Ideally the fines would pay for the program, but how expensive is it really to have an anonymous phone tip line, and reuse existing infrastructure to fine or ticket a property owner?
The answer, as with all govtech, is “a lot more than it should be.” Governments, especially local governments, have no internal technology competence, and have to rely on vendors and contractors for absolutely everything.
I haven't seen any evidence that governments, local or otherwise, spend "a lot more than it should [cost]." They are (correctly) unable to subsidize the cost of development by selling data, which in some cases means they cannot use certain preexisting libraries. But many groups have to rely on vendors and contractors for their technical needs. Their costs should be compared to other groups outsourcing their needs.
> They are (correctly) unable to subsidize the cost of development by selling data, which in some cases means they cannot use certain preexisting libraries.
This is not what raises the cost of development. It’s not having any in-house knowledge of software development or even how to manage software development contracts effectively. Most companies that require a lot of software end up building development organizations, because they recognize that paying someone else to do it is more expensive long-term. That’s not an option available to most governments.
It’s possible that this is just an inherent effect of outsourcing but even if it is, it ends up being too inefficient to justify.
I mean you can have Joe writing it down on a piece of paper, sure. But when it gets to a computer, costs start coming up. It depends on how the software works but the products used tend to be a) ancient and b) often either not configurable enough to support new use cases or so complicated that you have to submit a change request to the vendor to do it for you.
Idk I imagined an excel spreadsheet, which hits the middle ground between paper and some complex govtech application. If it is successful and fines/funding rolls in then maybe upgrade
Most cities have ample police force them being understaffed is somewhat of a bullshit narrative.
For example NYPD has 36000 ifficers for 8.4M residents or 1 for every 230 people. In Chicago it's 225. In Seattle it's over 500 but they could probably afford more if they weren't paying individual officers up to 400k including non electronically tracked probably fraudulent overtime.
