> The team’s approach was straightforward. Build working software fast. Put it in front of real users early. Collect feedback. Fix things quickly. Release updates every two weeks.
> That’s a 95% cost reduction. Both systems instead of one. Delivered faster. With 643 users already on the platform
This is a proven solution. These parts, the non-AI management ones, are proven to work in all sorts of places. Gov.uk is another example.
However, there's one massive problem with this: it doesn't involve the free market and it doesn't make any money for corporations to feed back to politicians in campaign donation kickbacks. It even involves respecting civil servants - maybe even paying them market wages! These parts are so heretical that most governments would choose the solution that 10X more expensive and also doesn't work, every single time.
That's kind of amazing. Alberta has a conservative govt so I am surprised "in-house" got the pass over "outside company". It is good to see fiscal conservatism over 'govt-bad' conservatism. Hats off to the deputy minister et al. for approving this.
Using Google Gemini to generate requirements/spec document from video is amazing. I wonder what the prompt looked like and if there was custom support to help process the videos.
I feel this has more importance than they think. Outside consultants would not have had this domain knowledge and would have spent months learning it. And then would have had to fix their mistakes because they misunderstood something (billed to the province, naturally)
This is the problem in a nutshell. Those firms are structured to extract money from their customers, not to produce useful work. The fact that anyone is signing contracts with them any more blows my mind.
> what if a small team of public servants, equipped with modern AI development tools, built the replacement systems themselves?
Next: bridges and brain surgery.
On the other, procurement is so broken, that if their inhouse team is only marginally better, it's a win.
Super disappointed to see most of the comments just complaining about AI and not engaging with the contents of the article.
Anyone else closed the article immediately after seeing the low-taste, sloppy image at the top?
How do you call this aesthetic? "Futuristic vomit"? AKA "Generate image of: code blocks, AI-brain image, diagram, smiling guy and bunch of other crap. Make it look cool and futuristic, make no mistakes"?
