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.)