18 Million for Recovery.gov 2.0

Written by: Clay Johnson
Date: 07/09/2009 1:20 p.m.

According to the GSA, Recovery.gov will be rebuilt over the course of five months for a total of $9,516,324. The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board then has the option to exercise options that can take the contract through 4 more years for a total of $17,948,518. The award winner is a company called Smartronix which will likely subcontract out to several companies over the next few weeks to deliver the site.

There's a lively discussion happening on the Sunlight Labs Email List, and we're trying to gather information about what the contract details are. While Twitter is on fire with shock at the price tag, I don't think that's the real problem here.

The real problem is transparency. The real problem is that while many are outraged at the cost, you can't presume that the government isn't spending its money wisely unless you know both what Government is paying and what they're paying for. We don't know what they're paying for, yet.

I hope that this gets rectified soon and that the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, along with Smartronix works with our community to make sure of three things:

That people know what every dime of that $18MM is being spent on,
That Smartronix works with the community to make the process of building Recovery.gov open and transparent, and
That Smartronix works with the Sunlight Labs community to make the data published on Recovery.gov accessible and machine readable to developers.

Here at Sunlight we're trying to make that happen. So we begin Chapter 2. As new stuff develops, we'll keep you informed.

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Discussion

Viq Hussain 07/09/2009 2:09 p.m. (permalink)

I think instead of having high expectations, maybe there is a way to proactively reach out to Smartronix or anyone else working on these government contracts.

Although I understand that importance of Transparency in this whole mix, it is also important to understand the contract companies initiatives to deliver the product, first and foremost. If we all show them the value of building Transparently and how it might be able to help them get the job done more effectively, the will be more likely to do include us in the mix.

I'm sure they would be open to hearing what we have to say, but if we make it a burden for them to reach out, then it's just another thing they have to do, and they might not be willing to put in the time.

Has anyone reached out to them yet?
Joe 07/09/2009 5:45 p.m. (permalink)

Need more alarm bells regarding whether Smartronix will naturally adhere to web standards in general? Firebug its site and witness deprecated HTML, Flash, non-semantic CSS, and tables:

http://www.smartronix.com/
Craig Colgan 07/09/2009 6:50 p.m. (permalink)

OF COURSE the issue is the price! $18 million for a Web site?! The only way ANY public, mass-audience Web site for ANY reason costs that much is ... if it's a federal government site! C'mon people.
Greg 07/11/2009 9:19 a.m. (permalink)

Uhh, they look like a military contractor. They also look like they contributed to the Obama election fund.
Steve Cox 09/03/2009 9:13 p.m. (permalink)

I could make 9000 websites at that price. What a sham!
Horton Deakins 09/28/2009 9:19 a.m. (permalink)

I've developed software for 32 years, web-enabled stuff for over eleven. I wouldn't have protested if they had allocated less than 1/2 of one percent of that amount, but somebody give me the fraud, waste, and abuse hotline number! This is stealing from the American people, nothing less. It is a crime, just like most of everything else the national socialist democratic workers' party controlled government (and I use that word loosely) does. Clean house!

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