The United States government paid tens of thousands of dollars to IBM to create software so simple, it could have been created by nearly any beginning-level app developer.

Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by developer Kevin Burke show the Transportation Security Administration paid IBM $336,413.59 for "mobile application development," of which $47,400 was used to develop randomization software for the TSA.

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The app, which you can see in action the video below, is essentially a random number generator — assigning passengers to right or left lanes at airport security.

If the app looks simple, that's because it is.

As others have pointed out, such an app could easily be created by any beginning-level coder. (In fact, creating a random number generator is a commonly used beginning programming lesson.)

Yet this app was apparently worth tens of thousands of dollars to the TSA.

While the documents don't mention the randomizer app by name, documents detailing the $336,413.59 contract were provided to Burke in response to a FOIA request for documents relating to the randomizer software. Other publicly available records show the app was part of a larger contract with IBM worth more than $1.4 million.

The total development cost for the randomizer app was $47,400, a TSA spokesperson told Mashable, which was part of the $336,413.59 contract. The spokesperson declined to elaborate on what else the contract entailed.

It's possible it also included the tablets themselves, which could account for some of the additional cost.

The app was used by TSA agents to randomly assign passengers to different pre-check lines as part of a now-discontinued program called "managed inclusion." The goal of the program was to make it more difficult for terrorists to predict patterns in security lines and to reduce potential of racial profiling, according to a report in Bloomberg that said the app was used in more than 100 U.S. airports.

The TSA is no longer using the randomizer app. The agency ended managed inclusion in 2015, after coming under fire for putting a convicted felon in a PreCheck line. TSA is also scaling back its practice of randomly assigning passengers to PreCheck lanes over security concerns.

UPDATE: April 4, 2016, 3 p.m. PDT Updated to include clarification from the TSA on the portion of mobile app development costs that was earmarked for the randomizer software.

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