City ditched plan to run open-data competition for new traffic app Paid tens of thousands in sole-sourced deal to Toronto company instead

classic Classic list List threaded Threaded
4 messages Options
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

City ditched plan to run open-data competition for new traffic app Paid tens of thousands in sole-sourced deal to Toronto company instead

Tracey P. Lauriault
"And second, a contract with a company that has some permanence guarantees ongoing support. An amateur programmer who’s really good at programming could land a time-consuming job or move away or just lose interest. “And then what do we have? We have nothing,” Tierney said."


And what was wrong with 511.ca?


--


_______________________________________________
CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: City ditched plan to run open-data competition for new traffic app Paid tens of thousands in sole-sourced deal to Toronto company instead

Stéphane Guidoin
To my knowledge 511.ca has always been a placeholder, nothing new here.

I have to say that the initial idea was pretty cool. I think that this case has been played several times in other cities. We would like to see hackathons and competition jump to another level and this kind of idea could really help. Hopefully some similar idea will finally make it.

Steph

Le 2013-11-26 21:49, Tracey P. Lauriault a écrit :
"And second, a contract with a company that has some permanence guarantees ongoing support. An amateur programmer who’s really good at programming could land a time-consuming job or move away or just lose interest. “And then what do we have? We have nothing,” Tierney said."


And what was wrong with 511.ca?


--



_______________________________________________
CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss


_______________________________________________
CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: City ditched plan to run open-data competition for new traffic app Paid tens of thousands in sole-sourced deal to Toronto company instead

Herb Lainchbury
In reply to this post by Tracey P. Lauriault
"a contract with a company that has some permanence guarantees ongoing support"

Hmm... it seems like he's expecting a lot of a new small company.


Interesting strategy, but I think the city would have been much better off with a contest followed by a potential support contract if they liked any of the apps.  

If it is supported apps they want (which is understandable) I would also encourage cities to state in the contest rules that they are looking for firms that can potentially provide ongoing support.  I think this would help set expectations and would actually bring more vendors out to the contest as it would increase the potential reward.  Even if the original developer couldn't support it, this could be provided by another firm if need be.

H



On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 6:49 PM, Tracey P. Lauriault <[hidden email]> wrote:
"And second, a contract with a company that has some permanence guarantees ongoing support. An amateur programmer who’s really good at programming could land a time-consuming job or move away or just lose interest. “And then what do we have? We have nothing,” Tierney said."


And what was wrong with 511.ca?


--


_______________________________________________
CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss



--

Herb Lainchbury, CEO, Dynamic Solutions Inc.
250.704.6154



_______________________________________________
CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: City ditched plan to run open-data competition for new traffic app Paid tens of thousands in sole-sourced deal to Toronto company instead

Stéphane Guidoin
Flybits is a spin-off of Ryerson U with backing from MarsDD. Although it's a young company, they have solid foundations (which does not mean they won't fail, but they have interesting credentials.)

One example of app founded by a public body is smart-muni who received a $100,000 grant to run a pilot for an ipad app to improve management of the Muni fleet in SF (http://smartmuni.org/our-story/). Unfortunately, there is no news about it since 2012, so it is unclear what happened after the 4-month pilot.

As of support: working with an open competition could have made things easier to ask for open source software. That's the kind of thing that could help municipalities to prevent vendor lock-in and maintenance issue, even if the provider runs out of business. It is by no mean the silver bullet to solve the maintenance issue, but it could certainly help.

Steph

Le 2013-11-26 23:05, Herb Lainchbury a écrit :
"a contract with a company that has some permanence guarantees ongoing support"

Hmm... it seems like he's expecting a lot of a new small company.


Interesting strategy, but I think the city would have been much better off with a contest followed by a potential support contract if they liked any of the apps.  

If it is supported apps they want (which is understandable) I would also encourage cities to state in the contest rules that they are looking for firms that can potentially provide ongoing support.  I think this would help set expectations and would actually bring more vendors out to the contest as it would increase the potential reward.  Even if the original developer couldn't support it, this could be provided by another firm if need be.

H



On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 6:49 PM, Tracey P. Lauriault <[hidden email]> wrote:
"And second, a contract with a company that has some permanence guarantees ongoing support. An amateur programmer who’s really good at programming could land a time-consuming job or move away or just lose interest. “And then what do we have? We have nothing,” Tierney said."


And what was wrong with 511.ca?


--


_______________________________________________
CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss



--

Herb Lainchbury, CEO, Dynamic Solutions Inc.
250.704.6154




_______________________________________________
CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss


_______________________________________________
CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss