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State Dept. Bureau Spent $630k On Facebook 'Likes'
schwit1 writes with this excerpt from the Washington Examiner: "State Department officials spent $630,000 to get more Facebook 'likes,' prompting employees to complain to a government watchdog that the bureau was 'buying fans' in social media, the agency's inspector general says. 'Many in the bureau criticize the advertising campaigns as "buying fans" who may have once clicked on an ad or "liked" a photo but have no real interest in the topic and have never engaged further,' the inspector general reported. The effort failed to reach the bureau's target audience, which is largely older and more influential than the people liking its pages. Only about 2 percent of fans actually engage with the pages by liking, sharing or commenting.
In September 2012 Facebook also changed its approach to users' news feeds, and the expensive 'fan' campaigns became much less valuable. The bureau now must constantly pay for sponsored ads to keep its content visible even to people who have already liked its pages."
The state department's budget is about $50 billion annually. There is probably some waste in there, but shaving off $630k in Facebook marketing is not a very promising place to start (that'd be a savings of 0.00126%!).
Besides which, various PR nonsense is a big part of what the state department does; it's sort of the marketing/sales department of the U.S. government.
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When thinking of good models to emulate, are you thinking more of Egypt Revolution 1.0, which got taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood, or of Egypt Revolution 2.0, which got taken over by the military?
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I suspect it's the people pushing this kind of populist story who fall into category (b). Let's say we have a $50 billion agency, and think it should save money. We could:
Option 1. Start by looking at the major expenses, and find some that can be cut down. Let's define "major expenses" here generously as anything that takes at least 1% of the State Department's budget. Are those all necessary? Can some of them, even if necessary, be done with less? Make these the main targets of your anti-waste campaign.
Option 2. Pick something down in the noise, under 0.01% of the budget. But find something that makes for a good evening-news scandal. Something populist having to do with the price of toilet seats, or Facebook, or something else that you can explain in under 10 seconds to idiots. Make this the main target of your "anti-waste" campaign.
The main difference is that Option 1 may actually save money, while Option 2 is just political grandstanding.
See also: idiots who think arguing over PBS funding is going to balance the federal budget.
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Here is the page. It's hard for me to understand why the state department even cares if people visit their page or not.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I have no love for the politicians running the country, but.......
Have you seen the signs protesters in the street flash around? There's a chance that 99% of them fail to understand the country as well, and a good portion of them have lost touch with any sort of reality completely.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I agree! The budget is so big that we shouldn't even consider looking at an item if it isn't in the "top 100" projects list.
In this sense, let's buy everyone an Alienware computer, upgrade to the most expensive brand of toilet paper, put in a soda fridge that is fully stocked for all federal employees, paint the building every year, and invite Britney Spears to the company picnic.
Waste less than 1% of the budget is still waste. The fact that the employees themselves thought that it was enough waste to report it should be an indication.
Theres a 99.9% chance that the media taking the video of the morons was told to find the morons and promote them.
There's no reason why you can't reduce waste in both categories. Which is what most of us who oppose government waste want to do.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
True... but this is like software optimization, you can spend your time fixing 1000 things that have a 0.00126% impact and you're still fucked.
The reason why software developers will tackle the biggest performance bottlenecks first is because a developer can only work on one thing at a time, and so should attempt to get the largest return on their investment in time.
The government, however, is not a single person, and employs millions of people. The people that are able to address the waste in area A are probably not the same people that can address the waste in area B.
It would be foolish for a large software development team to assign every developer to work on the same performance problem. Similarly, it would be stupid to tell those who aren't working on the top problem to sit on their thumbs until the top problem is resolved. If a source of government waste is identified, then the appropriate thing to do is address it, not come up with excuses why it's not important.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?