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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."
Ahh, the hypocrisy of our democracy.
What? I can't assume Occam's Razor was a slick fold-up scooter?
To add insult to injury, I wonder if it was a no bid contract?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Listen, I worked on the project. This is no big deal. Basically, it's [12 LINES REDACTED]. So I don't know what all the fuss is about.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Change we can believe in ! Belief being necessary because, you know, you don't get to check.
Say what were those economic numbers again ?
Now that it's slashdotted, it's completely blacked out!
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.
Maybe, just maybe, it's one of those PDF dealies where it's not really blacked out because they're just rendering rectangles over text that's still in the document. Yeah, it's a longshot but check on it anyway.
Also, WTF could possibly be so sensitive about a contract for a WEB SITE??? You'd think they have some kind of sense for how much traffic the most popular government sites are getting, and be able to order some colo and stuff based on that. That's what I'd expect to find in there... servers, bandwidth, hourly support rates to handle wierd stuff like DDoS attacks. WTF could possibly be in there that needs to be blacked out for any reason???
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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
black out? you guys have new code word everyday. just can't accept an African president can you.
>>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.
The first few redacted pages are the names and histories of the people involved. This is privacy, and nothing new.
The other pages are management chains used on the project and are part of KPMG's/Smartronix value-added business techniques, and it's their option to not reveal those practices.
I'm not too concerned. Wait until the site opens up.
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.
So far the ones that are being called unMerkin are the ones that seem to be incapable of speaking in any manner other than yelling and screaming about "Death Panels". Rather than contributing to the discussion they are denying everyone else the chance to contribute to the discussion.
You think THOSE typos were bad? This was supposed to be a contract for $18,000!
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
They didn't hide the costs for the project. They hid the cost per job type. They probably don't want their employees knowing what the others are getting paid.
But this looks more like they are hiding *companies* involved, not individuals.
In fact I would very much like to know just who is getting paid for this, and how much - so that if I wished I could trace back connections to various senators that insisted certain web development providers were chosen...
If you don't want someone to know how much you are getting paid, even as an individual - don't work on government contracts. It's that simple.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Like the one in NH where everyone present was hand-selected by the party?
He couldn't even FIND a skeptic in that auditorium.
It may have been civil, but wasn't anything that could pass as debate.
I would hate to see a secretive US Government then...
Not to take sides, but how about one that "loses" millions of emails? That's when stuff gets really scary-- when they stop redacting records before releasing them and start destroying them outright.
But no, sure, this isn't exactly transparent.
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.
Now you won't believe me, but lots of people think I'm too conservative, and I consider myself conservative to a large degree, so this isn't about that. But still, I don't agree with what you're saying.
As far as the evil press, it does seem to me that most people who talk about the press being evil are still blindly listening to someone who is part of "the media". People complaining about NYT and MSNBC are watching Fox News and listening to Rush Limbaugh, and vice-versa. The reason you think "the other side" is trying to use the media to mislead you is largely because "your side" tells you they are, so no one is completely clean in that regard. Yes, both sides are manipulating their coverage because the people running the show have an agenda that they're pushing. If you don't see how they're manipulating your and you don't know what agenda they're pushing, then you should pay more attention.
But as far as these people at the town hall meeting being "un-American", well... they're certainly being disruptive. What they're engaging in isn't constructive criticism or deliberate conversation. What they're doing is not debating. Hard to say whether that's "unAmerican" since our founding fathers were the intellectual elite who founded our government on philosophic theories, but they're also the lawless hooligans who dumped someone else's tea into the harbor.
However, it does seem to me that many of them are misinformed. There are plenty of valid things to be concerned about with this health care reform, but death panels aren't really one of those things. No one is suggesting death panels. Being misinformed and refusing to listen to anyone who might inform you better can be problematic behavior.
What amuses me is how many sheeple in this country still Trust the government to do what is best for them and to keep them safe.
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FACT: The Government can only always be trusted to take your money and rights away from you.
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Any government form is flawed as it is composed as many flawed individuals who are not good people. From the DMV clerk with an attitude, the City council member who taking kickbacks from the country clubbers, to the senator who is taking money from PACs, all of the way to the president who is taking money from companies like G.E.
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When will people learn that you need government but you need to be vigilant and limit their powers at every turn. We need to also teach people the common ideal that when you let or expect people to take care of a certain aspect of your life you lose some of your freedom. For every sugar coated promise a politician makes there is a equal price to pay in lost control, money or freedom over our own lives.
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The Instant Gratification ME, ME, ME culture of today's society feeds directly to the politician's sweet saccharine promises of how the government is going to take care of them. There used to be a time when people used to have enough pride in themselves that if you gave someone a free meal they would see to it that they would return the favor because they felt if they didn't they would be viewed a selfish loser. We used to bear the burden of our families and help take care of our grandmas and grandpas, aunts and uncles, cousins and children. These days those responsibilities are dropped upon the government who ends up doing a sub standard job of doing so. The politicians don't mind this, in fact they love this dependency on their special programs, they gain power in political capital which ensures that they get re-elected each term. These guaranteed votes allow them to be as corrupt as they want as they no longer fear reprisal. They no longer fear reprisal because they they have large voting block dependent on them.
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Put it this way, when you were a kid and were totally dependent on your parents and your parents grounded you, did you have the power to stand up against them in any meaningful way? No you didn't.
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Same with the government, the more of your life they control and make you dependent on them, the more they can get away with.
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The Government has so much of this control that they are no longer accountable to their own actions. It doesn't surprise me that they would black out information and manipulate documents even when it comes to a promise of transparency. They are all a bunch of corrupt schmucks because we let them be that way. Maybe if we are to be a ME ME ME generation who acts like children, then we really deserve Big Brother or Father watching over until we grow and wake up. What is the German word for Father again????
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We all have inherent human rights, the government's role is not to GRANT you rights, the role of government is to RESTRICT your actions when they infringe upon other people's rights. But people these days think that the government is their parents handing out things like rights, privileges and safety.
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Maybe we deserve exactly what we got.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Whoever we elect has to deal with all the other people we elected. Not to mention the thousands of people who've spent years of their lives (and upon whom we've spent millions of dollars) to become experts in their fields so they can accurately advise the president.
Though I am sure Ron Paul would have had all the answers. He would have know how to forestall a second great depression, made peace with the suicide bombers in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan, reversed the spread of AIDS and malaria in Africa and brought prescription and health care costs to 1970s levels.
Why, his very presence would have inspired NASA to ...
oh wait, he would have spent all his political capital trying to do away with the income tax. his platform of drastically reduced federal spending and lax regulation would have been perfectly timed for our recent recession. the slashing of federal spending just as private capital was drying up would have an incredible impact on our way of life.
and then after the fallout and devastation following the second great depression the survivors could get to the real business of building a new utopia based on the works of Ayn Rand.
now that is change I can believe in! sign me up!
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
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?
Dissent isn't un-American. What Pelosi said was that drowning out the other side so that there cannot be any debate is un-American. I agree. The town hall protesters are not interested in a debate. They are showing up, and walking up within a few feet of the speaker to yell at them in a physically-threatening manner.
Mr. Gingrinch opines that Obama's health care plan has spectres of Nazism. Protesters promptly paint swastikas onto the door of politicians who support the plan and waive signs calling Obama a Nazi. A black politician received death threats, and references to himself and Obama as "niggers". They are standing outside of town hall meetings with guns strapped to their legs with a sign saying it's time to water the tree of liberty.
The protesters don't even have anything intelligent to say other than, "YOU'RE LYING TO ME!" and "YOU'RE A BUNCH OF SOCIALISTS." That's not debate. That's a hateful mob trying to rule by intimidation. Look up videos of these confrontations. It's freaking terrifying. Tell me that's American.
For more fun, look up how Republicans and conservatives freely called Democrats un-American or anti-American. For fuck's sake, a few months ago, Republican Senator Inhofe called Obama "un-American" for opposing the war in Iraq. A speech is un-American but showing up threatening physical force and painting swastikas is not?
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Yes, I'm still waiting for somebody to explain which part was blacked out that should not have been?
Section 4.1 on page 81 is a good example of something that is redacted with no plausible reason. All the redactions on pages 83 through 89 are similarly questionable. These sections -- could we read them -- ostensibly would deal with how the website itself is specified to behave.
How on earth is that information subject to FOIA exemptions?