How on earth are there so many people on HN defending this? It's clear that _something_ untoward happened, and somehow the bad actor is not-for-profit archivists?
Seriously - these tech companies have burn rates in the millions PER MONTH. I frankly wouldn't be surprised if ancestrery is doing over $1B per year.
Please note - these are records that CAN NOT be lost by the state. Some shmucks who can't even afford $100K want to take possession of this stuff? Forget it. Seriously, the van crashed on the way to the cheap place that scans these, the van burned up on the way to our "super cheap" scanning place - is no excuse to permanently lose irreplacable records. That's how half these startups and fly by night groups work.
I've often looked at these quotes. The cost to government, with salaries, pensions, supervisors and admin to do something it doesn't normally do, make sure it is safe, get in the scanners, do the quality control etc is higher than you think.
Just to do the RFP is a HUGE PAIN in goverment. You have to write it, get it approved, publicize it, get bids, find a scoring panel, score them, check they meet all the city and goverment requirements (redwood purchasing, mcbride principles for northern ireland, health care accountability - the list goes on). Then do all the adjustments for preference groups (now mostly local and micro biz and small biz, and WME etc). Then you have to fight the appeals. Every politicans rule drives the cost UP in govt. Voted in by the people. By the time you are at contract stage, getting city attorney approval etc - you are burnt out. Trust me, if someone comes knocking and wants all this for free - forget it.
If ancestry paid, then the real issue is these schmucks got preferential treatment by not paying and free-riding off the work the company paid for. And this is considered preferential treatment for ancestry?
I'm not fan of them (and don't use them), but folks, get a grip. If one requester has to pay $150K or insure, demonstrate prior experience doing this etc etc, and another get's it free because the first paid, that is NOT preferential treatment for the first who paid. What planet are these guys on?
This is not about how much money "ancestrery" has to burn. I have also bid government jobs; almost none of the expenses you mention have anything to do with safely handling vital records. In fact, they are inefficiencies that the government is not legally permitted to pass along to records requestors.
I'm not sure what your dog in this fight is, but you clearly have one. I would certainly be curious to know what would make you think that records required to be legally accessible to the public should only be available to those with burn rates in the millions PER MONTH.
What they are asking is for NY to bid this, fight the bid appeals, contract this, manage this, supervise this, etc. Govt does not do well with new stuff, and everything goes through the big bureaucracy.
And vendor side, all the requirements (the forced source hiring so you can't use your own staff, but have to wait forever for someone to send you some folks for the "entry level" positions you are required to fill from the pool they have, plus a billion political football things that you need to jump through that have no real impact on the actual project etc) means the bids are high.
As someone who has worked both sides of this - the lack of knowledge here is shocking.
I'm not in NY, but looked up just the fringe overhead rate - 62%. That's probably double the private sector as a point of reference.
So to digitize 100 years of irreplacable records, be on-site, probably have to offer to leave the machine and equipment, work around a potentially unionized workforce (trust me - no fun). That get's costly.
If Ancestry shows up with insurance, money, references and experience doing this, they definitely would have moved to front of line.
People also don't realize that most of the gadflys involved in bothers government wear everyone out there. There are tons of overblown drama from folks with no budget who are totally convinced the state is out to get them. That makes for some very jaded govt workers.
