Shutdown Illustrates How Fast US Gov't Can Update Its Websites

An anonymous reader writes "Despite what we hear about how much the U.S. government is struggling with a website, it is reassuring that most of government entities can update their websites within a day after they are asked to. This conclusion is the result of research done by the Networking Systems Laboratory at the Computer Science Department of the University of Houston. The research team tracked government websites and their update times, and found that 96% of the websites were updated within 24 hours after President Obama signed HR 2775 into law, ending the Government shutdown. Worth noting that two websites took 8 days to update. It is interesting that the team was able to use the shutdown as an opportunity to study the efficiency of the IT departments of various parts of Government."

Comments

How is this complicated?

[Karmashock]

All they did was press "undo"... the shutdown didn't actually change anything. Government agencies were ordered to inconvenience everyone for awhile for entirely political reasons and then were returned to normal operation. That's it.

There was no policy or functionality change. They just disabled systems and then turned them back on again. All the government has to do to coordinate that is... Nothing. CNN basically did it. Government employees and their IT departments were watching the news. When the "shutdown" was ended they just went back to work and turned things on again.

Politics aside, I just don't see why that is impressive. You get the same sort of coordination at every bathroom in the US during Super bowl. Oh half time started!... 100 million toilets flush. That isn't organization anymore then every cock crowing at dawn or fish showing up at the surface of the water at dusk and dawn. Its like giving people credit for all commuting at the same time in the morning.

Would be nice to know which sites took eight days though.

y&ou FAIL it

[Anonymous Coward]

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