

$18M Being Spent to Redesign Recovery.gov Web Site - lunaru
http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/07/18m-being-spent-to-redesign-recoverygov-web-site.html

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jonknee
Misleading headline, go read the RFP. It's a major multi-year project that
includes 24/7 support (for years!). They are funneling in data from thousands
of sources and trying to automate it. Plus have it searchable in a very public
way. Hosted in multiple data centers. etc etc. To make it sound like they want
a new template is simply incorrect.

<http://www.scribd.com/doc/16515421/RAT-Board-Solicitation>

The bulk of the development work has to be done very quickly too, which vastly
complicates things.

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jpcx01
18 million is still way high for that.

Fact is, there's a huge open source community that would do 90% of that work
for free in order to get their names on a high profile project like that.

It only takes a few pages of reading the RFP to start seeing the rampant
waste. They'll be purchasing Sybase, Oracle, and MS SQL Server for the
project. Why all three? That's likely 100s of thousands of dollars right
there.

Also, why are they contracting this out? Why not hire a small team, and
release in stages via some agile project management techniques?

I doubt this is a big deal in the grand scheme of things however its the sort
of thing that sort of reminds you that no matter who is in power, things run
the same way in Washington.

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heyadayo
> Fact is, there's a huge open source community that would do 90% of that work
> for free in order to get their names on a high profile project like that.

A naive and unworkable strategy at best.

As a major open source developer and project leader I've come believe that the
majority of relevant open source works comes from a tiny, motivated, and
highly skilled minority. And remember, OSS developers don't work for free
because they want their name on some product or webpage. There are jobs for
that, and they even pay.

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ryanwaggoner
Looks like it's being done by <http://www.smartronix.com>

Let's hope it turns out better than their site, which doesn't look that great
(to me), uses Flash, doesn't validate, and doesn't degrade gracefully when JS
is disabled.

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jonknee
It usually takes a large established firm with a government contract record to
get a winning bid. They in turn outsource parts to contractors (with
preference to minority and veteran owned firms). They are most likely just the
project coordinators.

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gojomo
And each level of indirection _increases_ the quality of the ultimate
delivery?

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jonknee
None of the subcontractors could do the job themselves, so having one firm
manage the contract may be fairly efficient. Much easier than sending out RFPs
for 20 different tasks on the same project and then having to get them to all
work together nicely.

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eo3x0
Or how about we take that 18M and fund a startup (or two) that could probably
do recovery.gov plus a bunch of other public facing .govs

Not that I want the govt playing VC, just saying.

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SwellJoe
The first problem is that the government would be even more horrible at
choosing among startups than they are at choosing among big corporations with
several past bids under their belt. The second problem is that startups are
generally a perfect storm of failure when it comes to navigating the intricate
hurdles of securing government contracts.

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sil3ntmac
Hopefully this isn't the new black hole that they're channeling the cut
Defense department funds into...

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jonknee
$18m doesn't go far in the DoD, but your point about cut funds is false--the
DoD budget has been increased.

[http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=1...](http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=12652)

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symptic
Seems a bit ironic.

