So Much For Transparency

[/dev/null]

http://www.propublica.org/ion/stimulus/ite...ls-a-secret-813

[Alaska Darin]

$18 MILLION for a WEBSITE? Wow.

[Magox]

http://www.propublica.org/ion/stimulus/ite...ls-a-secret-813

I forget, was this the "stimulus" or the "stabilization" or was it the "Recovery" or "Reinvestment" part of the bill?

 

Transparency my ass, in other words, "what we feel is transparent will be transparent the rest is none of your !@#$ing business"

[DC Tom]

$18 MILLION for a WEBSITE? Wow.

 

It's development and operations. Still ridiculous..."Daily briefing calls and weekly status meetings"? That right there indicates a HELL of a lot of management overhead. I wouldn't be surprised if 40% of the contract was spent on meetings alone.

 

Looking at the document...I'm surprised the cost isn't more. They're using four different RDBMS systems? That's a million bucks a year right there.

[Adam]

I forget, was this the "stimulus" or the "stabilization" or was it the "Recovery" or "Reinvestment" part of the bill?

 

Transparency my ass, in other words, "what we feel is transparent will be transparent the rest is none of your !@#$ing business"

What did you expect......this is what America has been for decades.

[finknottle]

$18 MILLION for a WEBSITE? Wow.

 

I brought this up a few months ago following their testimony to congress. They claimed that the release of the site would take a year longer and require significantly more funding, specifically pointing to their lack of hard drives. I thought that was a comical example of snowing congress with technical babble.

 

But where I erred was in thinking that this was just a way of making excuses for the delay - I didn't realize it was actually about paying a company 18 million dollars to go to Best Buy and buy a drive.

 

Collecting data is one problem. But if you have it and want to create a simple but large online database of text data and statistics, there is no excuse for not being able to do it for under 600k.

[DC Tom]

Collecting data is one problem. But if you have it and want to create a simple but large online database of text data and statistics, there is no excuse for not being able to do it for under 600k.

 

Create and operate. Little more expensive.

 

The biggest chunk of that cost, though, is to "protect the American taxpayer against waste". The government spends a hell of a lot of money in the pursuit of proving that they're not wasting money.

[Magox]

What did you expect......this is what America has been for decades.

I don't dispute that, but there is one major difference Adam, and that is that this particular administration touted "transparency" on the campaign trail and the fact that they are not being "transparent" regarding their website that is partially dedicated to showing how "transparent" they are, is ironically moronic.

[Adam]

I don't dispute that, but there is one major difference Adam, and that is that this particular administration touted "transparency" on the campaign trail and the fact that they are not being "transparent" regarding their website that is partially dedicated to showing how "transparent" they are, is ironically moronic.

As I said, this is what I expected. I don't know if they were genuine when they said they would be transparent, but if they did, it was very naive.

[1billsfan]

I don't dispute that, but there is one major difference Adam, and that is that this particular administration touted "transparency" on the campaign trail and the fact that they are not being "transparent" regarding their website that is partially dedicated to showing how "transparent" they are, is ironically moronic.

 

I don't think the democrats in Washington could have been a bigger disaster this year if they tried. From "hope and change" to "fear and loathing" in the blink of an eye.

[/dev/null]

From "hope and change" to "fear and loathing" in the blink of an eye.

 

They ran as a Democrat and are governing as a Republican

[finknottle]

Create and operate. Little more expensive.

 

The biggest chunk of that cost, though, is to "protect the American taxpayer against waste". The government spends a hell of a lot of money in the pursuit of proving that they're not wasting money.

 

It is unclear to me that the operation of the webite is included in the contract, but let's assume it is.

 

Let's break it down, separating the web-site from the task of collecting the documentation and generating analytical summaries (which become more documentation handed to the site).

 

1. What are the manpower resources to create a document repository web-site?

2. What are the annual manpower resources to maintain it?

 

I consider half a man-year each to be way more than enough, even by bloated government standards.

 

 

Here is the actual website, btw:

http://www.recovery.gov/

I don't see anything requiring technical skill except the creation of the interactive maps. And while they are slick, the skills required to create and maintain those are quite common. If anybody here is a professional web-site designer, I'd be interested in their eyeball estimate to create and maintain such a site (assuming they are fed the data).

[Kelly the Dog]

The development and operation of the website was for 9.5 million. If all of the options are exercised over the next six years it will reach 17.9 million. Still seems like an awful lot. 59 companies were eligible to compete.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Government-IT/Sma...ontract-144490/

[Adam]

They ran as a Democrat and are governing as a Republican

I disagree.......the two are not mutually exclusive- they are very much the same animal

[1billsfan]

Speaking of transparency, Obama's spokesmen are the very picture of transparency...

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBCFkVJWyeU

 

 

 

Obama's "Snitch on your Fellow Amercian" website goes up and suddenly David Axelrod is sending out mass unsolicited emails to Obama dissenters. But of course their not collecting names or making enemy lists or anything like that.

[DC Tom]

It is unclear to me that the operation of the webite is included in the contract, but let's assume it is.

 

Let's break it down, separating the web-site from the task of collecting the documentation and generating analytical summaries (which become more documentation handed to the site).

 

1. What are the manpower resources to create a document repository web-site?

2. What are the annual manpower resources to maintain it?

 

I consider half a man-year each to be way more than enough, even by bloated government standards.

 

 

Here is the actual website, btw:

http://www.recovery.gov/

I don't see anything requiring technical skill except the creation of the interactive maps. And while they are slick, the skills required to create and maintain those are quite common. If anybody here is a professional web-site designer, I'd be interested in their eyeball estimate to create and maintain such a site (assuming they are fed the data).

 

Don't forget 3. what's the management overhead of such a project?

 

I worked on one, a few years ago. Small team, not nearly the management overhead, simple architecture. Still cost $3M, easy. This beast, with the functional specs and management process specified (which is oppressive - never mind the sh-- redacted), AND the number of people having a finger in the pie (Treasury, the White House, probably the Fed) is an easy $4-6M in development costs.

 

And that's if everything goes smoothly. And that's without operational costs. Four different RDBMS systems? Christ... It'll probably run WAY over $18M before it's done.

[finknottle]

I worked on one, a few years ago. Small team, not nearly the management overhead, simple architecture. Still cost $3M, easy. This beast, with the functional specs and management process specified (which is oppressive - never mind the sh-- redacted), AND the number of people having a finger in the pie (Treasury, the White House, probably the Fed) is an easy $4-6M in development costs.

 

Management overhead? For running a website??? As to the number of fingers in the pie making specifications, you can't use government inefficiency to excuse government inefficiency.

 

I see very little difference between this site and one you would expect a small manufacturer to have, where maintaining the website is at most a half man job. The only difference is linking to many more news announcements, and the graphic gizmo's (one time work creating them, then you just update the data).

 

The only real work is collecting and passing new data to the web maintainer, and that isn't part of this. Give me specs and I could create, maintain and update this site for 100k + 150k/year and feel pretty good about the deal.

 

Recovery.gov is not a sophisticated site. In complexity it is somewhere between twobillsdrive and realclearpolitics, neither of whom spend a tenth of that amount. The bottom line is that the government is incapable of undertaking the simplest initiatives without it ballooning into a major program.

[Adam]

Recovery.gov is not a sophisticated site. In complexity it is somewhere between twobillsdrive and realclearpolitics, neither of whom spend a tenth of that amount. The bottom line is that the government is incapable of undertaking the simplest initiatives without it ballooning into a major program.

I think more is spent on two bills drive

[DC Tom]

Management overhead? For running a website??? As to the number of fingers in the pie making specifications, you can't use government inefficiency to excuse government inefficiency.

 

I'm not excusing it. It's !@#$ed up. It's also par for the course for the government. Two-thirds of those tax dollars are spent making sure your tax dollars aren't being wasted.

 

I see very little difference between this site and one you would expect a small manufacturer to have, where maintaining the website is at most a half man job. The only difference is linking to many more news announcements, and the graphic gizmo's (one time work creating them, then you just update the data).

 

The only real work is collecting and passing new data to the web maintainer, and that isn't part of this. Give me specs and I could create, maintain and update this site for 100k + 150k/year and feel pretty good about the deal.

 

Recovery.gov is not a sophisticated site. In complexity it is somewhere between twobillsdrive and realclearpolitics, neither of whom spend a tenth of that amount. The bottom line is that the government is incapable of undertaking the simplest initiatives without it ballooning into a major program.

 

Did you read the functional specs (the unredacted, at least) in the document? That's not a simple application. Even after accounting for the some of the ridiculous unnecessary complexity they defined (again...four different database systems? You couldn't maintain four different RDBMS servers for $150k/year.), it's still a pretty fair bit of work. It's certainly more complex than this board. And there's a hell of a lot more to it than just the web site (security architecture - software, hardware, and physical; COOP; acquisitions, system administration. For starters.)

 

The real problem is that the project is WAY the hell over-engineered - which is also what you're complaining about. There's no need to make it as complex as they did. But for the deliverables (which isn't just the site) specified...that price is probably about right. The deliverables just suck.

[swede316]

Wow..That's crazy..As a Project Manager and Estimator for a contractor...I can't see this. A one year period of performance for a website (ends Jan 31, 2010). I could build this site from my home PC and host it in one rack of gear for $17.5 mil less.