The TSA uses an iPad application that randomly chooses 'left' or 'right', deciding which pre-check line a passenger must use. This program is designed to increase safety by preventing "predicting which of the Transport Security Administration's pre-check lines might make you more likely for a random check." This was the end of the story until one man decided to find out what the cost of this application was. To do so, he filed a FOIA request to discover for how much money the contract was.
$1,4444,315.
Granted, this price was for the entirety of the contract which encompassed a few projects. According to the TSA, the "total development cost" of the application was $47,400. The "total development cost", however, may not accurately portray the cost of the program to the TSA as "total development cost" implies the cost to build the program, not the price of it.
Even giving the benefit of the doubt to the TSA and accepting that $47,000 was the final price for the product, this price is still absurd. Given that a randomizer would rely on a random number generator and random number generators are covered in introductory programming courses, a freshman-level programmer could make a similar application. In fact, to prove how simple of an application this was and how ridiculous of a price even $47,000 was, former IBM developer Sandesh B. Suvarna built an application with the same functionality for both Android and iOS platforms in only four minutes. He even went so far as to post a video of him doing so to YouTube: How to build a $1.4Million dollar app within 4 minutes.
https://kev.inburke.com/kevin/tsa-randomizer-app-cost-336000/?lobsters
http://www.cnet.com/news/youll-never-guess-how-much-the-tsas-randomizer-app-cost/
http://www.cnet.com/news/former-ibmer-shows-you-can-build-tsas-randomizer-app-in-4-mins/
No comments:
Post a Comment