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

It's easier . . .

[Mitchell314]

to take something down than to make something new.

what's so hard about mod_rewrite?

[deadlydiscs]

for fscks sake.

The shutdown had been threatened for weeks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't it make the assumption that there was no lead time? The shutdown had been threatened for weeks.

Did the IT departments wait for the order to be signed before beginning any work on the updated sites or did they start the updates before the order was signed and then just flip the site over to the update version once the shutdown was confirmed?

It's not that hard.

[cold fjord]

mv index.html old_index.html ; mv no_longer_block_access_to_static_data.html index.html

The sites that blocked by DNS wouldn't have much more to do.

Re:It's not that hard.

[chill]

Except most did it via DNS redirects. Many actually turned off the servers, so they weren't serving a "Gone Fishin'" page. They changed DNS to point over to usa.gov, which remained open and hosted the static pages.

Depends on what you mean by "Update"

[Anonymous Coward]

Should we expect it to take much time to post a new notice or change some text on the front page of a website? How much does that involve the IT department assuming their front page is setup with some CMS that allows content to be posted with minimal technical effort? There is a big difference between changing the functionality of a website and slapping some notice on there with a default "page unavailable" message for none front page stuff. Heck, there can be a big difference between just changing text on a front page, and changing text that has detailed information, with the latter probably having to go through more people to check the actual content.

Re:Depends on what you mean by "Update"

[minstrelmike]

Should we expect it to take much time to post a new notice or change some text on the front page of a website?

Exactly. I am one of the government workers who 'shut down' our website.
All I did was replace the index page and altered the security program to prevent working even if you still had a valid cookie.
It took me 30 seconds to log in (from home) and undo the fixes (and most of that time was spent logging in).

Shutdown means different things to different people. For the last shutdown, we were given two conflicting orders:
1. Turn off the web servers
2. Display a web page to visitors announcing we are shut down.

/* for you manager types, I cannot serve up a web page if I have shut my web server down */

That isn't a problem of government; it is a problem of non-techie managers freaking out and trying to one-up each other.
I have seen similar things happen in private industry.

Re:Depends on what you mean by "Update"

[SuperKendall]

Tea *Party* members wanted only to delay Obamacare for a year until it actually worked. Now they look like geniuses.

The Republicans passed a number of budgets, any of which Democrats could have signed to avoid shutdown. So it's hardly the Tea Party having caused the shutdown; it was the vanity of Democrats insisting Obamacare not be touched even though it wasn't ready to launch anyway. If the Democrats had not been stuck on that one issue there would have been no shutdown.

you mean "shutdown" ...

[cascadingstylesheet]

... if there was a real shutdown, nobody would have been paid to put "shutdown" notices on websites.

Re:How is this complicated?

[BitZtream]

Exactly.

The websites were intentionally changed to display a notice they had been "shutdown" . If they had been shutdown, no one would have seen a notice.

What's more, many important sites with automated data feeds that I access stayed up and pumping out data, meaning someone was still taking a measurement too as the process is not automated.

It was nothing more than both fracking parties trying to make the other guy look like an asshole at OUR expense and frustration.

Vote every single one of those pricks out of office over the next two elections. The next president should meet a house and senate with no incumbents at all.

The private sector can do it faster

[Anonymous Coward]

I noticed that within hours after the shutdown ended, foxnews.com was featuring stories about Benghazi again ("the questions Americans STILL want answers for!") using their rather large top headline font.

Stories about the shutdown/re-opening/GOP infighting were completely buried for days afterwards.

Re:The private sector can do it faster

[Anonymous Coward]

Who said anything about this being unique to Obama? I think it is everyone's patriotic duty to question the "official" story being told by the Administration. If the Democrats had a little more testicular fortitude, maybe they would have questioned Bush administration's "intelligence" about WMDs in Iraq.

dumb comparison

[globaljustin]

This is a ridiculous comparison. The data are from two completely different proceedures, from a technical perspective.

Taking a functional government website, like say Astronomy Picture of the Day

To make it 'not work' all they have to do is whip up a basic "this site shutdown due to..." with a few HTML tags and its is "taken down due to the shutdown"

That's all...a few lines of HTML and a redirect!

Second, the criticism of the Obamacare website in the media is not representative of the ***ACTUALL*** technical problems.

Politics aside, the website problems were **routine IT work**...its not an excuse, but **management** is to blame for not scheduling testing with enough time before rollout...

So, this data is doubly unusuable...but it makes sense...

**of course** sites like Astronomy Picture of the Day were up in 24 hrs after the shutdown lifted!!!!! It just took a few lines of code!

It isn't a technical question

[feenberg]

There is a great misunderstanding in all these comments. The question isn't "How long does it take to change 3 lines of code", of course that only takes a few minutes. The question is: "How long does permission to change 3 lines of code take to wend its way through the agency from the Secretary to the contractor?" That typically takes weeks or months, but in this case was done quickly because no one between the Secretary and the coder thought to interfere. That is very unusual. Another question (not answered) is how long does it take for a request from the coder to the Secretary? Typically that would be "forever", which is why most things never get done. It would help if someone below the secretary were authorized to make a decision, but typically that isn't the case.