We should see this for what it really is - hidden unemployment benefit for people "working" at Accenture. Or hidden basic income, call it whatever you want. Our level of economic development and accumulated wealth is so great that without these sorts of "stimulus" the majority of the population would be unemployed or work just a couple of days per week [0]. And the conspiracy theorist inside me suspects that the government cannot allow it. With so much free time at their hands people might get creative and get some strange ideas and so on.
>FEMA Contract Called for 30 Million Meals for Puerto Ricans. 50,000 Were Delivered.
>For this huge task, FEMA tapped Tiffany Brown, an Atlanta entrepreneur with no experience in large-scale disaster relief and at least five canceled government contracts in her past. FEMA awarded her $156 million for the job, and Ms. Brown, who is the sole owner and employee of her company, Tribute Contracting LLC, set out to find some help.
Worth comparing with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18679767 , where we actually had something resembling a discussion rather than just descending into government-is-bad tropes.
There are really three separate questions:
1) Whether the thing is worth doing at all
2) Having decided to do it, is there enough commitment and leadership to actually doing it properly?
3) Given the desire to do it properly, is that best served by doing it in-house through a line management system of control, or outsourcing it and running it through a contract management system of control?
This is par for the course for Accenture. I joined Accenture to work on a very interesting development project for a fortune 10 a few years ago. A project that could have been done in 6-8 months by a competent team in a reasonable budget. But being Accenture, it turned into a mess of epic proportions with the client threatening to sue.
In the end we ended up delivering this piece of software that I wouldn't touch again with a 10-foot pole, which didn't even satisfy most of the original business requirements. The exec from the client that hired us changed the narrative to his stakeholders to make this appear as a big success, and the project even got a lot of coverage on the internal newsletter when in reality it was just a smash and grab of a dozen or so million dollars from a client that got swindled so bad that they wouldn't even admit it.
I ended up being mostly on the bench for the rest of my stay at Accenture while watching every single one of the individuals that worked on that project leave for better pastures. A year in after the project started no one that worked on it was in Accenture anymore, except me. I was conflicted if I wanted to leave because I would hit the gym for two hours every day at around 2-3pm, then go home. My mornings were full of reading blogs, working on personal projects and just gossiping by the water cooler. In the end I decided to leave since I missed doing real work and working with a competent team. That year was one hell of a ride for me.
One of the reasons why CBP loves the current administration, their new policies effectively lifted any limits on overtime. For a person with ten years seniority, if they're bored and want some OT, border patrol guys can sit around in a pickup truck listening to the radio clocking those 150% wage hours.
It is not uncommon for a CBP or ICE officer, with OT, to be in the $130k+ salary range now.
And these are in places with relatively low cost of living, compared to a big city, like Ferry County, WA.
I don't think it's fair to judge the "average" cost of living of a CBP officer, all ports of entry are staffed by CBP and the US has ports of entry all over the county. In fact, some of the busiest ports of entry are at airports located in major metropolitan areas with high costs of living.
I'd say this summarizes post-recession America pretty well. A demand for jobs that no one seems qualified and willing to do, and a bloated paycheck to the keepers of some "analysts" who scramble to keep doing what doesn't work.
The initial payment of ~$2000/recruit sounded reasonable, and then you realize that the total expenditure was for $40,000/recruit. Even if Accenture Federal Services delivered, is that price tag an accurate reflection of the true value of recruiting agents? What part of the recruitment process could warrant such a high price?
>Border Patrol jobs with the CBP have been notoriously difficult to fill, in large part because of the polygraph exam applicants are required to undergo. The AP reported that 2 out of 3 applicants fail the exam
Does that mean that the polygraph is extremely restrictive or that 66% of applicants are liars?
I mean, even if it is not applicable/valid in court, I believe most federal and government agencies use them internally, there was something on HN some time ago:
So, set aside how accurate it is, a number of people can pass it to get (or keep) a federal job, so it might be that the "quality" of people attemptng to enroll to CBP is "lower"?
> Does that mean that the polygraph is extremely restrictive or that 66% of applicants are liars?
Polygraphs are about as good for what they pretend to do as phrenology is.
> I believe most federal and government agencies use them internally
They are used for positions with certain security clearance levels, despite having been repeatedly shown to be junk science, because they national security establishment is attached to security theater and/or full of people in decision-making positions that disrespect science when it disagrees with what they want to believe.
Or maybe because they are really good at detecting the degree to which people are susceptible to cracking under theatrical pressure, which isn't what they are advertised as being used for but is something that rationally matters to the national security establishment, and which they might actually be good at.
> So, set aside how accurate it is, a number of people can pass it to get (or keep) a federal job, so it might be that the "quality" of people attemptng to enroll to CBP is "lower
You can't set that aside: how accurate it is at assessing “quality”, however you define that, is the key thing you need to establish to justify that conclusion.
>Does that mean that the polygraph is extremely restrictive or that 66% of applicants are liars?
Polygraphs aren't remotely scientific or even accurate. False positives are EXTREMELY common, simply being nervous that you're hooked up to a strange contraption can cause false positives.
Police departments often use them for hiring too, the Indiana State Police does for example.
I read in another article couple years ago thag a lot of people taking the CBP polygraph actually admit to very serious illegal/disqualifying behaviours during the polygraph.
>Polygraph results are of questionable scientific value, but the interviews have an unexpected benefit apart from their dubious powers of detection: under pressure from interviewers, applicants frequently admit to wrongdoing. The Verge obtained a document under the Freedom of Information Act that lists cases where CBP polygraph interviews were “referred” for further investigation. When a polygraph interviewer determines an applicant has done something potentially disqualifying, the information is referred to an “adjudicator.” The adjudicator is vested with the power to stop the applicant from being offered a job. The list of referrals for further investigation, produced by CBP’s Credibility Assessment Division, includes 205 cases over the course of last year, and highlight stunning admissions of crimes flagged by the division.
According to this article, the contract amount to be paid to Accenture is USD $297,000,000 to help the Government hire 7,500 employees. Nearly USD $40,000 USD per hire. Definitely makes me think about going all in on turning pure Libertarian.
I'm interested to know what part of this story sparked your comment about Libertarianism?
Was it the use of taxpayer dollars to expand a border force that didn't seem understaffed to anyone but the Pres?
I ask because the other part, namely government contracting work to the "more efficient" private sector sounds perfectly in keeping with Libertarian principles.
“There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost. Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch! Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government.”
This is very elegant, and encapsulates the problem with America. Well, many other countries as well, but certainly us, America. Not government -- but our conception of "ourselves".
HN occasionally has articles about education and the comparison of, say, Finnish education and American education comes up. I am firmly of the opinions that Finnish education works, when it works, because it is a service that the population is providing for themselves via government. It is seen as spending their own money on themselves. These other social services are seen similarly: people are getting what they paid for. And they (Finns, in this example) are conscious of it: in large part, I lay this lingering national consciousness of the value of government at the Karelian refugee resettlement of the 1940s. My inner armchair historian/anthropologist sees this massive national effort from family level through the top of government as providing a bit of national glue that also led to feelings of agency and efficacy among the population.
The sense that government takes our money and gives it to someone else, or steals it, pervades the US discourse. Our efforts are focused on avoiding taxes, lessening taxes, eliminating services for those undeserving others. We don't want to pay for other peoples' kids; they shouldn't have had them and haven't they heard of birth control, which they should also be able to obtain on their own. Personal responsibility is king. It subtly pervades even how we teach reading -- if you read [1], you see that teachers were taught that kids learn from their parents reading to them, and it's also just a matter of parenting choices and personal responsibility. From the family to top levels of government in the US, there's now an anti-glue, the story that government is an adversary, that it's a wasteful theft of honest peoples' money.
They are both just stories that make themselves true through our behavior, the behavior of government officials, citizens, and contractors.
I'm not sure what it says about me or Friedman, but if I'm choosing to buy someone a gift I don't care about the cost but I will attempt to make it something they like, and refrain from gift-giving if I don't think I can do that. (Or give money, I suppose.)
On the other hand, when spending other people's money on myself, for example lunches for business travel, I am incredibly cost conscious. I've skipped dinner a couple times because I felt the airport meals were too expensive. (The same was true when I was a child and spending my parents' money.)
Clearly they should put me in charge of governement budgets.
This is a good quote and I like it, but it's funny- I feel like what this quote best demonstrates is a basic difference in conscientiousness between the Chicago school folks and the Keynes folks.
If I buy a birthday present for someone, I care very much about the content of the present.
Friedman had a talent for conveying these ideas simply.
The problem with these economicist "stories," as they call them, is that people (including economists themselves) believe them too much.
Once stories like this are embedded in the way we think, we constantly see ways of interpreting the world in a reinforcing way. Every case of inefficiency is found to be an example of principal-agent problems.
Not specifically a Friedman problem or a laissez-faire problem.
Friedman's quote is particularly ironic considering his Chicago Boys were particularly notorious for "spending somebody else’s money on themselves" by shifting public money to their own pockets, often by awarding ridiculous contracts.
I don't know how much Milton Friedman applies here. It's not like the government is being wantonly careless. They are investigating, after all. This is partly a consequence of the bidding process and the push to keep costs as low as possible-- there could also be a bit of crony-ism here.
These kinds of stories usually start out with some bidders putting together a killer power point deck and making a pitch, just like that LLC of TWO people that won that disastrous contract to rebuild Puerto Rico's power grid, or those guys that the movie "War Dogs" is about.
Sometimes they're upstanding folks who do a good job, sometimes they're fraudsters, sometimes they mean well but just can't deliver, sometimes they deliver but with comical cost overruns (name your favorite defense contractor).
Having worked as an actual Fed, I think there is a bit more complication to this.
I know that I and the people around me worked hard to do a good job on our project. I would hire any of those people. I also saw a great deal of the government is run by MVPs built by Feds on their own initiative.
On the other hand, the projects (including ours) I saw to replace those MVPs were largely staffed by incompetent or unfocused contractors, and I believe that is where a huge amount of waste comes in.
These contractors are once removed from even government and the waste results from this Milton Friedman push for privatization of government functions to organizations just trying to log billable hours.
Maybe I'm just too much of an idealist, but I don't understand a perception of the government that isn't in the first category. It's my money and I'm reaping the benefit, both through direct benefits and through the overall improvement of society.
And I realize that it's partly that not everyone in government shares that sentiment, which is probably where a big part of the problem comes in, but that's another thing I don't understand. How can people not care so much?
“Teldar Paper has 33 different vice presidents each earning over 200 thousand dollars a year. Now, I have spent the last two months analyzing what all these guys do, and I still can't figure it out. One thing I do know is that our paper company lost 110 million dollars last year, and I'll bet that half of that was spent in all the paperwork going back and forth between all these vice presidents. The new law of evolution in corporate America seems to be survival of the unfittest... The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms: greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much.”
I like this quote ... and agree with the spirit of it.
That said, some central governing body does need to make sure certain needs of the community are taken care of. That way, we ensure that the whole community is taken care of and we're not in an every man for himself scenario where the "strong" prevail and the "weak" die off. When the government provides military to protect it's citizens, it does so for all citizens, not just the rich, not just the city dwellers. I guess the question is -to what else does this apply and to what extent?
Someone wondered publicly how the economics of Starbuck's recently-announced coffee delivery service are going to work. They don't think it will.
But it's probably going to be very easy easy. Police or Fire or other public departments order the coffee every day which gets buried as an office expense and taxpayers foot the bill. The bureaucracies are happy. Starbucks is happy. No one else, uh, notices.
Eloquently put but I do not appreciate the conclusion the rhetoric is driving. It is not impossible to structure these efforts in way which maintains effeciency and performance:$. How? Accountability and a payout which rewards good performance and punishes bad performance.
It's not true because when you spend somebody else's money on a third party, that third party can pay you back with future favors so there is a huge long term career incentive for you to give out a lot.
And if the government were a business with actual competition, no one would do business with them. It's a great example of how monopolies reduce quality and increase waste.
It is a funny quote, but obviously not true. Anyone who has worked in, and for, government will tell you that:
"And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government."
Is 100% incorrect. In fact, much of the bureaucracy we have in government is used for ensuring these types of things don't happen. It's why there are committees, reviews, approval chains out the wazoo, etc.
Government is nearly always the least effective use of a citizen's money. Huge discussion on HN a few days ago about the IRS barely making $7 for every $1 spent. Before than we discussed the astronomically comical cost of healthcare.gov.
It's good that people are demanding social change and action; the answer should bbe private charity and community leadership, as the current system just funnels money into contractors pockets.
[+] [-] perfunctory|7 years ago|reply
[0] http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf
[+] [-] astura|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spectrum1234|7 years ago|reply
How can inefficiency help poor people in the long run? Your logic doesn't pass the common sense test.
[+] [-] oftenwrong|7 years ago|reply
>FEMA Contract Called for 30 Million Meals for Puerto Ricans. 50,000 Were Delivered.
>For this huge task, FEMA tapped Tiffany Brown, an Atlanta entrepreneur with no experience in large-scale disaster relief and at least five canceled government contracts in her past. FEMA awarded her $156 million for the job, and Ms. Brown, who is the sole owner and employee of her company, Tribute Contracting LLC, set out to find some help.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/06/us/fema-contract-puerto-r...
[+] [-] forgot-my-pw|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pjc50|7 years ago|reply
There are really three separate questions:
1) Whether the thing is worth doing at all
2) Having decided to do it, is there enough commitment and leadership to actually doing it properly?
3) Given the desire to do it properly, is that best served by doing it in-house through a line management system of control, or outsourcing it and running it through a contract management system of control?
[+] [-] sakarisson|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danny_taco|7 years ago|reply
In the end we ended up delivering this piece of software that I wouldn't touch again with a 10-foot pole, which didn't even satisfy most of the original business requirements. The exec from the client that hired us changed the narrative to his stakeholders to make this appear as a big success, and the project even got a lot of coverage on the internal newsletter when in reality it was just a smash and grab of a dozen or so million dollars from a client that got swindled so bad that they wouldn't even admit it.
I ended up being mostly on the bench for the rest of my stay at Accenture while watching every single one of the individuals that worked on that project leave for better pastures. A year in after the project started no one that worked on it was in Accenture anymore, except me. I was conflicted if I wanted to leave because I would hit the gym for two hours every day at around 2-3pm, then go home. My mornings were full of reading blogs, working on personal projects and just gossiping by the water cooler. In the end I decided to leave since I missed doing real work and working with a competent team. That year was one hell of a ride for me.
[+] [-] robertsd247|7 years ago|reply
If you want to spend millions and get no deliverables..Accenture is your answer.
If you want projects late and over budget...Accenture is your answer.
If you want to quickly build your resume with performing little work...Accenture is your answer.
[+] [-] walrus01|7 years ago|reply
It is not uncommon for a CBP or ICE officer, with OT, to be in the $130k+ salary range now.
And these are in places with relatively low cost of living, compared to a big city, like Ferry County, WA.
[+] [-] astura|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] schnevets|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pesmhey|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaclaz|7 years ago|reply
>Border Patrol jobs with the CBP have been notoriously difficult to fill, in large part because of the polygraph exam applicants are required to undergo. The AP reported that 2 out of 3 applicants fail the exam
Does that mean that the polygraph is extremely restrictive or that 66% of applicants are liars?
I mean, even if it is not applicable/valid in court, I believe most federal and government agencies use them internally, there was something on HN some time ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18431683
So, set aside how accurate it is, a number of people can pass it to get (or keep) a federal job, so it might be that the "quality" of people attemptng to enroll to CBP is "lower"?
[+] [-] dragonwriter|7 years ago|reply
Polygraphs are about as good for what they pretend to do as phrenology is.
> I believe most federal and government agencies use them internally
They are used for positions with certain security clearance levels, despite having been repeatedly shown to be junk science, because they national security establishment is attached to security theater and/or full of people in decision-making positions that disrespect science when it disagrees with what they want to believe.
Or maybe because they are really good at detecting the degree to which people are susceptible to cracking under theatrical pressure, which isn't what they are advertised as being used for but is something that rationally matters to the national security establishment, and which they might actually be good at.
> So, set aside how accurate it is, a number of people can pass it to get (or keep) a federal job, so it might be that the "quality" of people attemptng to enroll to CBP is "lower
You can't set that aside: how accurate it is at assessing “quality”, however you define that, is the key thing you need to establish to justify that conclusion.
[+] [-] ryanmercer|7 years ago|reply
Polygraphs aren't remotely scientific or even accurate. False positives are EXTREMELY common, simply being nervous that you're hooked up to a strange contraption can cause false positives.
Police departments often use them for hiring too, the Indiana State Police does for example.
[+] [-] astura|7 years ago|reply
Here's the article: https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/23/16511732/border-patrol-p...
>Polygraph results are of questionable scientific value, but the interviews have an unexpected benefit apart from their dubious powers of detection: under pressure from interviewers, applicants frequently admit to wrongdoing. The Verge obtained a document under the Freedom of Information Act that lists cases where CBP polygraph interviews were “referred” for further investigation. When a polygraph interviewer determines an applicant has done something potentially disqualifying, the information is referred to an “adjudicator.” The adjudicator is vested with the power to stop the applicant from being offered a job. The list of referrals for further investigation, produced by CBP’s Credibility Assessment Division, includes 205 cases over the course of last year, and highlight stunning admissions of crimes flagged by the division.
[+] [-] dalbasal|7 years ago|reply
- $40k per hire
[+] [-] consp|7 years ago|reply
Doing this under a fixed contract is however.
[+] [-] wallace_f|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bobjordan|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rchaud|7 years ago|reply
Was it the use of taxpayer dollars to expand a border force that didn't seem understaffed to anyone but the Pres?
I ask because the other part, namely government contracting work to the "more efficient" private sector sounds perfectly in keeping with Libertarian principles.
[+] [-] bhl|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] etxm|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] j_m_b|7 years ago|reply
-Milton Friedman
[+] [-] kaitai|7 years ago|reply
HN occasionally has articles about education and the comparison of, say, Finnish education and American education comes up. I am firmly of the opinions that Finnish education works, when it works, because it is a service that the population is providing for themselves via government. It is seen as spending their own money on themselves. These other social services are seen similarly: people are getting what they paid for. And they (Finns, in this example) are conscious of it: in large part, I lay this lingering national consciousness of the value of government at the Karelian refugee resettlement of the 1940s. My inner armchair historian/anthropologist sees this massive national effort from family level through the top of government as providing a bit of national glue that also led to feelings of agency and efficacy among the population.
The sense that government takes our money and gives it to someone else, or steals it, pervades the US discourse. Our efforts are focused on avoiding taxes, lessening taxes, eliminating services for those undeserving others. We don't want to pay for other peoples' kids; they shouldn't have had them and haven't they heard of birth control, which they should also be able to obtain on their own. Personal responsibility is king. It subtly pervades even how we teach reading -- if you read [1], you see that teachers were taught that kids learn from their parents reading to them, and it's also just a matter of parenting choices and personal responsibility. From the family to top levels of government in the US, there's now an anti-glue, the story that government is an adversary, that it's a wasteful theft of honest peoples' money.
They are both just stories that make themselves true through our behavior, the behavior of government officials, citizens, and contractors.
[1] https://www.apmreports.org/story/2018/09/10/hard-words-why-a...
[+] [-] arandr0x|7 years ago|reply
On the other hand, when spending other people's money on myself, for example lunches for business travel, I am incredibly cost conscious. I've skipped dinner a couple times because I felt the airport meals were too expensive. (The same was true when I was a child and spending my parents' money.)
Clearly they should put me in charge of governement budgets.
[+] [-] AbrahamParangi|7 years ago|reply
If I buy a birthday present for someone, I care very much about the content of the present.
[+] [-] dalbasal|7 years ago|reply
The problem with these economicist "stories," as they call them, is that people (including economists themselves) believe them too much.
Once stories like this are embedded in the way we think, we constantly see ways of interpreting the world in a reinforcing way. Every case of inefficiency is found to be an example of principal-agent problems.
Not specifically a Friedman problem or a laissez-faire problem.
[+] [-] AsyncAwait|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adwhit|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crispyambulance|7 years ago|reply
These kinds of stories usually start out with some bidders putting together a killer power point deck and making a pitch, just like that LLC of TWO people that won that disastrous contract to rebuild Puerto Rico's power grid, or those guys that the movie "War Dogs" is about.
Sometimes they're upstanding folks who do a good job, sometimes they're fraudsters, sometimes they mean well but just can't deliver, sometimes they deliver but with comical cost overruns (name your favorite defense contractor).
[+] [-] 0xcde4c3db|7 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Accountability_Offi...
[+] [-] danzig13|7 years ago|reply
I know that I and the people around me worked hard to do a good job on our project. I would hire any of those people. I also saw a great deal of the government is run by MVPs built by Feds on their own initiative.
On the other hand, the projects (including ours) I saw to replace those MVPs were largely staffed by incompetent or unfocused contractors, and I believe that is where a huge amount of waste comes in.
These contractors are once removed from even government and the waste results from this Milton Friedman push for privatization of government functions to organizations just trying to log billable hours.
[+] [-] delecti|7 years ago|reply
And I realize that it's partly that not everyone in government shares that sentiment, which is probably where a big part of the problem comes in, but that's another thing I don't understand. How can people not care so much?
[+] [-] OzzyB|7 years ago|reply
-Gordon Gekko
[+] [-] texmex20|7 years ago|reply
That said, some central governing body does need to make sure certain needs of the community are taken care of. That way, we ensure that the whole community is taken care of and we're not in an every man for himself scenario where the "strong" prevail and the "weak" die off. When the government provides military to protect it's citizens, it does so for all citizens, not just the rich, not just the city dwellers. I guess the question is -to what else does this apply and to what extent?
[+] [-] simonsarris|7 years ago|reply
But it's probably going to be very easy easy. Police or Fire or other public departments order the coffee every day which gets buried as an office expense and taxpayers foot the bill. The bureaucracies are happy. Starbucks is happy. No one else, uh, notices.
[+] [-] DSingularity|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leejoramo|7 years ago|reply
I wonder whose money Verizon spent to purchase Yahoo.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18662822
[+] [-] porpoisely|7 years ago|reply
"You can sell anything to the government at almost any price you've got the guts to ask".
[+] [-] jondubois|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HillaryBriss|7 years ago|reply
what about when you're spending your parents' money on a cell phone for them?
[+] [-] everdev|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enraged_camel|7 years ago|reply
"And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government."
Is 100% incorrect. In fact, much of the bureaucracy we have in government is used for ensuring these types of things don't happen. It's why there are committees, reviews, approval chains out the wazoo, etc.
[+] [-] mkirklions|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] robertsd247|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sizzzzlerz|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moviuro|7 years ago|reply
However, those still doubting should probably use: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=675923576
[+] [-] exabrial|7 years ago|reply
It's good that people are demanding social change and action; the answer should bbe private charity and community leadership, as the current system just funnels money into contractors pockets.