[HN Gopher] Booz Allen ticketmastered America's public lands
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Booz Allen ticketmastered America's public lands
Author : tonystubblebine
Score : 220 points
Date : 2022-12-02 17:53 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (doctorow.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (doctorow.medium.com)
| black_13 wrote:
| PaybackTony wrote:
| I attended the NASPD conference this last year (National
| Association of State Parks Directors). After a couple of us ex
| Vacasa / Nike / Amazon engineers heard from our local state that
| the industry is up for disruption we started working on product
| in our free time. After attending that conference they couldn't
| be more right.
|
| Those running the parks hate their options, I don't see them as a
| crook here. The industry for park management software that fits
| the needs of a public land is stale. Fees for fees is normal. The
| process to become a vendor for a state is long and drawn out, and
| is riddled with red tape that was created in large part by the
| very same stale old vendors who've been in it the last 30 years.
|
| After speaking with multiple states and now being in the proposal
| process for a number of them, hopefully we can be a step further
| in the right direction (think things like opening up 3rd party
| integrations, better bot prevention, etc).
|
| Another thing I'd like to pass on from talking to a number of
| states including the national parks people: They are really
| trying to move in a more equitable direction when it comes to
| park access. They are very aware that many park experiences
| aren't as accessible (hard to get a reservation) to certain
| demographics and from my perspective they are making an effort to
| figure some of those things out.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Do you think part of that accessibility plan is more paved
| parkways too? My wife has a disability that makes walking on
| gravel substantially harder than paved road.
|
| Selfishly I'd enjoy parks more if the had paved access roads,
| parking and parkways. One of the things I like about where I'm
| living right now is the Recreation district in the city made it
| a mission to pave parkways and everyone's better off for it.
| StillBored wrote:
| I'm sorry about your wife, but I'm going to say that I (and
| quite a number of other people) are against paving public
| lands reserved for nature parks. I'm perfectly happy to
| support her using off road (powered even) bikes, wheelchairs
| and any other personal mobility technology that is invented
| or used.
|
| But, parks are suppose to be nature, its widely accepted that
| what the national parks did in the early 1900's was a huge
| mistake, paving and placing lodges next to old faithful, the
| paved path in carsbad caverns (along with the cafeteria), the
| roads through glacier and nearly all of the other parks. The
| town in the middle of Yosimite valley. This was done to
| encourage people to "see the sights" and the results have
| been a disaster, not only to nature, but to the traffic and
| general destruction of the "sights to be seen". And IMHO
| paved paths are just another name for a vehicular road.
|
| So the modern take on nature parks (vs recreational parks
| like you find in town, which have trails, baseball fields and
| swimming pools), is that the correct way to build them is to
| keep the cars on the borders, and build trails to the sights.
| Ideally single track, and most definitely permeable surface.
| Although, armoring, and other more natural construction
| methods tend to be fine as well. Most of the parks
| constructed since the 1970's (the few that exist) tend to
| follow this model. Visitors center near the road, along with
| the RV camping, improved camping sites, etc and the nature is
| accessed via natural surface trails on foot, bike or horse.
| phnofive wrote:
| This seems to be a signal boost for Matt's article from a few
| days back, discussed here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33789501
|
| See also the explanation for the fees:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33794493
|
| Essentially, BAH charges the US Federal Gov agencies nothing,
| with the assurance that the creation and upkeep of these portals
| will be funded by various fees that can be added at BAH
| discretion, so long as they hold a pro forma public feedback
| discussion.
| prescriptivist wrote:
| My experience with recreation.gov reservations has been as soon
| as registration is available for the coming season people will
| reserve every weekend speculatively and just eat the reservation
| or cancellation cost if they decide not to go. It really sucks as
| you have to basically play the game yourself even if you are
| opposed to it.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Yeah, the article is objecting to a fee for applying for the
| lotteries, but without them there would be so many speculative
| entries in the system that things wouldn't work.
|
| I'd prefer a system in which you get a certain number of tokens
| that you can use to bid on various things. Speculative entries
| would lower your chances of actually getting what you want and
| thus be discouraged.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Yes, this is what is happening. I drive through campground and
| talk to the hosts and they say that they frequently have empty
| spots because people just did not cancel.
| alchemyromcom wrote:
| "Ticketmastered" is one heck of a verb! It honestly strikes fear
| into my heart to think what else might soon be "ticketmastered"
| in the future. Hopefully it at least affords opportunity to
| create a counter-resistance that champions "anti-tickemastering"
| legislation.
| Dazzler5648 wrote:
| When an article like this so confidently (and incorrectly)
| declares that a scenic attraction is inside a National Park when
| it is not, I lose all faith and stop reading. If you don't know
| what type of government control The Wave is under, I don't
| believe I should be believing you.
| madrox wrote:
| I wonder if there's space for a kind of "open source government
| contract bidder" where a coalition of open source volunteers
| could bid on government contracts that are about serving the
| public good. If they were about doing it at cost, they could
| undercut these people every time.
|
| Recreation.gov feels like the kind of thing a bunch of engineers
| would've loved to build and run in their spare time if given the
| chance as long as server costs got paid for.
| atonse wrote:
| I don't think this has anything to do with open source. Booz
| Allen could've still charged all these fees, developed
| everything out in the open, MIT licensed it, and that wouldn't
| have changed anything about the fee structure.
|
| In fact, from my understanding, recreation.gov is built on top
| of tons of open source software (they use docker on Kubernetes,
| react, etc).
|
| Also "coalition of open source volunteers" sounds absolutely
| scary to me, government or not. Is there anything anywhere that
| runs this way? At some point, SOMEONE has to be accountable and
| pay the bills and receive the money.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| It's only partly about the source, and mostly the fact that
| hosting and operating a web site is something developers and
| other IT people can do and don't mind doing.
|
| "Is there anything anywhere that runs this way?"
|
| Co-ops exist at all levels all over the place, and even
| outperform traditional commercial organizations so, yes.
| jon-wood wrote:
| A co-op is quite a different thing to a loose knit group of
| volunteers. I'd love to see co-ops picking up this sort of
| contract, but I do think it's important people get paid for
| that work, and the contract is assigned to a specific
| organisation, otherwise you will eventually end up with a
| bunch of burnt out people keeping national infrastructure
| running for free.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I didn't see any such proposal that explicitly described
| a lack of organization. I assumed the actual
| implimemtation details were simply handwaved in a casual
| high level comment. Of course there would have to be some
| sort of structure.
| snake42 wrote:
| I literally just applied for the April 2023 lottery that this
| piece is talking about, after failing to win last month. While
| applying I consoled myself with the thought that all of my $9
| entry fees will go to the park service. It really feels bad to
| find out that is not the case. I can't believe that there isn't
| even a split between the Park and Booz Allen on the fee...
| killjoywashere wrote:
| A few more details:
|
| Gotta love Biz Journals, they do good work even if 99.9% of it
| seems like it doesn't apply to me:
| https://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/news/2018/04/11/nic-m...
|
| That points us to this: https://www.egov.com/what-we-do/outdoor/
|
| Broken link to original press release, maybe on archive.org?
| https://tylertech.irpass.com/Tyler-Technologies-Completes-Ac...
|
| "Tyler Technologies was founded by Joseph F. McKinney in 1966 as
| Saturn Industries after buying three government companies from
| Ling-Temco-Vought."
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyler_Technologies
|
| "This was a target procurement for us," says Booz Allen's Chief
| Innovation Officer Susan Penfield. "It represented the shift from
| Booz Allen's management consulting heritage to the delivery of
| modern, large-scale digital platforms."
| https://www.fastcompany.com/90666188/innovating-in-the-great...
|
| BAH also provides Advana, the Hadoop / Spark platform that was
| initially developed to support the Pentagon's audit and is now
| the centerpiece of the Chief Digital and AI Office, so Ms.
| Penfield's quote above does seem consistent.
|
| And the general trend of trying to make better use of ways to
| work with the government is a general trend of their
| modernization efforts, e.g.: *
| https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/323337... *
| https://aaf.dau.edu/aaf/contracting-cone/
| Lammy wrote:
| This sort of thing will apply to the entire planet some day if
| the ownership class have their way:
|
| https://www.independent.co.uk/space/bezos-space-colonies-ear...
| (https://archive.ph/z5DZm)
|
| > Jeff Bezos says that people will one day be born in space
| colonies and will take tourist trips to Earth "the way you visit
| Yellowstone National Park".
| StillBored wrote:
| This is the new normal, since the 1980's or so when "tax cuts"
| the politicians can brag about, then require back door "tax
| increases" through fee harvesting, and public/private
| partnerships (another word which in practice is just corruption)
| took over.
|
| Maybe instead of fee harvesting those that can afford it, we
| actually make "public" lands public instead of trying to keep out
| the riffraff via fees they can't afford. The federal Gov is more
| than capable of hiring a couple engineers and creating a
| reservations website that doesn't require paying $$ everytime you
| want to get a back country permit, which were free (and first
| come first served) for the first 100 years of a parks existence.
|
| The insanity is, that at least here in TX, its frequently less
| expensive and just as nice to find one of the many ranches that
| have recreation structures setup and go there rather than the
| state parks. The price is about the same, with the bonus of
| actually paying the owners instead of some corporation shaving
| off their slice of the pie of what my parents and grandparents
| already paid for.
| johnea wrote:
| It would really be best to stop using these medium.com links.
|
| Doctorow does maintain his own domain where everything is posted:
|
| https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/30/military-industrial-park-...
|
| I like his stuff, and subscribe to the RSS feed, but on this
| particular topic, I felt like the comparison to ticketmaster was
| contrived.
|
| Ticketmaster is a foul corp monopoly, but what Boos did was
| effectively privatize a public asset.
|
| Which to me seems like a different sort of crime.
| tony_cannistra wrote:
| Recreation.gov truly was a massive step in the right direction at
| the time of its release, but the total lack of oversight of Booz
| Allen Hamilton's revenue plan just cast such a pallor over the
| whole thing.
|
| I'm supportive of an experienced team of developers working on
| this problem, and I don't even care if it's BAH who's paying
| them. Especially since Reserve America (the predecessor) was so
| hilaribad.
|
| It's just truly deplorable that someone in the contracting
| process for the Feds heard "no cost to the government to build
| this" and didn't think "ok, cost to whom?"
|
| More context in this 2018 article:
| https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-gear/tools/camping-res...
| js2 wrote:
| Also found this 2017 interview with the project manager.
|
| https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector...
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That's almost exactly the same business model that red light
| camera companies use, as well as a lot of NPO fundraising
| agencies.
| gowld wrote:
| robcohen wrote:
| I really want to know who was ultimately responsible for the
| green light on the governments behalf. I don't mean the head of
| the agency. I mean the person or committee who was responsible
| for putting out the requirements and choosing the bid.
| madrox wrote:
| I would have thought this kind of deal would have been struck
| at some point when people still thought of the internet as
| "novel" or a "fad" and therefore didn't scrutinize the
| situation too closely but no, this deal began in 2017.
| rjbwork wrote:
| That's about exactly when I would have thought a massive
| privatization of public goods would have happened...
| mysterydip wrote:
| > The deal started in 2017, when Booz got the contract to build
| Recreation.gov "at no cost to the federal government."
|
| My experience has been that's as far as some committees
| consider the matter.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| In a similar deal, I want to know who in the government gave a
| private company (Clear) the right to expedite the travel of
| people who pay the private company.
|
| Especially when the government already setup a massive security
| agency called DHS/TSA and already had global entry/pre check
| programs in place.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_Secure
| joshuaheard wrote:
| This is a trending premium business model. Pay to avoid
| government regulation or for better services. It's the same
| with toll freeways here in Southern California. Even
| Disneyland now, you can pay to avoid the ride lines.
| notinfuriated wrote:
| It's incredible because the business model also implies
| they will always sell an inferior product alongside the
| upgraded premium one. It's like running a restaurant where
| I sell grilled "cheese" for $5 and you pay me an extra $5
| to use actual cheese instead of dogshit.
|
| Re: Disneyland allowing you to pay to avoid lines, I
| remember visiting Universal Studios (Orlando) after
| Hurricane Charley in 2004. The lines were non-existent, but
| the fun part wasn't skipping the lines so much as the
| feeling of having the whole park to yourself. If they could
| find a way to offer that experience, I'd pay for it. I
| suspect VR might be one of the only ways to do it (and
| perhaps a rollercoaster in VR is just as good as the real
| experience, I don't know myself as I haven't messed around
| with VR). I'd feel like an asshole paying to skip lines
| that actual, real human beings were waiting in, but I don't
| doubt that plenty of people would have zero qualms about
| this.
| sidfthec wrote:
| > The lines were non-existent, but the fun part wasn't
| skipping the lines so much as the feeling of having the
| whole park to yourself. If they could find a way to offer
| that experience, I'd pay for it.
|
| You can. Companies regularly rent out entire amusement
| parks for a day for company events. Tech companies have
| been doing it in the Bay Area at Great America for a long
| time: https://www.cagreatamerica.com/groups/corporate-
| events/park-...
|
| Of course, I'm sure it costs an amount much higher than
| you're willing to pay.
| tony_cannistra wrote:
| Rick DeLappe, the program manager for the Recreation.gov
| project.
|
| Source: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/technology-
| main/2017/02/amid-...
| boredumb wrote:
| They should have simply contracted it out for 843 million dollars
| and made everyone in the US pay for with federal taxes instead of
| charging 6$ to people actually using it.
|
| Sarcasm aside there is probably at least some overhead that the
| money is going towards. Also amusing to read about public/private
| partnerships when currently one of the biggest social/political
| buzzwords to imply absolute evil is fascism.
| haswell wrote:
| > _Sarcasm aside there is probably at least some overhead that
| the money is going towards._
|
| And so what if there is? I can promise it's not close to $9 of
| overhead, and if it is, that indicates a whole other level of
| problems to be rightly upset about.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| I am staying in a National Forest as I speak. I had to pay the $8
| fee to reserve my spot for two nights. Yeah, it does not matter
| how long you are staying so staying one night DOUBLES my costs.
|
| It used to be you would show up and just drop a check in the box
| and there was no fee involved. I hate what the internet did/
| Because what also happens is that people reserve thee spots
| online and do not show up and do not cancel making the parks more
| crowded than they really are.
| jdblair wrote:
| Unpopular opinion: if you don't charge a fee to enter the permit
| lottery, people will stuff the lottery using bots. It is a shame
| the fee doesn't go to the park service, though.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I see two problems though: the bullshit fees going to a private
| getkeeper on government lands and demand that outpaces supply.
| Your concern only addresses the second.
|
| I'd rather the park service charged 10x directly and made
| disposable income the gatekeeper, vs the current situation.
| devilbunny wrote:
| So charge a very high lottery fee that is refunded if you don't
| get a permit OR if you actually use the permit. If you don't
| cancel within X days - maybe a week - before your permit day,
| you lose the fee.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| They aren't called Beltway Bandits for nothing.
| SideQuark wrote:
| Any company could bid on the contracts to make these sites, and
| more importantly, maintain them and provide services.
|
| Most Silicon/tech companies don't do these contracts because they
| are not as profitable and simply doing usual tech work.
|
| So while BAZ makes money on fees, it's most likely not because
| they're evil wizards - it's more likely because not many others
| capable of running such a project for the required length of time
| bid on it.
|
| So, if you really think these things are somehow such a theft of
| money, go compete, do it vastly cheaper, hire your friends and
| other do-gooders, and see how it goes.
|
| But in the end, you might find that articles like this simply
| promote outrage and not actual understanding of the how and why
| of projects like it.
| notinfuriated wrote:
| > So, if you really think these things are somehow such a theft
| of money, go compete, do it vastly cheaper, hire your friends
| and other do-gooders, and see how it goes.
|
| Do you sincerely believe this is how it works? Just make your
| own software consultancy team and lobby the government to build
| their new campsite reservation system?
| SideQuark wrote:
| I've been doing small level contracts just like this for 20
| years for a small business.
|
| What in your experience tells you it's not possible? Do you
| read solicitations? Make proposals for govt projects?
| gwt4life wrote:
| No, it is actually the cozy relationships that wins Booz the
| contracts. You can't compete because you do not have the right
| relationships.
| SideQuark wrote:
| I work on these projects, almost all won with no cozy
| relationships, simply by bidding on them.
|
| So yeah, it's possible.
| PaybackTony wrote:
| Completely disagree here. See my comment in the main thread of
| this post. A startup could net anywhere from 200k/yr for a
| state park contract to 15m+/yr depending on the state. However,
| realistic cap on revenue with a healthy market share for just
| the park management / reservation management side is 55-75m
| annually.
|
| We are actually competing but it's important to understand that
| companies like Booz Allen have fought (successfully much of the
| time) to have a number of qualifiers put in these RFP's that
| would prevent any start-up from being accepted. Things like
| "You need X years in this specific market for your proposal to
| be accepted". Obviously the only ones who can possibly have
| that are the existing vendors which virtually eliminates the
| possibility of fresh competition. We've successfully got a few
| states to change their requirements however, which is the first
| time that's been done in a quite some time.
| SideQuark wrote:
| The company I work for does exactly small and mid sized govt
| contracts, the vast majority won on bids with no shady input
| from us. There's tons of companies like us.
| rojobuffalo wrote:
| I've been using recreation.gov for years and had no idea. I
| assumed the money went directly to trail maintenance, fences,
| restrooms, hiring rangers, etc..
| rojobuffalo wrote:
| This fee structure creates a malignant incentive to bring more
| public land into the reservation system. Having to deal with
| reservations sucks and should only be a requirement when
| absolutely necessary. Most of the places I've been that
| required a reservation were mostly vacant.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| I went to Yosemite about a month ago, which requires
| reservations, and it's crazy packed.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Man, I may be in the minority here, but I find recreation.gov to
| be one of the very few _excellent_ government websites. We use it
| every summer for whitewater rafting and camping reservations. You
| can disagree with how permits /reservations are offered (e.g.,
| lottery, first-come, etc.), but none of those decisions are made
| by BAH. They were given a task and, unlike so many government
| contractors, did it very well and relatively rapidly. The fee
| structure can be changed, but whatever the magic was, I wish it
| were repeated throughout government at every level.
|
| I think the biggest issue with recreation.gov is that so very
| many people are desperate to use public lands. Population levels
| in the western US have exploded in the last twenty years and
| we've developed almost _no_ additional recreation opportunities.
| For so long as that 's true, the scarcity and price problems are
| only going to increase. But at least we have a well-functioning
| website with which to tackle the problem.
| cheriot wrote:
| Turn it into an API and we'll have better ones. There's no
| justification for the ridiculous fees they're charging. Pure
| regulatory capture.
| nappy-doo wrote:
| hcurtiss wrote:
| I work for a lumber company in the PNW.
| carom wrote:
| Agree here. I LOVE recreation.gov, it is so great. I just
| booked a site for August next year.
|
| That isn't too say the fees shouldn't be better directed to
| public agencies. Still though, absolutely amazing site, great
| app, I'm happy to pay a little fee to BAH for it.
| zmj wrote:
| Yep. I use recreation.gov for entry permits into Rocky Mountain
| National Park every week in the summer, and I've never had a
| technical issue with it.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| StillBored wrote:
| It was even better when you just picked up the free permit on
| the way into the park. Its not like your saving any time,
| because that site is basically just a reservation system, you
| should still (and usually have to) stop at the ranger station
| and get the actual permit, check-in and sign various things,
| and hear various lectures and assure that the area is safe/etc
| due to weather/etc.
|
| Plus, I'm not even sure it is helping with the reservation
| problem, as more than once i've found myself in a camping/etc
| area that is 100% booked and 50% empty.
| colingoodman wrote:
| The fully booked with empty campsites thing drives me crazy;
| I see it quite often as well. Finding dispersed camping areas
| seems to be the way to go.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| The 50% empty problem is due to being required to reserve
| months in advance. I cannot tell you how a given date will be
| impacted 6 months into my future, I can plan but shit
| happens.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| I strongly disagree. Prior to reservation systems, it was not
| uncommon to drive out to Glacier, say, only to find every
| camp site filled. Now you can be assured that you will have a
| site prior to taking the week off and hauling your family
| hours from home. Likewise, several popular western rivers
| became absolutely crushed with traffic. One year I floated 30
| miles before I found a site (which was more than two regular
| days on that river). They needed a way to lottery or offer
| permits, and recreation.gov has performed better than what
| they used previously (though they're often gone within
| seconds of opening availability -- which converts first-come
| to a sort of lottery).
|
| I think the solution to the empty camp sites problem is a
| stiff penalty for failing to release the site to others prior
| the reserved date. For instance, last year on the John Day
| they said if you didn't put in on the designated day, you'd
| lose your ability to pull a John Day permit the following
| year.
| briffle wrote:
| Ahh yes, the "I really want the fourth of july, but I can
| only book X months in advance. So I'll book a week early,
| and book the 27th of June through the 4th of july weekend.
| Then i'll wait months, and then pay the $7 fee to change my
| reservation, and drop the first week from my reservation."
|
| Its very sad how common this is, and makes it very
| difficult to find spots out west in popular areas.
| mherdeg wrote:
| Huh. When did Red Rock Canyon add permits? I seem to remember
| just driving there.
|
| edit: Ah, here it is, October 2020, $15/car plus $2 reservation
| fee: https://www.mountainproject.com/forum/topic/119660918/red-
| ro...
|
| The recreation.gov entry ( https://www.recreation.gov/timed-
| entry/10075177 ) includes a 4 star review:
|
| "The reservation system is idiotic and predatory! What's the
| point of having it if there are open time slots all throughout
| the day? If I've paid for the interagency pass why doesn't it
| cover the "reservation fee"? And despite there being reservations
| parking was still full in all major areas. If the system doesn't
| reduce crowds then it's must only be there to nickel and dime us.
| Public lands should be accessible for the public to use,
| especially local residents. Yosemite National Park and Arches
| have now removed their reservation systems and they receive
| millions of more annual visitors and are much more remote and
| wild. This is a shameless cash grab and must be abolished. "
|
| What would have gotten them to 1 star?!!?
| jtbayly wrote:
| If the rock was actually green, maybe.
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