Is it true that Czech programmers created a website for free on which the government was going to spend €16 million?

There is a story going around on social networks about Czech programmers who, having learned about the plans of the Czech Ministry of Transport to spend €16 million on the development of an online portal, created a website for free over the weekend and donated it to the government. We decided to find out how true this story is.

The news about Czech programmers caused a stir in the media in 2020 (BBC Russia, Meduza, TJournal, "Present Tense", Radio Liberty), and in recent posts on social networks she meets to this day. This is how the story sounded in Russian-language sources.

In January 2020, the Czech Ministry of Transport announced a government contract for the development of an online store for the sale of passes (vignettes) for toll highways in the Czech Republic. Without announcing a public competition, the contract was concluded with the Polish private IT company Asseco Central Europe, and the project was supposed to cost the Czech budget 401 million Czech crowns (about €16 million). Then a team of programmers from the Czech Republic, free of charge, developed the ordered portal in two days and donated it to the government, saving budget funds. After this, the Minister of Transport was dismissed in disgrace.

To understand how truthful this account of events is, we tried to find out what exactly the programmers were able to create over the weekend and how much it corresponded to the original technical specifications (TOR) of the Ministry of Transport.

On January 20, 2020, the owner of the Czech IT company Actum Digital, Tomas Vondracek, published on social networks video message: “I think a $400 million government order for a site is absurd when a couple of talented guys can do it in a weekend.” He invited programmers to gather at his company’s office in Prague, write a website and donate it to the state. More than 300 people responded to Vondracek’s call, of which 194 programmers were selected, who implemented this idea during a two-day hackathon*.

*The word “hackathon” was formed from the English words hack and marathon; it can be literally translated as “marathon for hackers.” Essentially, a hackathon is an event in which participants need to develop a prototype of a product (for example, a web service or mobile application) to solve a specific problem in a short time.

The day after the hackathon, the website ferznamka.cz and applications for Android and iOS started working in test mode. The Prime Minister of the Czech Republic said that the government is ready to terminate the old contract for €16 million and use the website created for free if it is confirmed that it works without failures.

So, how much money did 194 programmers save the Czech budget? To do this, you should estimate what proportion of the work they completed from the original technical specifications in these two days.

What points did the Czech programmers fulfill?

1. Demo version of the online store for the sale of vignettes for travel on toll highways.
2. Related mobile applications for Android and iOS.

What points were not fulfilled by Czech programmers?

There is no definite answer, because in the published contract This is not a detailed technical specification for IT developers, but only an approximate amount of work. Also written, that the detailed technical specifications are classified at the request of the State Security Service and intelligence agencies. The fact is that the vignette recognition system had to take into account “special categories” of vehicles that have the right to free travel on highways: police vehicles, ambulances, emergency services and special services. The Ministry of Transport could not publish the technical specifications revealing the criteria for establishing the ownership of a car by various special services.

If you lean on the open part contractdescribing the total scope of work, Vondracek’s team did not complete the following points:

1. Creation of a working online store. The demo that Vondracek presented was, even in his own words, far from the final product. When asked by reporters whether it was really possible to develop such an online store over a weekend, Vondracek replied: “It was just a gesture. Of course this is impossible." He also noted that if, after two days of the hackathon, he really needed to start selling 7 billion real vignettes through the resulting site, he would not have risked doing it. “The site still needs to be debugged. Of course, it was created in a hurry and we had to sacrifice some things,” he said;
2. Connecting an online store to government systems and registers. How said Vondracek, over the weekend they did not have time to connect the site to government systems, and the government will have to develop additional functions for this on the existing site. Vondracek proposed announcing another tender to solve this problem, but for a smaller amount, about a quarter of the original one. As a result, the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic instructed the Ministry of Transport to hold an open competition for the implementation of the service ferznamka.cz to the state system, allocating about €4 million, or 25% of the initial contract cost;
3. User portal;
4. Call center;
5. Payment reporting system;
6. Accounting for “special categories” of cars exempt from payment (one of two classified points of TK). How said Vondracek: “We don’t know the details of the secret part of the site, we can’t say what its volume is - is it more or less than what we did”;
7. Clearing;
8. Information security and data protection system. The team of programmers did not have time to thoroughly work out this aspect, and two hours after the site was published, hackers hacked it, stealing the personal data of 6,000 users (only 5% of which turned out to be real people, and the rest were test records). “On Sunday at 20:57 there was a leak. The reason was that I set big goals for the developers and gave them little time,” Vondracek said. Due to the rush, the quality of the source code and security standards suffered, to which paid attention IT specialist Ondrej Barta: “I’m still rooting for you guys, but who spent your pentests? Most of the methods are not implemented, and the fact that you mix English and Czech names in your code indicates a complete inability to agree on a basic coding style. I understand that you only had one weekend to do this, but this is a violation of absolute fundamentals.” However, over the next few days, the site’s protection against hacker attacks was strengthened. Vondracek claimed that since then the online store has been attacked almost every day, but without success. "We are confident that in a few weeks ferznamka.cz will become the most trusted site in terms of stability and security,” he said;
9. Operation and technical support of the site for the next four years (from 2020 to 2024). In addition to operation and technical support, the contractor would have to provide training for employees - system operators, development and implementation of upgrades according to the instructions of the Ministry of Transport, as well as customer support through the created user portal and call center. According to the contractor's calculations, the amount of support over four years should have been about 2,000 man-days. The agreement also written, that if the Ministry of Transport asks the contractor to carry out work that goes beyond the scope of the contract (for example, when providing technical support for more than 2,000 man-days), then the contractor will be able to demand compensation in the amount of 1,500 crowns (€60) for each man-hour. Based on this amount of remuneration, it can be calculated that the Ministry of Transport estimated human labor over four years at approximately €2.8 million, or 18% of the original contract amount;
10. Preparation of project documentation, including specifications, detailed work schedule, operator training plan, risk management plan, description of project acceptance procedures and criteria, site testing plan, identification of required third party proprietary software products, etc.

It’s difficult to say what percentage of the tasks included in these €16 million were successfully implemented by programmers over the weekend. They didn’t have time to do a lot of things, they couldn’t do something due to the lack of exact technical specifications, and they had to debug something long after the end of the hackathon. It is also unknown how much 194 programmers would value their work if they were an ordinary contractor company and not a group of volunteers. Vondracek promised to draw up and publish a detailed hypothetical estimate for the development of such a site, but he never did.

So if the answer to the original question is “Is it true that a team of programmers created a website over a weekend on which the government wanted to spend €16 million,” the answer would be “no.” Over the weekend, they created only a demo version of one of the ordered services for the open part of the technical specification.

The action caused a wide resonance in society and among Czech politicians. After the video message published by Vondracek, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis fired Minister of Transport Vladimir Kremlik - he refused to cancel the already concluded contract for €16 million. “I spoke with the minister, he does not admit the mistake. He is a hard worker, but he simply couldn’t cope with this project,” Andrei Babish explained the dismissal. And that same weekend, the Prime Minister personally attended the hackathon along with the new Minister of Transport. All contracts and tenders related to this project were cancelled, a million-dollar contract with a Polish IT company - terminated. And although the site ferznamka.cz still works only in demo mode: it sells not real, but symbolic vignettes, the funds from which go to the treatment of children with severe injuries - we can say that the programmers have coped with the main task they have set themselves.

It is precisely this nuance that many Russian-language media missed. In the widely circulated viral publications, the emphasis shifted from anti-corruption to how a couple of programmers saved the state €16 million and four years of work over the weekend, which is not true.

Half-truth

What do our verdicts mean?

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