verification software for proving the correctness of the code.

It is so easy to point to software that doesn't do as advertised that it is easy to miss out on what the present state of the art actually is. The anecdotal cases are click-bait. But hey, I have spilled enough ink on this subject already. Yes, we can have nice things.

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Prof David West

Re: I am accepting wagers

In reply to this post by jon zingale

I started as a programmer (COBOL for business apps / Assembler for internals) in 1968. I have held almost every title up to and including CIO. I was a professor of, essentially, management information systems but also taught the non-math CS stuff, like O/S, programming, database, and AI.

Spent the last part of my career making wild and fantastical claims about how information systems could be orders of magnitude simpler and therefore easier, faster, and cheaper to develop, with no loss of quality. The jeers were loud and rude.

Only had two opportunities to prove, in the real world, I was "right." One a national company that produced forms (loan applications, disclosure forms, mortgage documents, etc) for banks in all fifty states. They employed 50 attorneys to review changes in law and generate requirements for programmers, and fifty programmers using C++. My system, written in the then still quite primitive Smalltalk) reduced the programming staff to five. The other was an insurance company rewriting and updating a legacy system supporting sales and management of commercial insurance (car fleets, boats, commerical real estate). They planned a 500 million, five-year, 1000 developer effort with multiple subcontractors and off-shore teams. Ended up being an 18 month project with a third of the development staff (still some off shore, and one subcontractor) at a cost of 20+ million.

In both efforts the company had to fight a continual rear guard effort by traditionalists. In the case of the banker forms company that effort was lost and last I heard they were up to 100 Java programmers.

Not a brag — I have no idea if my approach could be promulgated across the industry with similar effect. Certainly am not claiming some kind of philosopher stone for simplicity and low cost.

Just anecdotal support for Jon.

davew

On Sun, Mar 14, 2021, at 11:41 PM, jon zingale wrote:

> Ha, *bringing some more reality* is what I listen for to know when I have
> some naysayers on the ropes. Much of the last decade of my career has been
> working to reconcile data whose interfaces radically vary. Claiming it to be
> an 11 billion dollar problem is a rhetorical move that smells of
> *abstraction* rather than *reality* to me. Barry states the problem clearly,
> but it isn't IMO an insurmountable problem, just an intentional one with
> lots of particularities. At least one small start-up that I wrote for
> managed a similar problem surprisingly well (up to Google's data standards,
> for instance), and sold for orders of magnitudes less than the number above.
> Stating the problem is great, working the problem is best, but the rest is
> simply whining.
>
>
>
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