I was surprised at how cheap, relatively speaking, this system is:
> The state police used a vendor to build their program, at an estimated cost of $195,000, and the courts used in-house tech experts at an estimated cost of $50,000.
I don't have any experience in government IT, but even in corporate terms, this seems relatively cheap given the scope and lifetime of the system (though I'm assuming these stated costs don't include maintenance and ongoing operation) and the consequences when there's a system failure, e.g. lawsuits.
In Chicago, there was a system being developed in partnership with University of Chicago to make city-owned database schemas open to the public through a PHP web app.
The system cost 300k to develop, was never finished, and was quietly put into forever-maintenance mode after a few years of use.
As a general rule, Government is pretty bad with tech projects and their associated costs.
In practice, I agree: this is pretty cheap given the market.
But now take a step back and think about it: the actual problem is probably pretty simple. If the databases are well made, it would just take a few requests for this operation to be done. Even with the tests, that's one or two programmers' job for two weeks, and maybe one week of a partial review of results by a legal specialist to validate the quality.
Imagine if the state had two in-house programmers up to this task available. $195,000 would cover their salary for a year.
> and the consequences when there's a system failure, e.g. lawsuits
Another saving grace for doing things in house: you take actions internally. You can correct very quickly, shuffle incompetent people, save all the litigation costs and the bad faiths over misinterpretation of a SoW.
Those two in-house programmers would never get the time to do this. They would be swallowed in various maintenance task on the other 500 custom systems the state owns.
That's a difference I observed (in France) between the private and public sector. In several administration, public workers have a reputation of being lazy because they don't always have work to do. They are on demand, and work on projects as appropriate.
That's what a well-funded public task force looks like.
In such a case, a manager would look at the schedule, reserve the time necessary for this dev, take into account the other missions of the devs and get it done.
$195k would be enough to probably only cover one state-employee programmer for one year. Think about your salary, now double it. That's how much you cost your employer. I'm sure a state employee costs even more with how inefficient overhead is for government agencies.
In most of the world, public administrations tend to have lower overhead than similar private sectors. Administrations usually benefit more from the economy of scale and if you consider dividends as a cost for the end user, they don't have those.
Is a 100k salary the norm for people writing DB queries in the US? That sounds a lot.
It's all about liability transfer. Government is basically crippled by risk aversion. The first 165k were to sign a contract accepting all sorts of liability in case something bad happens. The other 30k was to write some SQL, test it (hopefully) and then run it in prod.
I doubt risk aversion is the reason. The govt is still on the hook for data errors regardless, also data errors are can be corrected with existing processes.
That's my point. What is expensive is to interact with a private entity to do it, to manage risks and potential litigation. All these costs would be saved if the solution was developed in house.
I work in county government IT in Ohio, and the $50K number, per county court, seems like a reasonable estimate. I don't know anything about Pennaylvania, but in Ohio each court (of which there could be multiple in each county-- a court of Common Pleas, a Juvenile Court, and one or more Municipal courts) would each have their own disparate court management systems. In my county there are currently 3 different systems covering 3 courts. Each one would need its own integration.
A few years ago the Supreme Court of the State of Ohio undertook a multi-year data warehouse project to build a centralized reference database for all state courts. I assisted the vendor in our County and easily had a significant fraction of that $50K in my labor over a period of a couple of years.
Pennsylvania has a similar structure as far as the different types of courts, but they have had their Unified Judicial System [0] for quite some time now. It's actually quite usable (once you know where the links you need are) and really ties together all the different courts and provides a web portal [1] where most things one would need to do (except actual court appearances) can be done pretty quickly.
Police use grant funds to do everything and usually have a stable of good smaller consulting firms that get shit done. They probably had 2-3 contractor FTEs for 4-6 months and built off an existing system.
Government IT is good at building things like this. They suck at large projects and ops.
Unfortunately expungement doesn’t really do much - most questions on employment forms or professional associations (state bar, FINRA, etc) ask about arrests not convictions. Secondly, despite being “expunged” the data still resides in numerous data bases etc. and I don’t believe you have any practical recourse against that. E.g. you go to buy a gun and the NICS system holds you up, or an employer fires you for a conviction found on a third party database what are you going to do?
Those bans come with loopholes that you could drive a bus through.
You can determine from free public records search that somebody has an arrest without even knowing what it is, and people use that to filter folks all of the time.
Yes, you can illegally discriminate in hiring if you choose to. Most major companies are very careful not to do this. In every case I have had a background check done on me I have asked for the company doing the check to send a copy and in every case the report sent to me certainly appeared to be following the law (the reports explicitly mention how far back they are reviewing).
> or an employer fires you for a conviction found on a third party database what are you going to do?
Ask for a copy of the report (they are required by law to provide it to you; you will know they have it because they had to get your legal consent beforehand; have to inform you decision is based on report), then dispute the report.
A company can do dishonest work and pretend their decision is not based on a report, but they can't legally use expunged records to make a decision in PA (or afaik anywhere; sealed records are another story), just because they got them from an outdated consumer reporting agency.
Some jurisdictions add an extra layer of protection against companies being (maybe intentionally) "sloppy" with where they pull data by mandating sequencing: You first have to make a conditional offer, and only then is it legal to pull criminal history. If you find a big red flag in the criminal history, you are still allowed to rescind the offer. But obviously at that point you had better be prepared to defend your rescission, so companies tend to make sure that they are using the real/legal criminal-history documentation there.
I first ran across this when I rented an apartment in Washington, D.C., which has that rule for housing (I hadn't previously seen that sequence of "conditional housing offer" followed by criminal-history check, followed by final housing offer). But it looks like at least California (as of 2018) requires that for employment too, with pulling criminal history only allowed after sending out the conditional job offer: https://www.californiaemploymentlawreport.com/2018/01/califo...
Of course, this doesn't stop blatantly illegal behavior, where a company uses un-expunged third-party databases pre-offer and just doesn't tell the candidate why they were denied. But at that point you're nowhere near having plausible deniability, which most bigger companies would like.
I known it’s not the main point of the story, but the fact that this legislation was intentionally held up by a congressman (a die-hard Ohio State fan) in committee who relented only after meeting with a famous former Ohio State football player who turned his life around after prison is really interesting given the blowback athletes like Kaepernick have gotten for getting political.
There is a kind of person in this world who is only able to empathize with others after an experience is made personal for them. It is frustrating to witness this, yet I’m happy that the player in question recognized that their personal story could make a difference in this instance.
Consider that the political positions they hold may differ from the views they hold in private, both before and after a seeming change of heart. Successful politicians are skilled opportunists. If the politician believes that holding one kind of view plays well with their constituents, they will hold it until the drawbacks begin to outweigh the advantages or the appetite of the electorate shifts.
Consider that news of a politician's family member coming out as gay is likely to invite questions about the politician's stance. They now have a choice: embrace the family member and evolve their political views, or reject them and play the hardliner. Fewer of their constituents would be put off by the first course of action than the latter.
There are many instances in which doing something that many people find offensive and being a good example are the same thing, or at the very least are not opposed to one another.
E.g. In the 1960s, the head football coach at a recently integrated high school treats players of all races with dignity and respect; in the present day, two married men raise their child to treat others kindly; etc.
It’s particularly difficult to distinguish between inoffensive activity and being a good example when the root cause of at least some offense is due to nothing more than your existence—you can be the best father to a child you can, but that will never make up for the fact that because you are gay some people do not think you should be a father at all.
Turning back to the specific content of the article, I am glad that Maurice Claurett was able to use his history and his personal connection to Representative Marisco to enable the betterment of so many people’s lives. A system in which 90% of petitions result in expungement but only 10% of the eligible persons ever know they are able to make a petition is a moral wrong, and its automation (for less than $200,000) seems as if it will result in significant harm reduction for relatively little burden and risk. It also seems like the benefits of such a bill should be apparent with empathy, and that Claurett’s intervention should not have been necessary to change Rep. Marisco’s mind, but so it goes.
I think a story like this, where many disparate groups generally opposed to one another worked together to effect positive change, is refreshing especially these days. Criminal justice reform has a lot of low hanging fruit and I hope this sort of progress continues (or kicks off) throughout the country.
As did every single peaceful civil right leader throughout history.
Many of the same people who hold up MLK as the way you “should” protest were calling him a troublemaker riling up the good people that didn’t want any trouble.
Let me remind you that all of the people who canonized Muhammad Ali after he died as a “great American” were probably calling him a trader when he refused to fight in Vietnam. I bet a lot of people found it “offensive” when he said “ain’t no VietCong ever called me a n”
It is a way toward better rehabilitation. Same should be true for financial data. Private prisons the US maintains leave the impression of abusing slave labor.
> ...interesting given the blowback athletes like Kaepernick have gotten for getting political.
Colin Kaepernick didn't get blowback for recognizing a cause , he got blowback for dragging it into the game, and choosing a particularly political way of expressing it.
In this case, the cause remained personal rather than political, and was not dragged onto the field.
Why are we playing the national anthem before games in the first place? The NFL dragged politics into football long before Colin was in the league. He just used the only platform he had to peacefully protest.
Why not play the national anthem? The whole song is about the war of 1812 with Great Britain, and it's a ceremony of unison just before a competitive game. It's a reminder that we're on the same team even though we're rooting for different teams.
It's also laughable to say that a very rich NFL star's only platform is the national anthem. Especially in 2019, when even unheard of people go viral via Twitter and YouTube.
He literally did go on YouTube. And you just proved my point - he used the platform he had available to reach the broadest audience. Which absolutely wasn't YouTube.
And why not play the anthem? Because this constant barrage of "support the military or else" is toxic to democracy and is yet another page out of the playbook to stop the public from ever being against another Vietnam.
It has absolutely nothing to do with "even though we're on different teams we're all on the same team". The visceral reaction to his protest proves that out.
The national anthem isn't about supporting the military or else. It's about supporting your country. And it is about remembering that sports is just entertainment. It's all for nothing without a unified country. Every other country on the planet plays their national anthem before sports events. It's not unique to the U.S. and it's not toxic. It's okay to be proud of your country. Even when it's not perfect.
> It's okay to be proud of your country. Even when it's not perfect.
I think the problem is Americans are taught to be proud of America just because it's America (or more specifically because it's the land of the free...although few people can define what "free" is other than being in America). It's jingoism and, based on my own observations, removes critical thought from the process of supporting your country. Just because other countries do it doesn't mean it's right (or wrong).
I'm pretty cynical, but it seems pretty easy to draw the connection between playing patriotic songs at sporting events (and grade school, before students are even able to comprehend the words they are saying) and how it instills a sense of zealotry in fans.
> or more specifically because it's the land of the free...although few people can define what "free" is other than being in America
Like the freedom in the fact that the U.S. government, unlike all other governments I'm aware of, is prevented by superiour law from considering a law that would prosecute you for this criticism you are writing. Lots of other places have "free expression... until it's inconvenient" or "free expression, while the establishment appreciates it", the U.S. has free expression especially when the establishment dislikes it.
> I'm pretty cynical, but it seems pretty easy to draw the connection between playing patriotic songs at sporting events (and grade school, before students are even able to comprehend the words they are saying) and how it instills a sense of zealotry in fans.
The fans of sporting events are zealous everywhere, regardless of national anthems. Participation in the anthem seems low here in southern Ontario, and yet the fans will gladly riot, burn vehicles, etc.
> Every other country on the planet plays their national anthem before sports events.
I don't think this is true. For national games, sure, the anthems of both countries are usually played; but for league games in Europe I don't think this is the typical case. At least I can't remember a single european league game I've seen, regardless of sport, where they play the national anthem.
The only time I've seen this happen in Europe is when the NHL does overseas games at the start of the season, when they'll both the US anthem and the anthem of whatever country they're playing in.
With one stanza, which is generally not included anymore because of the controversy. If you read the top answer on that Quora, you'll also note it's more complicated than that.
Team sports are rituals to mimic our instinct for tribal war. Our boys are defending us against those bastards in the other city. Or going over to the other city and teaching them not to mess with us in the future.
The NFL amps up the imagery with militaristic starting lines and ultra patriotic imagery. Fans think of the players as local heroes defending the city.
Kaepernick's protests shattered that illusion and revealed the contempt many players have for the fans and cities.
Generally protests and such involve bringing a topic to a different venue and communicating the issue in new ways because only talking about it at the "right" time isn't working.
> Colin Kaepernick didn't get blowback for recognizing a cause , he got blowback for dragging it into the game, and choosing a particularly political way of expressing it.
Colin Kaepernick has saved zero lives, encouraged zero people not to get shot. This comic is meant to shut people up, ironically.
In more irony, in the case OP points out, it's likely that the outcome was positive because the people involved were given an opportunity to save face.
>>Colin Kaepernick has saved zero lives, encouraged zero people not to get shot.
He also has not brutalized or outright murdered someone, all the while hiding behind his uniform and the power and privilege it grants him.
What he did was use his platform as a star player to raise awareness about one of the most important issues of our time. You may be bitter that he brought politics into entertainment. But that says more about you than about him.
> In this case, the cause remained personal rather than political, and was not dragged onto the field.
The cause was literally politics. The difference is that it didn't step on anyone's jingoism. (I'm not sure what else to call people getting frothing mad at someone not standing during an anthem.)
Well, all I can ask is that you try to reread what I wrote, but this time do it in good faith; then imagine for a second that people are maybe not being as unreasonable as you assume.
> Well, all I can ask is that you try to reread what I wrote
Well, you could explain how you think I misread "the cause remained personal rather than political". Or you could explain why you think that fighting to change the law isn't politics. Either of those would be a helpful start.
> then imagine for a second that people are maybe not being as unreasonable as you assume
People who froth over someone not standing during an anthem instead of looking at why he chose to do that are being exactly as unreasonable as I assume. Or did you mean a different group of people?
People who "people who froth over this" instead of "looking at why this was done" can vary wildly depending on what "this" is and who the person is. You may not see standing during the anthem to be a big deal; someone else might.
To take it to an extreme, consider the act of killing someone to push forth an agenda. A dictator, to save lives. A senator, to change the politics of something. You may think one of those is ok but not the other, or both. Someone else may believe differently.
> You may not see standing during the anthem to be a big deal; someone else might.
Sure. Ask that person how they feel about unfettered police brutality and regularly killing unarmed civilians without consequence in "the land of the free". Now ask them to compare the two. This moral relativism sleight-of-hand only works for people who choose to ignore or just plain don't care about the underlying issue of police brutality in the US.
> Someone else may believe differently.
Sure. But if racists or jingoists believe racist or jingoist things, that doesn't magically make the racist or jingoist things they believe ok.
> To take it to an extreme, consider the act of killing someone to push forth an agenda. A dictator, to save lives. A senator, to change the politics of something. You may think one of those is ok but not the other, or both. Someone else may believe differently.
You're getting awfully close to suggesting an equality between murder and non-violent protest against consequence-free police brutality and killing of unarmed black people. I sincerely hope that isn't the case. Either way it's a terrible look.
I'm going to just quietly back away from this conversation now. For one thing, we're going to hit the comment nest limit imminently.
I'm not using sleight of hand or suggesting an equality between murder and non-violent protest.
It is possible to believe that unfettered police brutality and regularly killing unarmed civilians without consequence is a horrible thing AND to believe that standing during the anthem during a game is an inappropriate way to address said horrible thing.
Your argument appears to boil down to
1. This is horrible
2. We should do something
3. They did something
4. They are correct
The set of all things which are acceptable is not the set of all things. It's not even the same set for all people. Just because someone doesn't believe the same things as you doesn't make them wrong; it doesn't make them right, either, but it doesn't make them wrong.
> if racists or jingoists believe racist or jingoist things
Maybe the most important point here... just because someone doesn't believe in the same ways to oppose something as you doesn't mean they don't think it should be opposed. It doesn't make them a racist and implying they are is a horrible thing to do.
> The state police used a vendor to build their program, at an estimated cost of $195,000, and the courts used in-house tech experts at an estimated cost of $50,000.
I don't have any experience in government IT, but even in corporate terms, this seems relatively cheap given the scope and lifetime of the system (though I'm assuming these stated costs don't include maintenance and ongoing operation) and the consequences when there's a system failure, e.g. lawsuits.