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$18M Contract For Transparency Website Released — But Blacked Out
zokuga writes "The US government recently approved an $18 million contract for Smartronix to build a website where taxpayers could easily track billions in federal stimulus money, as part of President Obama's promise to make government more transparent through the Internet. However, the contract, which was released only through repeated Freedom of Information Act requests, is itself heavily blacked out. ProPublica reports: 'After weeks of prodding by ProPublica and other organizations, the Government Services Agency released copies of the contract and related documents that are so heavily blacked out they are virtually worthless. In all, 25 pages of a 59-page technical proposal — the main document in the package — were redacted completely. Of the remaining pages, 14 had half or more of their content blacked out.' Sections that were heavily or entirely redacted dealt with subjects such as site navigation, user experience, and everything in the pricing table. The entire contract, in all its blacked-out glory, is here."
Change we can believe in ! Belief being necessary because, you know, you don't get to check.
Say what were those economic numbers again ?
$18 million dollars is change...
It's pocket change in the face of billion dollar bailouts.
I would hate to see a secretive US Government then...
Ramming bills through Congress, no five day period, hell five days seems to apply how long a before a thousand page bill is dropped on us before its rammed through.
One party rule never works and just as before when they were in power they do all the same rotten things they claim the other side did when they had power.
Apparently they are so wrapped up in knowing whats best for us, because they are so obviously smarter and well... transparency is where they deem we need to have it.
Now we have a nearly sinister cooperation of the press and government all walking the same line. Calling them out on it is now unAmerican. We get town halls that first tell us everyone is entitled to their opinion followed by statements that those who dare have a differing one need to get out of the way.
Website, schebsite, its all just more bs for the point column where the score never matters as long as they win.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
If this is the way that things work in the Government, maybe we should all try it on our 1040's next April.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
However, the redactions in the contract are to protect trade secrets, national security concerns...etc
So what part does cost of the contract fall under for you.
If they are hiding costs here, how can you assume the website is really revealing all money being spent, when the foundation itself remains obscured.
Not one cent of government expenditure should be obscured. I can understand something like military spending sometimes being put in a black box (and that only in truly exceptional cases), but you should at least be able to see the cost of the box...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
>>We get town halls that first tell us everyone is entitled to their opinion followed
>>by statements that those who dare have a differing one need to get out of the way.
It's not so much that shouting the pledge of allegiance in an overly jingoistic way in a juvenile attempt to disrupt things is unAmerican; it's more a matter of being annoying and counter-productive. It wasn't entertaining when the Dems acted like babies for the last 8 years, and it isn't entertaining now to see Conservatives acting the exact same way. If you want to express a dissenting opinion, then do it in a civil manner, but please, take the dress off before you do.
I'm not sure how this is "insightful". Because we're spending a ridiculously huge amount of money, we can waste a ridiculously huge (but relatively small) amount of money?
Startup companies that develop web applications run for 4+ years on $18mil with 30+ developers and a sales and management team. And they turn out products orders of magnitude more complex than this tracking website. I wish I knew about the bid. I could have undercut these guys by about $14 mil, pulled a team together in about a week, gotten the job done quick and retired in style.
BS. There are no national security concerns around a publicly-facing website, particularly one dealing with dissemination of budget information. If there are, then they need to seriously rethink their strategies. I can envision certain sensitive information that may be blacked-out, but for a project like this, it would be a rarity. Furthermore, there is absolutely no reason to hide the remuneration details from the public.
It's not unreasonable to ask why this project costs $18 million to implement, when it is mostly a standard CMS with a few extras added on.
An online banking site. Possibly also betting sites. Mostly because they deal with money and any security breach is fatal. That's the only examples I can think of excluding megasites like google, facebook and amazon.
Those sites could be built for a few hundred thousand + server costs. $18M to make a site that lists sales receipts is a huge middle-finger to taxpayers.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
We're a Representative Democracy. That's a kind of Democracy. As opposed to a Direct Democracy, which is what a lot of people mean when they say "We aren't a Democracy". Well, we aren't that kind of democracy. But we are a kind of Democracy. So depending on what you mean, it is perfectly valid to say we're a democracy.
"Republic" fundamentally means "A nation whose leader is not a King or other hereditary ruler" -- the CIA's totally-not-Cold-War-politics-derived definitions notwithstanding. Iraq under Saddam was a Republic. China is a Republic. So are we. Just a different kind.
The enemies of Democracy are
You could call any country with a constitution, a federal government and indirect representation a "federal constitutional republic", and since just about every country has a constitution of some sort, I'm gonna go with "federal democratic republic" as the title of our type of government.
Yes, indeed. China is a Federal Constitutional Republic, among other things. The original error in this thread was when someone said "we're not a democracy, we're a republic", as though they are mutually exclusive, or as though either word on its own fully describes a government.
A Republic is a government which has a leader or chief executive who is not a hereditary monarch. A Democracy is a nation ruled either directly or indirectly by the people. They are not exclusive, and neither term necessarily implies the presence or absence of the other -- though nearly all Democracies are Republics, there is one obvious counter example.
We are a Republic. A Constitutional Republic. We're also a Democracy, specifically a Representative Democracy, which is to say indirect rule by the people via elections.
People are trying to be pedantic but are creating extra restrictions that don't exist for the words in question, which is the opposite of pedantry. It's basically arguing "This cat is orange!" and "No! This cat is fuzzy!"
The enemies of Democracy are
By some measures, the U.S. government is the most corrupt in the world. For example, this Rolling Stone article about the extreme financial corruption in the U.S.: The Great American Bubble Machine. (The full article is in the paper edition, available at any library.)
The U.S. government spends more money on surveillance and war than any country in the history of the world. That taxpayer money partly helps those who want corruption to profit, and hurts U.S. taxpayers, and the entire world. For just one example, see the book, House of Bush, House of Saud.
The U.S. government has invaded or bombed 25 countries since the 2nd world war. Most or all of the interference was for profit. Quote: '... although nearly all the post-World War II interventions were carried out in the name of "freedom" and "democracy," nearly all of them in fact defended dictatorships controlled by pro-U.S. elites'. The dictators pay the corrupters. In Iraq, those who control the U.S. government want control over the oil, and don't care how many people they kill. In Afghanistan, the corrupters want to build an oil pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to a port where the oil can be delivered.
The U.S. government has a higher percentage of its people in prison than any country ever in the history of the world, over 6 times higher than in Europe, for example. Wikipedia quote: Approximately one in every 18 men in the United States is behind bars or being monitored.
U.S. citizens don't want to believe that their government is as corrupt as it is, even though the recent financial corruption has made many of them poor.
Yes, I'm still waiting for somebody to explain which part was blacked out that should not have been? So far all I see is a bunch of people having a hissy fit for no apparent reason. As a private company, doing business with the govt. does not mean you have to open your accounting, pricing, and HR database for the world to see - only to a certain degree as proscribed by law. Where are the violations here?
Well, yeah, but you have to admit the irony of it; an $18m website to convince people a $1t expenditure was not wasted, and an apparent cover-up to see if the $18m was wasted. Rarely is cynicism and humor this conjoined, and yet so recursive.
I mean, seriously - rushing bills through faster than anyone can read them and check them for problems, and now this?
The new boss is the same as the old boss. This does make me sad, since I was hoping Obama would be better than Clinton (being better than Bush isn't hard, and he easily exceeds at this, as would my cat). But to paint this as a Democrat or Republican issue is rather naive, both parties are only interested in the same thing right now; power. The Republicans are even more laughable than the Democrats though (which again is a very meaningless compliment).
I'd rather they rush through health care though, which I might see a small benefit from, than the USA PATRIOT ACT, or a silly war, neither of which benefited anyone. Not saying its a good thing, or that I agree with Obama's package here, but just as points of comparison.
What annoys me more is both parties new found reliance on astroturfing and cheap gimmicks stolen from the advertisement world. And what annoys me even more is that tons of people (who I now no longer feel guilty calling "plebes") buy it and repeat the well bought falsehoods to me, and on the evening news. This crap was especially present during the Sotomayor brouhaha, with the left saying everyone with any doubt was a racist, and the right selecting sound bites to make her sound racist (racism being the the instant taboo of the day), and with the bizarre "birther" morons catering to the absolute morons of the Republican party (not saying the Dems are better, just they haven't catered to any demographic quite so stupid yet, not that they are beyond it).
It is bizarre that neither party is capable or wanting of a public policy debate, and that none of there members seem to be wanting of one. At least the previous groups of partisan nitwits weren't afraid of waving their agenda about. After this last election, though, the idiots are out in force.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey