As much as this type of corruption sucks... I gotta say recreation.gov is way better than what came before it, with every state and federal system doing their own random thing with terrible UX and horrible performance, and many campsites having no online presence at all.<p>Many places now on recreation.gov used to require you to fax in reservations and wait days for a confirmation, or else just do the drive up and fill out a paper slip thing the morning of (too bad if they're all gone).<p>Sure, it'd be nice to clean up the fees and get more money to the parks themselves, but I gotta give credit to the website for cleaning up what used to be a nightmare and turning it into a pretty streamlined (if slightly more expensive) process.<p>Edit: Imagine if we had a similar system for the departments of motor vehicles... pay 20% more but get it all done in minutes online instead of hours at the local office. Who wouldn't pay for that if they could afford it?<p>Of course it would be better to have actually functional public services, but our governments just don't seem to be set up to actually be effective at basic services. Is it worse for public dollars to get funneled to a public private partnership with an overhead, that at least delivers a functional product, or to just disappear forever into the coffers of bureaucrats and their cronies with nothing to show for it?
I have no perspective on the legality, but this sounds like a corrupt contract.<p>The details from the article that stand out to me:<p>* The US Government paid nothing for Recreation.gov, and the site is instead funded by fees charged on the platform, that are passed through to the site's operator, Booz Allen<p>* The amount generated by those fees and paid to Booz Allen is not publically disclosed.<p>* There are times when government agencies (like the NPS) offer free tickets (aka, timed entry to popular national parks), and Booz Allen still tacks on a fee.<p>* Similarly, when you enter a nonrefundable lottery for popular permits (climbing Mt. Whitney, rafting the Salmon, etc.) the $6 fee you pay to enter doesn't go to, say, conservation efforts in those areas, but goes straight to Booz Allen.<p>On princple, I don't mind user-fees being attached to some activities in public lands. But this payment structure seems designed to defraud the American public. Certainly, the contractor is providing value by delivering online reservation systems, and that costs money, but they should not be incentivized to charge fees that go to them, not the public lands.<p>I hope the lawsuit succeeds in gaining class action status, and prevents other government websites from being structured this way.
As a somewhat heavy user of recreation.gov this suit really makes me happy. The cancellation fees are borderline insane - ex. a $25 per day camping site fee that needs to be cancelled leads to a $10 fee per day, meaning that the fee is 40% of the initial reservation price.
There's a huge need for real investigative journalism into corruption like this. Kudos to the plaintiffs for exposing the grift.<p>recreation.gov has some benefits – they've improved usability. The fees are punitive and obscure. Also there's lots of corruption and scalping on the site that they are not taking responsibility for.
This is pretty rampant across all levels of government. A couple of examples:<p>- Several states/counties/cities/etc add a surcharge for credit card payments or transaction/processing fees for things like vehicle registration, paying traffic tickets, obtaining court records, paying property tax, etc.<p>- Prisons and jails are really terrible with junk fees for both the prisoners and for systems set up for their friends/families to call or message them, send them food/sundries, etc. They also promote a system where you deposit funds in even chunks of $10, $20, $30, etc...then they keep the uneven remainder when you're no longer using their system.
This reminds me of Oracle managing the health care site for Oregon. I remember when a bunch of us in the open source community were trying to avoid Oracle getting this contract:<p><a href="https://www.marklogic.com/blog/oracle-oregon-lawsuit/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.marklogic.com/blog/oracle-oregon-lawsuit/</a><p>But, Oracle got it anyway.<p>Imagine if the dozens of Perl programmers had $240M and had recycled all that money back into the local economy.<p>Could it have gone any worse even if that exchange was rewritten in Perl 6?
The price of everything on recreation.gov is already so cheap, honestly I don't care about their fees. It's like, ten bucks in fees for staying a night somewhere in the San Francisco area. Far, far lower than Airbnb fees.<p>The problem that most bugs me is how often reservations for popular campsites fill up the moment they become available. And then when you go camping, there are often empty sites. It's so cheap to reserve campsites, and you have to do it so far in advance, people reserve campsites they aren't sure they want, cancel their plans later, and don't even bother to inform the campgrounds.
Anyone have access to Pacer and can get us the filings since this article was written?<p>Virginia Eastern District Court Case # 1:23-cv-00043<p>I’m not familiar with any ways to get free access<p><a href="https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/47432813/Wilson_et_al_v_Booz_Allen_Hamilton,_Inc" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/47432813/Wilson_et_...</a>
Out of curiosity - What would be the difficulties in having government services like this be offered as "api-only" from the government's side, and allowing open competition for interfaces and other interaction?<p>What difficulties would there be from the government's perspective, what issues would the companies experience when trying to create the interfaces and portals, and what issues would pop up for the users of the services?
You could make the lottery tickets cheaper if you buy early and create a marketplace where you can sell or auction you tickets or winnings. Then they could take a percentage of that and ramp up prices to chase the market.
I would love to go camping. I have some friends who are going over the 4th of July weekend. I was like: "WOW! How did you get a camp site??"<p>"Oh, we reserved it... in December"<p>Fucking WILD that these camp sites are selling out like miley cyrus tickets. Really annoying!
The app is developed and managed by Booz Allen Hamilton. Insiders in the NPS that I've spoken to all have no nice things to say of them, primarily because of bloated contracts, underdelivery, and overruns.