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."

Comments

cash4cronies

[Anonymous Coward]

$18 mil for a website and in a total coincidence the contract goes to a company run by people who have given tens of thousands of dollars to house majority leader Steny Hoyer (D)

Re:cash4cronies

[MindStalker]

Your shocked they are giving the contract an existing large military tech contractor? Or are you shocked that an existing large military contractor is giving campaign contributions to the house majority leader?

Personally I'm with the latter, why should they need to continually bribe if their foot is already in the door.

Re:cash4cronies

[Red Flayer]

$18 mil for a website and in a total coincidence the contract goes to a company run by people who have given tens of thousands of dollars to house majority leader Steny Hoyer (D)

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.

Re:cash4cronies

[ShakaUVM]

>>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.

Out of curiosity, since corporations can't vote, why should they be allowed to donate money to campaigns at all?

Re:cash4cronies

[cml4524]

Two things:

1) Corporate personhood: the notion that a corporation is a person entitled to the same rights as a natural person, or some subset of those rights (e.g. due process, free speech, etc.)

2) Money as free speech: the notion that campaign donations are a form of constitutionally protected speech

Therefore, a person - or company legally recognized as a person - cannot be restricted from donating money to a campaign because that would be an infringement on their constitutionally-recognized right to free political speech.

The legitimacy of this position, and either of its two components individually, has been and continues to be a matter of substantial debate.

Re:cash4cronies

[BCW2]

Proves what I have said for years: Party doesn't matter, they are all crooks and only worthy of our contempt!

You can not come up with a website complicated enough to justify an $18 million price tag!

Every member of Congress who voted for Spendulous without reading it should be recalled or impeached!

Re:cash4cronies

[MozeeToby]

Most large corporations rely on Political Action Committees to raise money which is then donated to one of two groups.

1) Politicians who support that business sector, geographical area, or tax breaks. I really don't have a huge problem with that, essentially this is individuals donating money to people who will work to improve conditions for the business they work for. Though I would prefer to see a system where you can only donate if you can vote in the election, with the current situation of national and multinational interests that may not be possible. For example, the company I work for has offices all over the US but the main office is in Iowa, if taxes go up in Iowa that would effect all the employees no matter where they work.

2) Politicians who are willing to grant 'favors' in exchange for contributions. This is where the real problems begin. Pork barrel spending, pet projects, and downright bribes. The only way I can foresee this going away is to make all campaign contributions anonymous which at best would be an accounting nightmare. Either that or outlaw PACs and other groups that pool contributions into a single fund, but there would be nothing to prevent an unofficial system from springing up to replace them.

Re:cash4cronies

[Hijacked Public]

Because the sort of person who requires a bribe in exchange for awarding a contract probably doesn't care who has a foot in the door, they care only about the bribe.

Duke Cunningham made lists and, although there were some advantages of scale in his bribe menu, there were no 'foot in the door' clauses.

Re:cash4cronies

[jmorris42]

> 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?

Re:cash4cronies

[DarKnyht]

If you look up the history of that, it became that way because of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. To quote wikipedia (I know, but you can find better sources):

The Supreme Court never reached the equal protection claims. Nonetheless, this case is sometimes incorrectly cited as holding that corporations, as juristic persons, are protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.[2] Although the question of whether corporations were persons within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment had been argued in the lower courts and briefed for the Supreme Court, the Court did not base its decision on this issue. However, before oral argument took place, Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite announced: "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does."[3] This quotation was printed by the court reporter in the syllabus and case history above the opinion, but was not in the opinion itself. As such, it did not have any legal precedential value.[4]

Nonetheless, the persuasive value of Waite's essentially ultra vires statement did influence later courts, becoming part of American corporate law without ever actually being enacted by statute or formal judicial decision.[5][clarification needed] For these reasons, it is literally an unprecedented extension of constitutional rights to US corporations.[2]

Re:cash4cronies

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah totally. Last time I did a site redesign it was for a friend and I made only about $5000 for 3 weeks of work. It was an online sales system I slapped together with some JSP and a couple of Servlets, so it wasn't just basic HTML. If I had realized I could charge her $18,000,000 for it, I would have cut her a friendly break and only charger $10,000,000 for it. Man was I cheated.

Re:cash4cronies

[rho]

When somebody tells you that a corporation is considered a person, that person is talking out of their ass.

A corporation is a legal entity. It is not a person. It shares some privileges with people, but that's a different thing altogether. Somebody, once, used the analogy of "a corporation as a person" and now we've got a lot of half-witted nonsense floating around because of it.

Next person that tells you "a corporation is like a person", ask them how many businesses they've incorporated. If it's zero, you're perfectly within your rights to kick them in the knee.

Re:cash4cronies

[rho]

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.

I've a question: how come it's always obviously graft when Republicans do it, but it's a sign that the system is flawed when Democrats do it?

Why can't it be simple vote-buying no matter who does it? And why hasn't tar-and-feathering made a comeback yet?

Re:cash4cronies

[sumdumass]

Actually, he probably with me and is shocked because no one is bitching about the administration, no bid contracts, millions of dollars being spent and payoffs to those responsible for the contract.

I guess maybe if haliburton or cheney was a name in the story, everyone would be pissed.

Re:cash4cronies

[Deosyne]

You don't buy politicians, you subscribe to them.

Re:cash4cronies

[jmorris42]

So which is it?

> Party doesn't matter,

and

> Every member of Congress who voted for Spendulous without reading it should be recalled or impeached!

You do know how the votes went on Porkulus, right? Or could you be bothered to actually, ya know, know what the hell you are talking about?

Porkulus got zero Republican votes in the House and three RINOs in the Senate. Senator Arlen Specter received so much heat from his vote he finally came out of the closet and became the moderate Democrat he has always voted as. Senators Collins and Snowe are both from Maine, and aren't really Republicans in any modern meaning of the word. So yes, Party did matter.

I'm with ya as far as wishing a pox on both their houses, but it is for very different reasons. Democrats are essentially an enemy of liberty these days, period. Republicans are wishy washy, unprincipled and frightened of their shadows. However, except for the old country club Republicans and east coast RINOs, most Republicans would like to do the right thing, at least when first elected.... but they need some balls... and to avoid the temptations of Washington. That is an easier problem to fix than making Democrats not be evil.

Re:cash4cronies

[Jawn98685]

When somebody tells you that a corporation is considered a person, that person is talking out of their ass.

Actually, no. They might well be citing established case law, including SCOTUS decisions, that very clearly bestow personhood on corporations.

Here is your reading assignment... http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/personhood/

Re:cash4cronies

[Golias]

Actually, he probably with me and is shocked because no one is bitching about the administration, no bid contracts, millions of dollars being spent and payoffs to those responsible for the contract.

I guess maybe if haliburton or cheney was a name in the story, everyone would be pissed.

Yep. I maintain that it is THE LEFT, after working so hard to elect Obama, who should be most pissed off at him right now. On economics, foreign policy, and even civil liberties, he's doing nearly everything which we were all supposed to be so enraged at Bush over, and in many cases, taking things farther.

As a libertarian, I kind of expected him to keep ballooning the federal spending and ruin what's left of the tattered economy which Bush left him. Right on schedule there, and I don't feel let down about it because I never had my hopes up.

What I find disappointing is that the unlawful detentions without trial, the wire-taps, the cronyism, the pointless foreign warmongering & gunboat diplomacy, the war on drugs, the denial of gay rights, the staged Q&A sessions, etc. etc. etc. ... all chug along with as much momentum as ever.

But hey, we (the taxpayers) now own a shitty car company, so I guess there's that.

Re:cash4cronies

[sydbarrett74]

You don't buy politicians, you subscribe to them.

PaaS = Politicians as a Service.

Re:cash4cronies

[Sean0michael]

Only persons who can vote should be allowed to donate to campaigns. Can corporations vote? Nope - so no donations from them.

Then we ought not to tax corporations either. No taxation without representation!

Where's the Money Going?

[virtigex]

Will we be able to see where the money is going to redesign this web site? Will this amount of money be sufficient to ensure that it doesn't get hacked for, say, 24 hours, or do we have to pay extra for that?

First Item on list...

[Anonymous Coward]

$500 million: compiling a report on how much we are spending to report on what we spend...

WTF?

[Guspaz]

$18 million to redesign a website? WTF are they doing with it?

From TFA, they're going to spend $9.5 million over the next 6 months or so. Assuming $75k salaries for the web developers/DBAs/etc (generous), they'd be hiring 250 people to design a website.

And Americans wonder why they have such a big deficit.

Re:WTF?

[Nerdposeur]

If you think you have to hire web developers in the city where you live, you don't understand the web.

Re:WTF?

[aengblom]

$18 million to redesign a website? WTF are they doing with it?

From TFA, they're going to spend $9.5 million over the next 6 months or so. Assuming $75k salaries for the web developers/DBAs/etc (generous), they'd be hiring 250 people to design a website.

And Americans wonder why they have such a big deficit.

I'm guessing this isn't just build the web site, it's to build and run it through January 2014 (See the GSA press release). Remember, they have to buy equipment and bandwidth too, although I'm betting the biggest issue is collecting, entering and sorting the massive amounts of data related to all the projects. Still sounds like a lot of money.

Re:WTF?

[t0rkm3]

Sure you could... to a company in Oklahoma... Like another gov't agency does... FAA/DOT anyone?

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cut your number of people in 1/2. The total cost of employing someone (benefits, facilities, management, HR, ...) is about 2X his or her salary.

OTH mabey we should look at this as stimulus spending for programmers.

Re:WTF?

[locallyunscene]

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.

Re:WTF?

[TooMuchToDo]

A $75K/yr employee takes home $6250 monthly (pre-tax). Putting that in my surepayroll account nets me this:

Monthly Gross pay: $6,250.00
Direct Deposit Total $4,971.24
Employee Taxes $1,278.76
Employer Taxes $721.88
Processing Fees $46.80
Amount Electronically Transmitted $7,018.68

This doesn't include the $1200/month in health insurance costs I pay on single workers, or up to $2500-$3000/month I pay for married workers with a family. Throw in our 401k fees (all that the business shoulders) as well as the 401k match, and it gets pretty close to the number I specd pretty fast. Try to not come off as such a tool next time.

WTF? We're doomed

[mcgrew]

And I was so hopeful this administration wasn't going to be full of idiots like the last one was. Jesus, I could probably code their whole damned site in a day, I'm sure I could do it in a week (and it would be standards-compliant and work on your phone, too). Can I get millions?

I'm starting to understand the teabaggers.

Re:WTF? We're doomed

[east coast]

What? Were you really fooled into thinking that one administration was going to be heads and tails above another? If you were let me be the first to say I'm sorry.

Why is it that in a nation where we swing between two parties in power every decade or so that people really think that one has that much on the ball and the other is full of gimps and morons? The fact is that they're roughly the same entity and every couple voting cycles people get sick of hearing what one has to say and goes to the other to hear the same thing they were hearing from them the last time they got voted out of office. The difference is that most voters have an easier time remembering Terry Bradshaw's pass completion percentage from the 1975 season than the hollow promises made to them by politicians in the same time frame.

We will not see a truely progressive politician make it to the presidency until we get a viable third party. And even then it's a long shot.

Re:WTF? We're doomed

[MindlessAutomata]

Not all of us want a "progressive politician"--I don't want a politician making my own life decisions and choices for me, whether it's a corrupt one or one that honestly believes that nonsense.

$18 million for a website

[frovingslosh]

Well, they can certainly say "come and see where you tax money is being wasted", one needs look no farther than the website.

This is idiotic

[alexborges]

Whomever is purchasing this is a plain idiot: there is NO WAY a site costs that much.

I mean, guys, the horrid system for paying taxes in Mexico is only two million more expensive than what they are attempting here and hey, the mexican system sort-of works (it has to: gov only takes taxes through the site nowdays).

That one is also hugely overpriced, but also my country has very poor transparency in government spending: we expect this kind of things to happen here in thirdworldland: are you guys heading this way?

If so, as a fellow citizen of the world, I bid you: TURN AROUND NOW.

Demand, regardless of partisanship, to know exactly how and in what is all that and all other money being spent.

Demos did it very well with halliburton (and now THATS money: 20 mil is chump change for those guys), reps should drive this one to the last consequences accordingly: without a vigilant opposition, democratic governments cannot be called that anymore.

Already exists

[Anonymous Coward]

There's already a website that clearly illustrates where the tax dollars towards stimulus are going, in innovative and exciting ways!

I think it's called goatse.cx, or something like that.

Irony

[kevinNCSU]

You have to wonder if these people have either a wonderful sense of irony or no understanding of the word at all. To pay 18 million to create a website that will show where our money is going is so ludicrous I thought I had clicked the bookmark to go to The Onion instead.

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[ColdWetDog]

Just so I know how to direct my rage properly: am I supposed to be mad that the government is going to launch a site to add sunshine to the recovery bill grant process, or that they couldn't make it appear online for free?

I don't know about you, but I'm going to be a little pissed off at a web site that cost eighteen million dollars and doesn't have blackjack and hookers (which I'm presuming is the case).

If you're gonna spend money, fine. But spend it on useful things.

The Definition of "Design"

[waldoj]

Those of us who are website developers will recognize the misuse of "design" committed by ABC News here. To a layperson, "design" means "make" when it comes to websites. They're not spending $18M to redesign the website (presumably), but presumably on a total overhaul of the thing.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[sycodon]

At $100,000 per employee, you could hire 10 developers, buy all the best equipment and development tools and spend 10 years on the project and still have money left over.

Remember, this is the kind of process they would bring to health care.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[mcgrew]

Remember, this is the kind of process they would bring to health care.

Ok, this is oftopic but I'll respond anyway, just because I've lost friends because they had no health care. You may be right and they may fuck it up royally, but just because government does something doesn't always mean they do it badly. They only do it badly if the people they hire to do it are incompetent.

My city's government (Springfield) owns our power company, CWLP (whose manager, Todd Renfrow, is a dead ringer for Mr. Burns; do a google image search). We have the cheapest and most reliable electricity in the state. The problem isn't bad government, the prpoblem is bad PEOPLE in government. It took five days to get water to the Superdome because Bush hired an incompetent crony to run FEMA. Had we a competent President who appointed people for skillsets rather than good old buddies, Katrina wouldn't have been the clusterfuck it was.

But when you elect people to government who think that government is always the problem and never the solution, you're not going to have very good government.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[sycodon]

Ahem,
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/05/katrina_what_the_media_missed.html

Summary:
No water Shortage.
No food Shortage.
No murders, rapes, etc.

It was all media bullshit that made for dramatic stories.

It may make you feel better to blame Bush for imaginary problems, but to the extend there were problems, Nagel and Blanco were the primary fuck ups. The most you can blame FEMA and Bush for is not telling the dipsticks in LA government to get the hell out of the way and then do what needed to be done.

Nagel should have evacuated the fucking city like he was asked to do.

Death and Taxes Poster

[WillAdams]

For that kind of money they could put a copy of the ``Death and Taxes'' poster:

http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/

in almost every schoolroom and courtroom and courthouse in the country.

William

Counterexample

[oldhack]

They've better not "improve" it like they are doing it to slashdot.

well...

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is that its not 18 million on just developing the site. To get that high of a numer they are probably redoing their entire infrastructure. You're talking licensing which in a corporate envioronment can hit 10 million easy.

Then you're also talking paying developers to create custom applications, build databases, etc..

If you've ever worked in a corporate environment dropping 10 million on an infrastructure is nothing. Not saying its right or ok, just saying most people probably have no idea the cost of things.

First pass

[evil_aar0n]

Don't forget: this is only the first pass. I'm sure there will be overruns, missed deadlines, re-designs, etc. This $18 mil is just the start.

Read the RFP

[gorbachev]

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.

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[digitalgiblet]

Started to make a joke and decided not to. This isn't funny.

My guess is that on slashdot a really large percentage of the readers are capable of producing a website. A smaller percentage could make a good website and a really small percentage could make a website that will be every bit as good as the upcoming $18 million website from the govt 2.0.

Being good slashdotters, many of them would know of the concept of FOSS.

So the existence of FOSS means that it is possible to achieve this website for the cost of 1) servers, 2) bandwidth, 3) electricity, 4) infrastructure (building, etc), and 5) people to make/run/maintain the site.

Let's say we just take about $1 million and buy a really nice building somewhere. That may not get you much in DC, but all we need is a connection to the internet, right? I seem to heard something in the news recently about real estate and how some people are having trouble selling theirs. Maybe for $1 million dollars we could pick up a really nice building in the mid-west somewhere?

That leaves us $17 million to work with.

If we take the Google approach of buying cheap PC grade hardware and making a big distributed system, we could build a pretty nice farm for another $1 million. Right? Now we are down to $16 million.

If we run more than $100,000 a year for combined bandwidth and electricity, I'd be kind of surprised, so we're good for ten years on $1 million. That leaves $15 million.

That leaves people. So we have $15 million dollars to hire people to make and run a website. Let's spread that over ten years as well. That gives us $1.5 million per year. We'll pay every single one of them $100,000 a year. That means we can have 15 people. Realistically we only need the bulk of those people during the initial redesign, but why quibble? It's only money, right?

So laying it out that way, wouldn't you agree that we should be seeing one heck of a great website? Innovative and interactive indeed!

OMG! Just RTFA! The $18 million tag is not for 10 years, but only 5 years. Wow.

As for your sense of rage, that's up to you. You could feel rage that the government is spending more money for this than is necessary. You could equally feel a sense of irony that they are spending a large sum of money on a site meant to show you how well they are managing your money and not spending it frivolously.

How you react to the story is really up to you.

Put it in perspective.

[copponex]

I get tired of these stories. You could claim it's a waste of money to spend 18 million for setting up a transparency website and then running it for a few years. But put these stories into perspective by visiting DefenseLink every day to view how much of your tax dollars are being "invested."

http://www.defenselink.mil/contracts/contract.aspx?contractid=4067

Yesterday alone we awarded over 120 million dollars. The day before that we awarded over 500 million dollars in contracts - I got too disgusted to continue adding the numbers.

So, would I rather not waste 18 million dollars? Sure. But I'd rather spend it on something constructive than destructive. A website about government spending is way more valuable to me than another novel way to hunt and kill humans.

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[Rei]

Did it not occur to you that the lion's share of the budget is most likely for *collecting and assembling the information*? There are a huge number of entities involved here, including all 50 states and thousands of individual counties, each with their own data handing mechanisms.

.. and they want a 2nd stimulus?

[Billly Gates]

They can't even run a simple website without spending tens of millions of dollars and this is the same government that bankrupted social security. How many people would someone need to hire for $18,000,000 to run a simple website?

Now they want to put our great grandchildren further in debt by a second stimulus?

I admitted I voted for Obama because I assumed he would balance the budget like Clinton. In addition, I figured anyone could be more fiscally responsible than Bush and Hannity and Rush's fanatic complaints about him being a big spending liberal would be way off. I was proven wrong. Instead I have another idea if you want to help the economy. Cut government spending. After we have lower interest rates from less panicy government bond holders we will have a revenue increase and once books are balanced the need to hire again will return. If no one wants something a big check wont help the economy. The market needs to fix it and the government needs to help the market rather than prohibit it by making them pay for socialistic recovery schemes.