Code for Ireland Launch Event

ChRoMe

Anyone coming along to Dublin Castle this evening (Thursday) for it?

MyPeopleDrankTheSoup

No. I'm surprised that'd be your thing tbh. These hackathons are a joke! This tweet regarding some Australian government hackathon sums up my feelings:

Hey cleaners, I'm holding a cleaning hackathon at my house this weekend. There will be cleaning mentors and lots of cleaning supplies.

https://twitter.com/taybenlor/status/402262523635712002

ChRoMe

georgiecasey wrote: »

No. I'm surprised that'd be your thing tbh. These hackathons are a joke! This tweet regarding some Australian government hackathon sums up my feelings:


https://twitter.com/taybenlor/status/402262523635712002

Usually I recoil in horror at the idea of a hackathon, for the reasons suggested above.

I consider this event to be distinctly different as its attempting to provide software that could genuinely make people's lives and environment better.

MyPeopleDrankTheSoup

fair enough. seems it's popular anyway, as registration is closed. https://twitter.com/codeforall_ire

i predict a lot of ideas people at it and not a lot of actual coders.
no apps jump out at me from the american version:
http://www.codeforamerica.org/apps/

do you've an idea yourself or you just heading along?

ChRoMe

georgiecasey wrote: »

fair enough. seems it's popular anyway, as registration is closed. https://twitter.com/codeforall_ire

i predict a lot of ideas people at it and not a lot of actual coders.
no apps jump out at me from the american version:
http://www.codeforamerica.org/apps/

do you've an idea yourself or you just heading along?

I don't have an idea myself, I'm going along as a coder willing to donate some time. However only to something that I think will really help society at large or a very disadvantaged group.

ChRoMe

http://www.codeforamerica.org/?cfa_app=adopt-a-hydrant-2 is a great example of the good I think this initiative can do.

KonFusion

I'll be there.

Will be wearing a blue short sleeve shirt with white floral patterns*.....

Say hello if ya spot me.



*Don't judge me

ChRoMe

KonFusion wrote: »

I'll be there.

Will be wearing a blue short sleeve shirt with white floral patterns*.....

Say hello if ya spot me.



*Don't judge me

Red hoody black jeans here

Mort5000

So how was it?

KonFusion

Mort5000 wrote: »

So how was it?

Good. (and in some ways, bad).

Few things grinded on me.

• There was no info on the breakaway sessions before you arrived (and even then it wasn't quite clear)
• I wrote my name and email down 3 times on the night. Someone now has to go off and input that data somewhere for 300 people. This should have been an online form etc
• Very few devs from what I could gather. We had 4 in our breakaway session. Seemed to be more journo's and politicians than devs.
• Very....'governmenty'... (anyone who's worked in the public sector will get where I'm coming from)

But on the pro's side, intentions all good. Good potential to create some meaningful work. The evening itself was pretty well organised, and free food and wine afterwards is always good

In our breakaway session we managed to put together a new website for it, in about 15 mins using Bootstrap as a base, which had we had the FTP details we could have had live on the site that evening

Overall a good start/launch with good intentions. It'll be interesting to see where it goes.

Mort5000

Sounds mostly positive.
Any idea if there are more to come in the future?
Any need for C#, VB.NET, Oracle, SQL skills?

KonFusion

Mort5000 wrote: »

Sounds mostly positive.
Any idea if there are more to come in the future?
Any need for C#, VB.NET, Oracle, SQL skills?

There are yeah. I think they said they want to have 10 events in 2014.

As for the skills required...I've no idea tbh. All of the above? :rolleyes:

ChRoMe

KonFusion wrote: »

Good. (and in some ways, bad).

Few things grinded on me.

• There was no info on the breakaway sessions before you arrived (and even then it wasn't quite clear)
• I wrote my name and email down 3 times on the night. Someone now has to go off and input that data somewhere for 300 people. This should have been an online form etc
• Very few devs from what I could gather. We had 4 in our breakaway session. Seemed to be more journo's and politicians than devs.
• Very....'governmenty'... (anyone who's worked in the public sector will get where I'm coming from)

But on the pro's side, intentions all good. Good potential to create some meaningful work. The evening itself was pretty well organised, and free food and wine afterwards is always good

In our breakaway session we managed to put together a new website for it, in about 15 mins using Bootstrap as a base, which had we had the FTP details we could have had live on the site that evening

Overall a good start/launch with good intentions. It'll be interesting to see where it goes.

I joined the queuing application session and out of about 13 people just over half were developers. With the exception of one person I got a very good vibe and felt from it discussion that there were defo the skills required to pull it off.

I'm quite enthusiastic about the possibilities. It was with a few hours of my time on a rainy Thursday night.

Graham

When I went to look, all the tickets had gone. They should really think about splitting the ticket allocations into 2 streams with one of them reserved for tech/devs/designers etc.

Mort5000

Silicon Republic article

Sparks

Why would someone writing an article for Silicon Republic feel the need to preface "Steve Jobs" with "(Former Apple CEO)"?

Mort5000

Sparks wrote: »

Why would someone writing an article for Silicon Republic feel the need to preface "Steve Jobs" with "(Former Apple CEO)"?

So that when people read the article in 100 years (when Silicon Republic is of course still in existence) and they can't remember who Jobs was, it'll remind them.

jmcc

Sparks wrote: »

Why would someone writing an article for Silicon Republic feel the need to preface "Steve Jobs" with "(Former Apple CEO)"?

Recycled press release? Some of the technology churnos might not know who Steve Jobs was.

Regards...jmcc

Sparks

Ah lads, come on now You might as well preface "iPhone" with "mobile telephony device with data communications abilities and a modicum of processing power"

ChRoMe

Sparks wrote: »

Ah lads, come on now You might as well preface "iPhone" with "mobile telephony device with data communications abilities and a modicum of processing power"

I get what you are saying, however I've always seen that as standard journalistic practice to be dis-ambiguous. I'm sure there is more than one person in tech called Steve Jobs.

Zipppy

Mort5000 wrote: »

Sounds mostly positive.
Any idea if there are more to come in the future?
Any need for C#, VB.NET, Oracle, SQL skills?

Next Code for Ireland event 22 February at Facebook HQ - some info on the website
I'd image their will be lots more techies at this one...

And all skills could be utilised...depends how you put them to use :rolleyes:

georgiecasey wrote: »

These hackathons are a joke! This tweet regarding some Australian government hackathon sums up my feelings:

Curious....why do you think hackathons are a joke ? the Australian tweet aside

Sparks

Zipppy wrote: »

Curious....why do you think hackathons are a joke ?

Perhaps because you don't see many other professions running events (barring events for charitable cases which explicitly state what they are), where professionals are asked to volunteer their services for free on commercial projects (that being rather counter to the whole notion of "professional").

It is not, to be fair, anywhere near as bad as jobbridge internships that require a PhD from their applicants or the sort of thing that @forexposure_txt documents, but personally I've always thought these kind of things have a massive potential for abuse and/or hype (read, "bull****"). I mean, if I wanted to work for free on cool ideas, it's not like I don't have a list of things I could stay home and work on. Hell, just go take a look at github and you'll find several lifetimes worth of projects that would be fun to hack on.

MyPeopleDrankTheSoup

sparks pretty much summed up my view.

to add, hackathons are grand if the coder enjoys them, sure that's all that matters. and/or if they feel like they're contributing to something.

what irks me is any humanities-studying, 'social entrepreneur', 'ideas' people taking any credit for anything. not that I know if they do, I'm making assumptions here!

if there's any prizes or presentations at the end or on the website, only the technical & design people should be listed, everybody else is superfluous.

Mort5000

Zipppy wrote: »

And all skills could be utilised...depends how you put them to use :rolleyes:

Why are you rolling your eyes?

ChRoMe

georgiecasey wrote: »

everybody else is superfluous.

You had me up to there, thats just a blatantly false statement. Its a typically arragont statement from developers who don't release that without the biz dev people there is no one to pay our outrageous salaries!

stevenmu

Sparks wrote: »

where professionals are asked to volunteer their services for free on commercial projects

I've only read a little about this, so I'm not sure, but my understanding is that they should be "community" projects, which I would expect to be useful for the community but non-commercial in nature.

If they are commercial in nature then it is ridiculous to expect professionals to just volunteer their time.

Sparks

The first Code for Ireland meet-up that took place at Facebook’s Dublin headquarters in November has already led to the commencement of three app projects, including an emergency app that shows where all the defibrillators in Dublin are located, a queueing app aimed at avoiding long waits at the motor tax office, and a business location assessment app that will guide businesses on the best place to locate based on zoning, available property and other businesses in the area.

It might just be my cynical side having spent too much time watching the public accounts committee, but those three examples mentioned in the Silicon Republic coverage do not strike me as non-commercial. The first and second strike me as being public sector (the HSE or Department of Health, and the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government respectively to be exact), and the third as private sector, but all seem commercial in nature to me.

Perhaps you're correct and they're the exception and the fault is in the report and not the event; but if so the coverage is way off base and is portraying it as an event to get professional developers to work on commercial (if predominately public sector) applications for free.

stevenmu

Yeah, I see your point. The third does definitely sound commercial.

For the first two, while they are public sector, there's definitely a community aspect I think. I presume they're taking web service feeds already provided, or possibly scraping existing web sites, and just putting it in app form. Personally I'd prefer to see the government make data available through web sites/services and let the community build apps for whatever platforms are relevant to them.

Zipppy

stevenmu wrote: »

I've only read a little about this, so I'm not sure, but my understanding is that they should be "community" projects, which I would expect to be useful for the community but non-commercial in nature.

If they are commercial in nature then it is ridiculous to expect professionals to just volunteer their time.

Sparks wrote: »

It might just be my cynical side having spent too much time watching the public accounts committee, but those three examples mentioned in the Silicon Republic coverage do not strike me as non-commercial. The first and second strike me as being public sector (the HSE or Department of Health, and the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government respectively to be exact), and the third as private sector, but all seem commercial in nature to me.

Perhaps you're correct and they're the exception and the fault is in the report and not the event; but if so the coverage is way off base and is portraying it as an event to get professional developers to work on commercial (if predominately public sector) applications for free.

Very valid points .. however I'm looking at this from a different perspective..


1. Government and specifically local Government have lots and lots of ideas and concepts that they'd love to develop and distribute ON BEHALF of the community and citizens but alas lack of funding, resources and know how mean that these, possibly very beneficial ideas, will most likely never see daylight....and

2. Community groups and joe bloggs on the street have lots of ideas or needs that they'd love to see realised for the betterment of their community or society in general, but again lack of resources and know how mean that again these ideas will most likely never see daylight..

So along comes Code for Ireland (or another similar group / get together) and suddenly it MAY be possible to get some good done for society...suerly that's a good thing?

The vital ingredients are government / community / society being involved and identifying and agreeing on the actual NEEDS...
Obviously it's even more important that developers get involved as without them nothing will actually get done ..

So if it's community / societal needs I say great...

As for Commercial ideas .. I'd imagine that in the vast majority of cases commercialisation would not be possible /viable...

So if you're a developer with any development skills, why not get involved?
If an idea is proposed that is close to your heart and something you're interested in then work on that....any that you don't like simply steer clear of...
Also don't forget that if you're a young or inexperienced developer seeking employment, such initiatives can give you vital experience to put on your CV and maybe get you a job....just maybe...

Zipppy

stevenmu wrote: »

Yeah, I see your point. The third does definitely sound commercial.

For the first two, while they are public sector, there's definitely a community aspect I think. I presume they're taking web service feeds already provided, or possibly scraping existing web sites, and just putting it in app form. Personally I'd prefer to see the government make data available through web sites/services and let the community build apps for whatever platforms are relevant to them.

They do..to an extent..dublinked.ie

Initiatives like Code for Ireland will give the clout to get more data opened up....

ChRoMe

Sparks wrote: »

It might just be my cynical side having spent too much time watching the public accounts committee, but those three examples mentioned in the Silicon Republic coverage do not strike me as non-commercial. The first and second strike me as being public sector (the HSE or Department of Health, and the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government respectively to be exact), and the third as private sector, but all seem commercial in nature to me.

Perhaps you're correct and they're the exception and the fault is in the report and not the event; but if so the coverage is way off base and is portraying it as an event to get professional developers to work on commercial (if predominately public sector) applications for free.

I'm involved in the development of the queueing application, what exactly do you mean that they seem commercial in nature? Its quite an ambiguous comment.

There was one person in our group who was trying to talk about "monetisation" however the group generally dismissed that quickly. I have to admit I face palmed at the suggestion it reallly made me quite angry.

Sparks

Zipppy wrote: »

So along comes Code for Ireland (or another similar group / get together) and suddenly it MAY be possible to get some good done for society...suerly that's a good thing?

That's irrelevant. Nobody's suggesting that the projects are meritless. The objection is about something entirely different - namely that these aren't charitable works, but commercial ones. If the public sector can't afford to pay to get them done, well, tough. If a developer working on an app can't afford their mortgage, the bank won't care about the community's needs.

So if you're a developer with any development skills, why not get involved?

Because I charge for my time and services so that my family can have a roof over their heads, food on the table and clothes on their back.

Also don't forget that if you're a young or inexperienced developer seeking employment, such initiatives can give you vital experience to put on your CV and maybe get you a job....just maybe...

That argument was morally bankrupt when jobbridge first used it and you're talking about looking for qualified skilled professional work for even less money than jobbridge offers.

We need better quality roads and infrastructure too, but I don't see us holding these kind of events to get the building industry to volunteer its time for free to build them for the community, because we all know the building industry wouldn't be able to stop laughing long enough to tell us where to go jump.

So are events like this saying that the software industry is just not as professional as the building industry? Is our time less valuable, is our work seen as just being so easy that we should agree to do it for free during an economic recession?

If you want a bunch of students to take this on as part of a course, cool, talk to the universities and set it up. There's already precedent for that, there are programs at the graduate level to get universities to do R&D work for industry under subsidy by the government. This kind of thing would work very well for what this event is talking about. Asking industry to do it for free is just... well, if you were in an uncharitable frame of mind, it would be bordering on a professional insult.

Sparks

ChRoMe wrote: »

I'm involved in the development of the queueing application, what exactly do you mean that they seem commercial in nature? Its quite an ambiguous comment.

I mean that it's work that isn't for a charity and isn't the developers own idea of what to do for fun on a saturday night.

Look, you want to do this for fun, that's not a bad thing. But I look at the way this event is being reported and it just doesn't strike me as being of the same nature as someone hacking on the linux kernel on the weekend for their own amusement. It's being reported as though elements in the public sector have specifications for apps and no budget to commission them, but they're asking for the work to be done for free anyway.

Put it this way - if you wrote that app and tried to sell it in the store for a euro, (a) would you be allowed, and (b) would you get all the money the way you would if you'd done it without this event, if you'd just come up with the idea some rainy tuesday and implemented it that weekend because you were bored?

Zipppy

Sparks wrote: »

That's irrelevant. Nobody's suggesting that the projects are meritless. The objection is about something entirely different - namely that these aren't charitable works, but commercial ones. If the public sector can't afford to pay to get them done, well, tough. If a developer working on an app can't afford their mortgage, the bank won't care about the community's needs.


Because I charge for my time and services so that my family can have a roof over their heads, food on the table and clothes on their back.


That argument was morally bankrupt when jobbridge first used it and you're talking about looking for qualified skilled professional work for even less money than jobbridge offers.

We need better quality roads and infrastructure too, but I don't see us holding these kind of events to get the building industry to volunteer its time for free to build them for the community, because we all know the building industry wouldn't be able to stop laughing long enough to tell us where to go jump.

So are events like this saying that the software industry is just not as professional as the building industry? Is our time less valuable, is our work seen as just being so easy that we should agree to do it for free during an economic recession?

If you want a bunch of students to take this on as part of a course, cool, talk to the universities and set it up. There's already precedent for that, there are programs at the graduate level to get universities to do R&D work for industry under subsidy by the government. This kind of thing would work very well for what this event is talking about. Asking industry to do it for free is just... well, if you were in an uncharitable frame of mind, it would be bordering on a professional insult.

Taking all your points together...

Code for Ireland is obviously not for you...and that's perfectly fine...to each their own.

Lots of people in society with particular skills are happy to help out their community...
eg people giving up their evenings / Sundays to coach schoolboy soccer / GAA/other sport....

If the public sector can't afford to pay to get them done, well, tough.

So then these services wont be delivered and those that could have availed of them will go without...why should society lose out because the country is broke?
I would hope that people would be civic minded enough to assist out....

Zipppy

Sparks wrote: »

I mean that it's work that isn't for a charity and isn't the developers own idea of what to do for fun on a saturday night.

Look, you want to do this for fun, that's not a bad thing. But I look at the way this event is being reported and it just doesn't strike me as being of the same nature as someone hacking on the linux kernel on the weekend for their own amusement. It's being reported as though elements in the public sector have specifications for apps and no budget to commission them, but they're asking for the work to be done for free anyway.

Put it this way - if you wrote that app and tried to sell it in the store for a euro, (a) would you be allowed, and (b) would you get all the money the way you would if you'd done it without this event, if you'd just come up with the idea some rainy tuesday and implemented it that weekend because you were bored?

I took it that community were involved to detail their needs / community issues that need fixing and Governments inclusion was mainly to leverage more Open Data...for everyone not just the Code for initiative..
I gather the idea is that the power of the movement involving the three necessary ingredients (community, developers, Government) will give greater leverage to realising much more Open Data...or at least that been the experience in the states...and I'm sure all developers would welcome more Open data to play with ?

If the PS have requirements for Apps based on a percieved community need and community sector agree that they are necessary services then surely that's not a bad thing? Community need is the key?

Anyhow just my thoughts........................

ChRoMe

Sparks wrote: »

I mean that it's work that isn't for a charity and isn't the developers own idea of what to do for fun on a saturday night.

Look, you want to do this for fun, that's not a bad thing. But I look at the way this event is being reported and it just doesn't strike me as being of the same nature as someone hacking on the linux kernel on the weekend for their own amusement. It's being reported as though elements in the public sector have specifications for apps and no budget to commission them, but they're asking for the work to be done for free anyway.

Put it this way - if you wrote that app and tried to sell it in the store for a euro, (a) would you be allowed, and (b) would you get all the money the way you would if you'd done it without this event, if you'd just come up with the idea some rainy tuesday and implemented it that weekend because you were bored?

The society/community I live and work in I feel may benefit from the queueing application, thats why I'm willing to devote some free time to it. The society/community I live in most likely wont directly benefit from kernal hacking.

I wouldnt consider a chef doing a few evenings in soup kitchen as a professional insult to them, its just a nice thing to do that could benefit the people in their community.

hint: I'm a black and red lefty

Sparks

ChRoMe wrote: »

I wouldnt consider a chef doing a few evenings in soup kitchen as a professional insult to them, its just a nice thing to do that could benefit the people in their community.

Yeah, but that's charity, not commercial work.
Hence all those mentions above of that exception...

stevenmu

Sparks wrote: »

If the public sector can't afford to pay to get them done, well, tough.

I don't think the argument should really be about if the public sector can afford to get them done or not, it should be about if the public sector should have an obligation to do them or not.

I would argue that for some things the public sector should have an obligation to do them, and in that case should pay for it to be done correctly. I would also argue that for other things the public sector should not have an obligation to do them, and should therefore not pay for it to be done. There are already plenty of essential services which are underfunded, we don't need projects which are "kinda nice to have" also competing for limited resources.

If we accept that principle, and I would think it's a relatively uncontroversial one, then there will be certain things which the public sector should not develop, and wouldn't be commercially viable for the private sector, but which are still useful anyway. This is the gap I would think Code for Ireland intends to fill.

I think the queuing app mentioned does fit in that gap. While I think it's right for the public sector to provide that data, I don't think they should be throwing good money at the display format du jour, i.e. iOS and/or Android apps.

The location of defibrillators is arguably more essential, but again, we have to think about what formats should the public sector be obliged to provide that data in. While the web is fairly universal, apps are not. Even when it comes to just smartphones, there's a split between iOS, Android and to some degree Windows Phone and Blackberry. Should the public sector pay for apps for all of them? And if Ubuntu, Firefox, Sailfish etc take off, should the public sector have to redo all the apps for those too? IMHO it's better to oblige the public sector to provide websites with data (and to pay appropriately for them to be developed) and let the community decide if they want to develop apps or not.

I don't get the purpose of the Nama app, to be fair I haven't read the details of it, but that does sound it should be handled commercially.

ChRoMe

Sparks wrote: »

Yeah, but that's charity, not commercial work.
Hence all those mentions above of that exception...

Its not really different, and by the way the public service did not have these ideas already. They were formulated from the volunteers after discussing with public sector bodies their pain points. This is a volunteer driven endeavour in all senses.

Its a bizarre distinction, what we are doing is charity.

Sparks

Zipppy wrote: »

Lots of people in society with particular skills are happy to help out their community...
eg people giving up their evenings / Sundays to coach schoolboy soccer / GAA/other sport....

If you knew who you were talking to, you might feel silly for saying that. I'm more than familiar with volunteer work, I've done a decade or two of it.

I'm also rather familiar with how certain public sector bodies in Ireland, if they think they can get professional work done for the price of hiring out a conference room for a night, think that they shouldn't ever pay for that kind of work again. And I'm also appalled at what that jobbridge approach has done, and all the reports so far suggest this is just more of the same.

Doing pro bono work for fun or for charity is one thing and most of us here will have done that; being taken advantage of by people who try to imply being paid fairly for professional work that benefits others is unethical, well that's quite another thing, and it's not wrong to be wary of that.

So then these services wont be delivered and those that could have availed of them will go without...why should society lose out because the country is broke?

Did you seriously ask that question in this country after the last five or six years of cuts, or are you just trolling?

I would hope that people would be civic minded enough to assist out....

Hoping that professionals will volunteer their time to work on projects in an area that all the reports are stressing is worth $3 trillion seems... odd. But who knows, maybe that's just me.

Sparks

stevenmu wrote: »

If we accept that principle

I think we both take that principle as a given.

Whether or not professionals should step into the gap and in effect pay for the shortcoming, that's a whole other question. I don't see the building industry just going out there and fixing the infrastructure pro bono for the sake of the community, to reuse an example.

And this isn't charity work either, lets be clear on that. This isn't me arguing that soup kitchens shouldn't happen because Libertarianism.

I'm just saying, this is Ireland and we have a long history of taking the piss, and maybe we need to be a tad more cynical about this kind of thing, and not just because of where the the last few days in the public accounts committee have put the spotlight.

The location of defibrillators is arguably more essential

That one, to descend into detail for just a minute to make a side point, made all the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Have we actually passed a good Samaritan law in Ireland yet? If your app has a bug and sends someone to the wrong place for an AED and someone dies, what are the liability issues? How do you explain to the family that whoops, there was a null pointer exception and your loved one died, but bugs happen and if they needed an AED, they were probably dead anyway (if you need an AED and you're not in a hospital already, you really don't have great odds of survival to start with). If the family sues, will someone pick up the legal defence costs or are you left twisting in the wind because you tried to volunteer to do a community project?

I mean, if the app worked properly, I could see it being of some value (though maybe less than it sounds on first reading), but it's not exactly something I'd take on light-heartedly myself.

Sparks

ChRoMe wrote: »

Its a bizarre distinction, what we are doing is charity.

No, what you're doing is unpaid public sector work.
Look, if you find this fun and you're not being taken advantage of, more power to you, have fun, hope you succeed.
It just looks really odd to me.

ChRoMe

Sparks wrote: »

No, what you're doing is unpaid public sector work.
Look, if you find this fun and you're not being taken advantage of, more power to you, have fun, hope you succeed.
It just looks really odd to me.

I come from the view that the service charities provide, *should* be provided by the state, they get off lightly leaving it to charities. The point is as a citizen that wants to contribute to my society, I can go and do something largely unskilled such as soup and coffee distribution. Or I can put my skills to use in a more effective way that essentially just being a warm body.

"This isn't me arguing that soup kitchens shouldn't happen because Libertarianism."

Thats what it looks like from the cheap seats.

Sparks

ChRoMe wrote: »

I come from the view that the service charities provide, *should* be provided by the state, they get off lightly leaving it to charities.

So do I, and to be fair, so do many many others. I would guess the vast majority in fact. I would also say that this is utterly unrelated to the cynicism some people feel towards this sort of thing, and trying to tie the two together is deeply unfair.

"This isn't me arguing that soup kitchens shouldn't happen because Libertarianism."
Thats what it looks like from the cheap seats.

Wow. The cheap seats shouldn't be thinking that. (Is this the bit where we have to defend our opinions by citing long records of volunteer and charity work?)

ChRoMe

Sparks wrote: »

So do I, and to be fair, so do many many others. I would guess the vast majority in fact. I would also say that this is utterly unrelated to the cynicism some people feel towards this sort of thing, and trying to tie the two together is deeply unfair.


Wow. The cheap seats shouldn't be thinking that. (Is this the bit where we have to defend our opinions by citing long records of volunteer and charity work?)

Well, if you agree in principle with charities doing what should be done by the state, that makes your comments regarding it not being charity and being unpaid public sector work even more confusing. It also ,at least appears, to contradict you making a distinction with the soup kitchen analogy.

The "cheap seats" comment is merely a turn of phrase, it was not implying (or at least I didn't intend to) anything of the sort of people's views requiring validation by their own volunteer work or similar.

srsly78

In the UK the government have a "crack team" of developers that they send around where needed. Why have we nothing like this here? Instead they spend loads of money on managers and consultants, it's ridiculous. This puts me off volunteering, well that and being lazy and mercenary.

Oh, the charity sector here is a joke as well, but that's another topic... Charity in Ireland means giving money to fatcat managers.

ChRoMe

srsly78 wrote: »

In the UK the government have a "crack team" of developers that they send around where needed. Why have we nothing like this here? Instead they spend loads of money on managers and consultants, it's ridiculous.

I'm just back from 5 years in London several of which were spent writing software in the criminal justice sector for the UK government. I find it highly amusing any notion that the UK government have a crack team of developers, basically everything is contracted out to G4S and Serco, which churn out complete garbage (the civil servant ones are no better either).

tl;dr UK government is just as dysfunctional as the Irish one.

srsly78

It's a new thing apparently.

ChRoMe

srsly78 wrote: »

It's a new thing apparently.

It would require near unfathomable fundamental structural modifications to how the UK government deliver technical projects, of which there has been no change recently and certainly none on the horizon.

srsly78

Well things are worse here... While your charity is admirable, it essentially props up our bloated system.

This is supposed to be the page for that uk team, but it seems to be down :P http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/about/

Google for "cabinet office digital team". Loads of their sites are down tho haha...

Another link: https://gds.blog.gov.uk/tag/transparency/

It's probably bollox, but the idea of having a team they can parachute in where needed is good.

ChRoMe

srsly78 wrote: »

Well things are worse here... While your charity is admirable, it essentially props up our bloated system.

This is supposed to be the page for that uk team, but it seems to be down :P http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/about/

The defence rests your honour

The idea of parachuting developers in to a troubled project has generally be considered that it causes more problems than it solves (mythical man month). In the case of greenfield development you have other issues considering that generally public sector IT projects like this require a huge amount of specific domain knowledge from the developers to be able to truly deliver value and solve the problems.

" While your charity is admirable, it essentially props up our bloated system."

Yeah possibly, I wouldn't deny that, but until the revolution comes comrade.. etc etc. I will admit one thing that has greatly disapointed me with the Code for Ireland initiative so far. We (the developers) supplied email addresses to the the project coordinator and I made a point to discuss in the last ten minutes how further communication would be handled and what are goals were for the next meeting etc. So far I've not been contacted