Slashdot Mirror
Recovery.gov To Get $18 Million Redesign
barbarai notes a report by ABC News's Rick Klein: "For those concerned about stimulus spending, the General Services Administration sends word tonight that $18 million in additional funds are being spent to redesign the Recovery.gov Web site. "Recovery.gov 2.0 will use innovative and interactive technologies to help taxpayers see where their dollars are being spent," James A. Williams, commissioner of GSA's Federal Acquisition Service, says in a press release announcing the contract awarded to Maryland-based Smartronix Inc. according to the ABC news blog."
And the same company gave tens of thousands of dollars to the House majority leader when the House was controlled by Republicans.
This is not a partisan issue, I hope you weren't trying to make it into one. Because that would dodge the core issue.
This is just another example of a fundamental flaw in how campaign finance works in the US, and the current party in power shares the culpability with the prior party in power.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
If you think you have to hire web developers in the city where you live, you don't understand the web.
https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=9745fb34e48a36a32b4fc589c3e371cb&tab=core&_cview=1&cck=1&au=&ck=
The Federal Business Opportunities website listed this opportunity a few weeks ago (could've been up longer than that, who knows).
It's not "just a website". It's a bit of a cluster**** in terms of number of data sources, what they expect to do with the data, etc.
I've done my time (never again!) with sorting through data from various data sources and while the actual programming part is *usually* not that difficult (assuming the data is not too badly malformed), but there are so many problems with processes, dealing with crap data, exceptions, etc. that if I were bidding for this work, I'd inflate my estimates quite a bit, too.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
> This is not a partisan issue, I hope you weren't trying to make it into one.
Agreed. It is a general problem.
> This is just another example of a fundamental flaw in how campaign finance works in the US,
Here is where we part company. It has exactly zero with campaign finance. You are upset about a symptom of the problem. The problem is the size and scope of government. A Congresscritter makes a lot more than an average slob but compare the 535 members of the legislative branch with the 500 leaders of the 'corporate branch' (CEOs of the Fortune 500) of our society and ponder. But at those levels it is about POWER as much as MONEY. Which group has more power? Now you begin to understand why a seat that pays so little is worth spending several million every two years to keep. And why the corporations will invest so much into politicians.
When the corporations very survival depends on the whims of political class it would be stupid not to invest as much time and energy into controlling that factor as they spend on any other aspect of success with so much potential to affect the bottom line. Take the example everyone here loves to hate, MSFT. Until the government took such an intense interest in their operations their Washington DC office was vestigial, now it is a major presence. Just like every other major corporation, they either want to deflect the government's gaze or get their snout into the public treasury.
And it will be ever thus until we put the government back into it's proper place. Make the government small enough that a House seat isn't worth millions and the money will go away. Nothing else will work, no law will stop clever people who have so much at stake. At least no law that leaves the 1st Amendment intact and do we really want to go there?
Democrat delenda est
So the headline, and summary are misleading? It's not "18 Million for Website", but "18 Million for Design, Build, and Maintain a Publicly Accessible National Repository of All Gov't Spending for the next 5 Years"? Man, that's just not catchy enough to make a good headline.
Headline's good for a laugh, but it's a bit of a troll.
You don't buy politicians, you subscribe to them.