They Said It Would Cost $54M. We Said "No Thanks."
- > where we identify public servants with strong technical aptitude across government, bring them into dedicated product teams
> The team’s approach was straightforward. Build working software fast. Put it in front of real users early. Collect feedback. Fix things quickly. Release updates every two weeks.
> That’s a 95% cost reduction. Both systems instead of one. Delivered faster. With 643 users already on the platform
This is a proven solution. These parts, the non-AI management ones, are proven to work in all sorts of places. Gov.uk is another example.
However, there's one massive problem with this: it doesn't involve the free market and it doesn't make any money for corporations to feed back to politicians in campaign donation kickbacks. It even involves respecting civil servants - maybe even paying them market wages! These parts are so heretical that most governments would choose the solution that 10X more expensive and also doesn't work, every single time.
by kwertyoowiyop
2 subcomments
- Great idea, and hopefully great results. But it’s written like LinkedIn “broetry” and that AI image at the top promises a fluffy article. Maybe expand a bit on some of the impressive tech described in the body?
by deskamess
1 subcomments
- "On the client side, this project would not have been possible without the exceptional support of Deputy Minister Mark Kleefeld and his team at the Ministry of Infrastructure. From the very beginning, Infrastructure’s leadership understood what we were trying to accomplish and backed it fully. That kind of top-down support from the client ministry is rare, and it made all the difference."
That's kind of amazing. Alberta has a conservative govt so I am surprised "in-house" got the pass over "outside company". It is good to see fiscal conservatism over 'govt-bad' conservatism. Hats off to the deputy minister et al. for approving this.
Using Google Gemini to generate requirements/spec document from video is amazing. I wonder what the prompt looked like and if there was custom support to help process the videos.
by sokka_h2otribe
3 subcomments
- Writing quality was distracting. Very breathey. Hard to understand if I was getting important information or not -- but it's ok, some people will defend this style.
- > They understand the business processes they’re digitizing.
I feel this has more importance than they think. Outside consultants would not have had this domain knowledge and would have spent months learning it. And then would have had to fix their mistakes because they misunderstood something (billed to the province, naturally)
- USDS and 18F proved that strong, internal technical leadership and dedicated teams make this work.
by WBrentWilliams
0 subcomment
- I don't know... I read the article, and what I really saw was a simpler argument: The buy vs build decision had drifted so far to capture by vendor, where the vendor charged to gather the already in-existence in-house knowledge, that it was much cheaper to build in-house. The AI bits could be seen as a speed-up, but I think it more likely that those designing the new system were designing from pain. That is, they knew the pain points based upon years of intimate knowledge. No wonder the new system, stood up quickly, and quite possible still in MVP mode, is so popular.
In brief, the story isn't AI as an accelerant. It's someone finally letting loose their internal knowledge to build to spec rather than buy.
by goodcanadian
0 subcomment
- The shortlist came down to four major consulting firms.
This is the problem in a nutshell. Those firms are structured to extract money from their customers, not to produce useful work. The fact that anyone is signing contracts with them any more blows my mind.
by adamtaylor_13
0 subcomment
- This sounds like the exact type of system my team replaces. 4 years and $54M sounds like some consultancies saw a money piñata (government contract) and decided to take a crack at it.
There is no reality on this planet where this project costs $54M and 4 years. Good on the folks in the ministry to notice this and not blindly follow implement.
by foo-bar-baz529
1 subcomments
- AI seems somewhat orthogonal. It may have sped up the timeline, but the people using it need to be competent in the first place.
- I wonder how much of the needs satisfied by this software in Alberta is also needed by other states?
Yes, it's great that they saved money and built what they need so quickly, but a catch with govt is that they build out these proprietary processes that need more bespoke software.
- I think the use of AI is really missing the point here. The point is that small in-house teams can deliver a lot more quickly and to a higher quality and at a lower cost than large outsourced teams from the big consultancy companies. I've seen this over and over again (the problem is that large organisations often prefer to go the slow and expensive route with the big consultancy companies for a complex variety of reasons). So it would be like an article saying "our small inhouse team using VS Code did a much better job than a big outsourced consultancy using MS Visual Studio - isn't VS Code awesome".
- The UCP did something, anything without the buddy buddy system? How did the kickbacks work?
- I'm using AI every day (and it's not really about AI), but:
Anyone else closed the article immediately after seeing the low-taste, sloppy image at the top?
How do you call this aesthetic? "Futuristic vomit"? AKA "Generate image of: code blocks, AI-brain image, diagram, smiling guy and bunch of other crap. Make it look cool and futuristic, make no mistakes"?
- I searched this report for "test". Result: none found.
> what if a small team of public servants, equipped with modern AI development tools, built the replacement systems themselves?
Next: bridges and brain surgery.
- The writing is on the wall: It's game over for software contracts and SaaS. This is more true outside the US where financial constraints are stronger.
by PunchyHamster
0 subcomment
- I think it's more argument for in-housing than AI (as vendors would probably use AI anyway)
Smaller team that's closer aligned to business goals can be far more agile and efficient than bouncing between middle managers of 2 separate corporate structures
- Thankfully they added that horrible AIslop image right in the beginning of the article, so I knew instantly to not trust the author on anything.
by Esophagus4
0 subcomment
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- This is really awesome work. Solving these legacy IT problems in government is under appreciated. Love that you all were able to accomplish this.
Super disappointed to see most of the comments just complaining about AI and not engaging with the contents of the article.
by jmspamerton2
1 subcomments
- Alberta needs to leave Canada. Imagine having the profit from all of your natural resources leave the state to fund social programs that don't benefit you at all. The rest of Canada does nothing for Alberta.
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