[FRIAM] I am accepting wagers

[Prof David West]

Biden promised a Federal Website to give citizens easy an accurate access to vaccination appointments. Fully operational May 1, date that all Americans wishing a vaccine/vaccination will be able to obtain one.

Assume 50,000 vaccination sites, 50, 15-minute, time slots per day and, at that time, a maximum of 150 million clients.

There are several people on this list who, I believe, could build this Website over the course of a weekend, including UE (user experience) elements like Google Maps for site locations, and install it on a cloud server for volume scaling/descaling. Allow a month to collect data - the only thing really problematic is a list of sites, addresses, and operational hours (to constrain the daily calendar slots).

Total cost: < $25,000 ($500 hr - you folks deserve this pay rate - for 40-50 hours)

Now the wager: I bet that the feds will contract with a major software development corporation for development. Contract will be in the range of 5 and 10 million dollars; there is a 50% chance the site will be late or deployed with partial functionality; there is a 20% chance that it will be as dramatic a failure upon debut as was the healthcare.gov site.

Risk is two beverages of your/my choice — payable when next we can share a physical presence.

davew