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$10,000 Prize For Connecting Businesses With Government Data

Posted by samzenpus on from the working-for-the-man dept.

First time accepted submitter InsertCleverUsername writes "The Department of Commerce has announced a $10,000 contest for developers making apps to utilize Commerce and other publicly available data and information to support American businesses. Developers must use at least one Department of Commerce dataset to create an application that assists businesses and/or improves the service delivery of Business.USA.gov to the business community. Developers may choose any platform. A list of developer-friendly data sets can be found on the Business Data and Tools page of Data.gov."

28 of 45 comments (clear)

  1. Just in case you wondered by Opportunist · · Score: 1, Funny

    what government needs all the info about you for.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  2. Woohoo $10,000 by GeneralTurgidson · · Score: 3, Insightful

    To do a $50,000 contract job plus on ongoing support hours. This is a pretty shitty IT bailout

    1. Re:Woohoo $10,000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's even less than that. $5,000 for first prize, $3,000 for second, and $2,000 for third. So the DOC gets three applications on the cheap. $5,000 is a lot of money in India, but it's chump change in the US.

    2. Re:Woohoo $10,000 by Anonymus · · Score: 1

      For the amount of work required and the skills necessary to build this, a $5000 first prize is chump change. That's about the price something with a chance of winning would be if you were to build it for a paying client, unless you've already got some genius yet simple ideas for government datasets.

      You're not guaranteed to win, however. You're not even likely to place. So you've sunk several days or weeks worth of work on something for a very slim chance to get a normal wage for it.

    3. Re:Woohoo $10,000 by Anonymus · · Score: 1

      I should add, however, that you would get some free advertising/bragging rights for winning something like this, so it could still very well be worth it. Especially if you do get a genius idea for a simple little app you could knock out in a few hours.

  3. Web services by Nerdfest · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wouldn't they be further ahead to just publish their data as simple web services as a starting point? I see that some already seem to be, but many are just CSV files, zip files, etc . You never know when new data is available, or there's corrections, etc. It's also a little surprising that the number of downloads for the first file I tried was zero.

    1. Re:Web services by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Quick'n'dirty solution :) https://developers.google.com/fusiontables/

  4. Wikileaks? by Alex+Belits · · Score: 4, Funny

    I mean, they do it already.

    --
    Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
  5. Did You See the List of Judges? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Vivek Kundra is a judge. Enough said.

  6. Uh huh by BonThomme · · Score: 1

    "well, we held this competition, and no US citizens applied, so we must have a huge skills shortage...."

  7. how about just doing your jobs? by decora · · Score: 3, Funny

    the way i hear it, thousands of government bureaucrats get a $40,000 "prize" every year, whether they actually accomplish this goal or not.

    1. Re:how about just doing your jobs? by superwiz · · Score: 1

      If one developer can do the job that 5 bureaucrats cannot, then why not fire 5 bureaucrats and give their salary to 1 developer? Or is it written somewhere that bureaucrats must remain employed while developers must continue working for peanuts?

      --
      Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
    2. Re:how about just doing your jobs? by Dutchmaan · · Score: 1

      Just need to play devils advocate here, so I guess it needs to be said that maybe the five bureaucrats, might be in charge of more than just the development of one app. Now I'm all for efficiency in government, but it seems there's no pleasing some people. You want government to spend less, you got it, can't complain about overspending. so then you move onto something you CAN complain about. Just cut to the chase already and say you want government for defense and nothing more and save everyone some reading and typing.

    3. Re:how about just doing your jobs? by superwiz · · Score: 1

      But this isn't government spending less. This is government employing highly-paid bureaucrats (and they are highly paid at this point) to figure out how to pay less for highly skilled private sector work. They are not replacing people with lesser skill by people with higher skills (that would be efficient). They are offering peanuts for mundane work (ie, nothing innovate there) which requires professional experience. It's one thing for the government to sponsor basic research (because business won't invest in that which won't be profitable for another 50 years). It's quite another to try to create illusion of attempting efficiency while maintaining and increasing the earnings of all those entrenched in the apparatus. They are doing the latter here. Instead of hiring someone to think of ways to get free tech work, why not fire those who can't do tech work and hire those who can do tech work and can think of ways to use tech to make government more efficient? In other words, replace some dead wood with someone who can code this problem up.

      --
      Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
  8. Shows what PHB's want to pay for software. by fhage · · Score: 3, Insightful

    6. Intellectual Property Rights: All submissions to the DOC Business Apps Challenge remain the intellectual property of the individuals or organizations that developed them. By registering, consenting to the terms of the challenge, and entering a Submission, however, the Participant agrees that DOC reserves an irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free license to use, copy, distribute to the public, create derivative works from, and publicly display and perform a Submission for a period of one year starting on the date of the announcement of contest winners.

    So, for $10k they get bunches of apps which can be distributed royalty-free for a year. If an app is popular, they can change the labels (create derivative works) and continue on. Only 3 developers get any money. Everyone else may have their their app distributed with no compensation.

    If you plan on paying off loans or feeding your family by developing software, you should avoid these contests. Leave the submissions to the 9th grade web design classes.

    1. Re:Shows what PHB's want to pay for software. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      However, If you wish to make a name for yourself and can create a high quality application that is adopted by the federal government...
      I think you'd be showing future employers (or venture(vulture) capitalists) that you have the ability to create stellar applications.

      Sometimes doing something for advertising is more important than for the pure profit. Comments like yours never seem to take that into account

    2. Re:Shows what PHB's want to pay for software. by parkinglot777 · · Score: 2

      So, for $10k they get bunches of apps which can be distributed royalty-free for a year. If an app is popular, they can change the labels (create derivative works) and continue on.

      I agree with you all of it but the part when you talk about "derivative works" because it is not correct. You cannot modify a copyrighted work (derivative work) and claim that the new modified work is yours. The copyright law covers that part as well.

  9. It's better than $0 by sirwired · · Score: 1

    Hey $10,000 isn't too bad for the work, at least if you compare it to other things, like the X-Prize.

    1. Re:It's better than $0 by Mariomario · · Score: 1

      Its not like they are asking for a full program, just a small app. So even 5k is enough.

  10. And? by sirwired · · Score: 1

    I'm not quite sure what you are getting at, AC. So no, enough isn't said.

  11. SIGH by koan · · Score: 1

    Ties ins with business and government data, privatized police forces and military, Super PACS, we are living in a Plutocracy.

    --
    "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
  12. Trusting gov for data access is a bad, bad idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Note: I understand the anecdotal nature of this comment. The problematic, US Government (USG) employees (mentally retired but still obstructing progress) are what we call "institutionalized."

    This program, to pay people to develop apps based USG data sets and applications, is not a good idea.

    USG cannot and will not guarantee access-to nor permanence-of data and applications.

    Engineering firms used data sets and applications via analog or digital files for years. Engineers and firms swapped their copies of data and some programs.

    USG decided it would 'help'. USG adopted data sets and applications and hosted them.

    Organizations built applications based upon USG-hosted data. Organizations built applications based upon applications built upon USG data.

    After a few iterations of Federal employees and administration changes, unilaterally, USG personnel decided either it cost too much to host the data or no one used the data or no one should be allowed to access to the data, and, USG cut off the data and applications. (USG employees exacerbated the problem when they declared public domain data to be proprietary property of USG. "We're not sharing, and, it's illegal for you to share!")

    Suddenly, applications around the world crashed. The underlying software crashed because USG-hosted data was inaccessible. The meta software crashed because underlying software crashed.

    Users revolted against USG.

    USG relented a little. Some data and apps became available - if you applied for access and a USG employee's arbitrary decision deemed you worthy.

    However, realizing the unreliability of politicians in charge of data, applications, science, and 'approval', engineers returned to swapping their copies of data and programs.

    Trusting USG to guarantee access and permanence of data is a bad idea.

    This program, to pay people to develop apps based upon probably transient and spurious USG data sets and applications, is a bad, bad idea.

    An independent-host or revolving-host escrow repository of data and source code could be more reliable.

    When someone says, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help.", grab you data and source code and RUN!

  13. Why link to the blog? by tomhath · · Score: 2

    The article links to a White House blog, which is nothing more than a parroting and link to the real information. Must be an election year.

  14. Re:Just give me the money by crafty.munchkin · · Score: 1

    Simple solution, get your retarded country to stop being so retarded all the time! ;)

    --
    ... wait, what?
  15. Re:Only for US "entities" by M0j0_j0j0 · · Score: 1

    Didn't read the article, but for 10k I actually thought the target was for India developers.

  16. Pocket change by maple_shaft · · Score: 1

    This amount is laughable. I have a few ideas for web crawler algorithms that can compile specific government data across single US government agency sites. If i were to package them into subscription based web services then I could hopefully make 50 times that by starting a business.

  17. Solving other people's problems is good exercise by anyaristow · · Score: 1

    I once tried to convince someone trying to get into programming after a career of underemployment that programming was about solving other people's problems. If you can't find satisfaction over solving problems you didn't imagine yourself, you're not going to like programming for other people. As he was coming up with his portfolio project to demonstrate his knowledge I tried to convince him to solve a problem potential employers could relate to. But he thought it more important to bring his vision to the world. So he wrote a web-based dice game.

    This is a great project for someone looking to show potential employers they know how to solve problems. Winning would just be gravy.

  18. Conflict of interest? by 3seas · · Score: 1

    Perhaps we should change the historic documents to read of the business, for the business, by the business. And the people pay taxes to be the enemy.