So, through a FOIA request, the contract for recovery.gov was released. This website is for taxpayers to use for more transparent government so that they can track the billions the government spends.
Of course, to ensure full transparency in government, the contract isn’t *totally *blacked out. Only 25 pages of a 59-page technical document were blacked out. This is on top of 14 pages that had portions blacked out.
Portions that were blacked out include the pricing, site navigation and user experience.
Besides the irony of having the contract for the website devoted to transparency extremely non-transparent there is the cost. 18 million.
That is way high for a website. I’ve worked at and with companies that get way more traffic than the government website and, for 18 million, it better be giving Obama an hourly hummer.
So, does anyone still think the transparency in government shtick is still for real?
Who gives a fuck? It looks like they redacted a lot of private company information. Is that something that’s really so important to you to know? I pretty much don’t give the slightest shit. There’s nothing on that contract I have the least bit of interest in reading anyway.
For those who don’t want to take the time to read, but also don’t want to just take sleestak’s word on it, it’s actually not as mysterious as claimed, and it appears that the redaction was at the insistence of the vendor, not the government. Pricing is available, for instance. For the most part, it appears that they’ve blacked out names and backgrounds of individuals involved in the project, as well as what Smartronix likely considers valuable trade secrets in their proposal. The actual statement of work doesn’t seem redacted much, if at all. Their perceived value in these “trade secrets” is likely overrated, but that’s true with just about any corporation. Basically, it appears that they don’t want you to know that John Doe is the project manager, and that they use Endeca for guided navigation, Tridion as the CMS, and Rails as the dev platform, etc. (all products and personnel are simply examples, as it was blacked out, so I have no clue what they used ).
As for cost, it appears that the initial work, including hardware is around 7 million or so, a bit over 80% which is in labor. Considering that they have BI, CMS, and various other things in addition to the site itself, you can burn through that amount of money VERY fast. Hell, my company only has three main websites and we spend several million a year just on developers. CMS and BI systems can hit 7 figures out of the box, and if you custom build them, they can cost that much or even more.
It appears that they are also responsible for operations, maintenance, and even upgrades, for 3 years, and that also appears to be included in the 18 million. It’s still a decent chunk of change, but it doesn’t appear to be a $400 toilet seat. I’m betting they could have forced Smartronix into full exposure as part of the initial contract, but I’m guessing the price would have been higher.
Whatever the lip service they may pay to it, governments of all complexions dislike genuine transparency. They will make a great show of revealing one thing while surreptitiously hiding ten. It’s the nature of the beast.
“Hey look, who cares? BESIDES LOOK THE OTHER SIDE IS EVIL!” - yeah, that’s a productive argument.
You can like Obama without being a sycophant and apologist. Considering one of the things I really liked about his campaign was promises about transparency, the lack of follow up he’s had has bothered me.
Did you not bother to read DMC’s contribution? Because you’re taking for granted that this means the Obama White House is as opaque as Bush’s, yet in this thread there has been no evidence for that.
Do you think you could contribute something substantive instead of taking partisan snipes based on nothing but your ideology?
A reasonable quibble might be the sunlight rules, but I gather they didn’t realize how much that would gum up the works. Remember, 21st century conservatives can turn medicare paying for voluntary end of life counciling into death panels. With an opposing side willing to outright lie and drive the ignorant into hysteria, putting bills out for an extended time is a bad thing. Republicans killed sunlight because they’re so dishonest and wretchedly underhanded that it was inviting trouble.
This is a ridiculous refutation. You cannot possibly accuse your opponents of hypocrisy because a statement made by one of them may indirectly contradict a statement made by a completely different one. If that weren’t absurd enough, you’re “contradicting” a serious post with one made flippantly.
On reading the article, though, I’m inclined to agree: this looks foolish to me. The GSA should review the redacted sections and ensure that they really need to be redacted, and if Smartronix is really smart, they’ll allow a lot more of the contract to be open.
I agree that there is probably some overly cautious redactions in there, but there are some legitimate ones. The rate for various labor is very much something you want to keep from being public, as you are constantly competing with other companies for work. What is far more interesting is what was the process for awarding this contract. I am not saying one way or the other, but that is the real question isn’t it?
DMC, I saw those clauses. The fact that Smartronix can propose redactions doesn’t mean the gummint must accept them, and the fact that substantial risk of injury redactions are allowed doesn’t mean those are the ones that occur here. I certainly could be wrong, but the level of redaction here suggests corporate paranoia that’s unsupervised by the appropriate gummint body: I suspect that if an official turned a gimlet eye on the redactions proposed by Smartronix, they’d find that not all proposed redactions were appropriate.
Again, I could be wrong; this is just the feeling I get from it.
And let’s not forget, as a corporation you are pretty paranoid, you will over-redact just to be safe. There is not necessarily anything nefarious about it, just the nature of the beast.
Nothing nefarious, but I’d argue it’s pretty dumb in this instance: when you’re spearpointing the gummint’s policy on transparency, it’s bad PR to show data paranoia.
I do think that if there’s any error in this instance, it’s on the part of an insufficiently watchdoggerish government official. (By the way, why on earth does spellcheck freak out over Smartronix but not over watchdoggerish?)
I completely agree. I’d either like it fully exposed, or if blacked out, an explanation as to why, for each section. My response was intended as a counter to crap like this:
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I don’t recall seeing the contract the government had with Blackwater, and if it is public (I’d be interested in seeing it if that were the case), I’m guessing that it doesn’t contain things like “Joe Bob, expert waterboarder, is being billed out at $280 an hour, with an expected in-service duration of 3200 hours.”, etc.
Fair enough. I agree that it’s absurd to equate this to the level of secrecy in the last administration, when Cheney invented a whole new branch of government to avoid giving up secrets, and the administration engaged in blatant contempt of congress to avoid giving up secrets. Redacted pages in a contract just ain’t the same.
Obama made claims of transparency as a campaign promise. The partisan claim of “change” would be his. He changed nothing and his supporters got the same. It will be the gift that keeps on not-giving.
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