OSHA App Costs Gov't $200k

itwbennett writes "How much does it cost to make a phone app to tell local temperature and suggest how not to get heatstroke, such as drink water and avoid alcohol? If you're the U.S. Government, it'll cost you a pretty penny. Using MuckRock to file a Freedom of Information Act, Rich Jones of GUN.IO discovered the Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration paid $106,467 for the Android version; $96,000 for the iPhone version, and an additional $40,000 for a BlackBerry app that never got distributed."

Comments

Re:This sounds like an article

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about that... Android and iOS offer very easy to work with developer APIs, I have personal experience. In 5 lines of code on iOS you can request the GPS location of the phone, then you just query the weather data from a public source... never done this personally, but I am sure there are weather data providers available for cheap or free....

If all this app does is display the weather, and display hardcoded recommendations based on that weather, any competent developer could have this done in a day... of course since this was a more professional job there is far more people involved, so with all the beurocratic nonsense that goes into your average disfunctional R&D unit I would be surprised if this took more than 2 weeks.

Just downloaded the Android version

[wjcofkc]

So I just installed the Android version of OSHA Heat Safety Tool to take a first hand look and it really is total crap. This is like something a kid would write in python for an intro to programming class. This "app" could have been written in a day by any one of half the people on Slashdot. In fact, I would be surprised if it did take more than a day to develop.

Code is posted

[Ukab the Great]

Here is a link to the code

- (float)getHeatIndex:(float)temp:(float)humidity {

        NSLog(@"[getHeatIndex] temp: %f, humidity: %f", temp, humidity);

        float hIndex =
        -42.379 + 2.04901523 * temp
        + 10.14333127 * humidity
        - 0.22475541 * temp * humidity
        - 6.83783 * pow(10, -3) * temp * temp
        - 5.481717 * pow(10, -2) * humidity * humidity
        + 1.22874 * pow(10, -3) * temp * temp * humidity
        + 8.5282 * pow(10, -4) * temp * humidity * humidity
        - 1.99 * pow(10, -6) * temp * temp * humidity * humidity; //hIndex = round(hIndex);
        NSLog(@"-Heat Index: %f", hIndex);
        return hIndex;
}

There's probably a reason it's calculating 140F in boston.

Re:wow, a guy made a mistake

[micheas]

You have it wrong.

If a budget has been approved, the bureaucrats have an incentive to award the bid that exactly matches the budget, because otherwise next years budget will be cut.

You would be amazed at what gets approved at the end the year of a well run department that is well under budget. (at least I always am.)

Re:Sounds reasonable.

[Paul Slocum]

I'm an iPhone developer and I've had to do a lot of research on pricing lately. I installed the app, and it has one simple form that does a simple calculation, a few static HTML screens, and it gets weather info based on your location. I think most experienced devs could do this in a few days including testing. You could probably get some kid to do it for a few hundred on the iOS developer forums I use, but if you want a tried and true developer with credentials, probably a few thousand.

That said, it's easy these days to spend more than you need to on iOS development. And in the grand scheme of things I don't think the amount they overspent is that crazy, especially considering there's probably some overhead just because it's the government. I'm sure a lot of companies are overspending when getting apps made.

Who's astroturfing this story?

[Above]

I see plenty of comments on how reasonable or unreasonable the price is, and they are interesting. I generally agree it doesn't seem that out of whack price wise for a working application supported for some time period.

What I find more interesting is this story is being posted all over the web all of the sudden:

• IT World
• Free Republic
• Human Events
• Business Insider
• Gizmodo
• Big Government
• TPM

And of course here on /.

Hitting that range of sites (and more) with this sort of non-story story trying to push a narrative of the government is wasting your money? Someone behind the scenes is pushing this narrative, I suspect. Not news for nerds, but manufactured political outrage.