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Obama team spending $18 million to redesign Recovery.gov already
Recovery.gov is the Obama administration's website for tracking government stimulus spending. Will there soon be a tracking explanation of the $18 million that the administration has recently dedicated to redesigning and maintaining the newly-launched site for the next four and a half years?That's $4 million a year. I'da done it for them for about a tenth of that and hired a couple slaves at good wages to do the actual typing. The Maryland-based Smartronix Inc. won a bid for $9.5 million to redesign the already-functional Recovery.gov by January and up to $18 million through 2014, according to a press release from the General Services Administration. Smartronix isn't giving interviews right now about the deal, but the company released a statement saying it will offer "24x7 operation and maintenance" in addition to the initial creation and installation of the new version. Whoopdy doo. 24-7, is it? Kinda like Rantburg, only without fresh content daily. And without the commentary. But with press releases. To complement the beefy computer servers that the company will need to run the site and support millions of users, Smartronix will keep a mirror version of Recovery.gov in case things go wrong. I've got a mirror of the Burg in my basement, though I'll admit I don't keep it backed up often enough. Tack an extra hundred thou on what I make on it, though, and I would. Guaranteed. At first glance, the White House got ripped off. Picked right up on that, didn't they? Twitter Inc., the fastest-growing social network, didn't even raise that much money in its third venture funding round last year. Oh, well. What's Twitter? Some fly-by-nite, right? Some website designers had similar first impressions when asked about the contract. "That's insane," said Brad Crowell, a Los Angeles-based Web designer who worked on a now-defunct media-rich social network. "I would never have to work again in my life... It doesn't even take a million dollars a year to keep a site up." I ask for donations every three or four months. I make hosting, plus a little left over for the hardware fund which is usually eaten up by household emergencies. Chetan Damani, director of Imano, a Web development company with 40 employees and offices in New York, London and Mumbai, initially agreed. "That's a pretty sweet deal," Damani said on the phone from London. I'd say so. With that kinda money I could do nothing but the Burg, as could each of the mods, plus we could all smoke expensive cigars except for Doc Steve who could chew expensive gum. But putting it in perspective, Damani conceded that very few design firms can follow through on the hyper security and quick turnaround that Smartronix is promising. "They're following some pretty strict standards," Damani said of Smartronix. "It's more than just a design." Right. I'd put a few bucks extra in Badanov's pay check, but not $4 million a year. Between the two of us, we've kept the Burg puttering along. The site hasn't been knocked down in a long time. That's prob'ly because we've got at least half of China and Korea in the ban bucket. Posted by: Fred 2009-07-16 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=274442 |