Can somebody explain to me why this got upvoted so much even though the writer doesn't have a brain?
Booz Allen is not renting us a park, because they don't own it, hence they cannot rent it out. Booz Allen is running a website and we are paying them fees because that's the money they use to run the website. He quotes them as saying as much in the article.
Then he goes on to basically state he has no clue what they were paid to run the website, and yet the entire article claims that the fees are "junk", regardless of the fact that he has no evidence to support this.
Despite this, in the linked article on Booze's website it states: "With more than 45 million users in FY21, the site has generated more than $270 million in revenue for the federal government". Compare that to the 182 Million to be invested in Booze over 10 years (18.2 Million/year averaged).
It's not stated how payment takes place, but Booze's wording suggests that the government did not have to front the capital and instead Booze will recoup it over time, which takes the risk off the government of another $400M boondoggle.
Clearly the government is making more money than it is spending, which is what you want, rather than a botched government job spending $400 Million and having jack shit to show for it. Not only that, but Booze's site was completed in only a year, and was the first major government site made in the cloud. It has continued to expand and has not failed. This is an amazing achievement for government work.
Pay them your fees and stop whining, or we'll end up with the government failing to make a basic website for 10x the amount of taxpayer money. People love to whine when they have to personally pay a fee, but they don't care at all when their taxpayer dollars are flushed down the toilet in the millions to billions. Out of sight, out of mind.
> Booz Allen is not renting us a park, because they don't own it, hence they cannot rent it out.
If they are controlling access to it and if they are charging for the access, it evaluates to the same whatever the means of that control. Its a workaround for effecting privatization for things that cant be privatized.
Oh come on, contractors work at the direction of their contractees. Private companies also often contract out event staff and ticketing. Not because it's some conspiratorial workaround transfer of power -- because it is a specific problem with contractors who specialize in it.
The fact of the matter is that the BLM just simply isn't a software development organization.
I mostly agree with you, including the sentiment that people are often just being whiny assholes.
> Clearly the government is making more money than it is spending, which is what you want
I think it would be nice if our federal lands were supported by federal tax dollars instead of pay to use.
But that single point pales in comparison to the number of whiny assholes who absolutely refuse to acknowledge that the reservation systems exist to keep us from very obviously trampling and permanently ruining our treasured parks and lands.
I actually want a broadly fair reservation system for the various parks, even if the government has to spend a bit to get there.
Maybe the article is wrong and Booz is doing great, but from the various comments here talking about people abusing the reservation system, it doesn't sound like it.
As I understand it, the problem is not so much the revenue they made for the government. The issue is that they are making a much higher (and recurring) revenue that they keep for themselves, for running a website that the government may have paid, or that - as you say - paid for itself already.
It's the result of political initiatives to cut cost[0]. A contractor won't work for free. If congress won't give you the money to pay for it up front, you gotta work out a deal somehow. As it often plays out, 'lower taxes' often just results in the costs of some public need being shifted to some private industry.
The government got the website for “free” (no up front cost). Maybe once BA collects some amount of money the website cost up front the cost structure should shift to cover the ongoing maintenance rather than building the initial version
$18 million a year is pretty steep for an RNG serving 64 people a day. More importantly, maybe the government should not be trying to make a profit off national parks?
Well I personally believe that it should break even. As a US citizen I am a part owner of that land. I'm fine with paying cost of upkeep to use it, but as a public resource it should be not for profit. The goal of the government should not be a squeeze every penny it can out of citizens, simply because they can and have the Leverage.
I suppose it depends on what you mean by "profit". If money made by the National Park Service goes back into park improvements, land purchases, better facilities, etc, that seems great. If the money goes back into the government's coffers and is used to pay for patriot missiles, that seems bad. The NPS, as a government organ, shouldn't be run on a profit basis for the sake of other government functions - I think that's the reasonable version of the not-for-profit view.
Booz Allen is not renting us a park, because they don't own it, hence they cannot rent it out. Booz Allen is running a website and we are paying them fees because that's the money they use to run the website. He quotes them as saying as much in the article.
Then he goes on to basically state he has no clue what they were paid to run the website, and yet the entire article claims that the fees are "junk", regardless of the fact that he has no evidence to support this.
Despite this, in the linked article on Booze's website it states: "With more than 45 million users in FY21, the site has generated more than $270 million in revenue for the federal government". Compare that to the 182 Million to be invested in Booze over 10 years (18.2 Million/year averaged).
It's not stated how payment takes place, but Booze's wording suggests that the government did not have to front the capital and instead Booze will recoup it over time, which takes the risk off the government of another $400M boondoggle.
Clearly the government is making more money than it is spending, which is what you want, rather than a botched government job spending $400 Million and having jack shit to show for it. Not only that, but Booze's site was completed in only a year, and was the first major government site made in the cloud. It has continued to expand and has not failed. This is an amazing achievement for government work.
Pay them your fees and stop whining, or we'll end up with the government failing to make a basic website for 10x the amount of taxpayer money. People love to whine when they have to personally pay a fee, but they don't care at all when their taxpayer dollars are flushed down the toilet in the millions to billions. Out of sight, out of mind.