Is the Federal Government the Most Interesting Tech Startup For 2009? 148
With all of the recent focus on technology and the promises to continue "getting stuff done" by the US government, Techdirt's Masnick suggests that they might just be the most interesting tech startup to watch this year. "But, of course, talk is cheap (especially in politics). And, while Chopra (and Vivek Kundra, the government's CIO) both actually have a nice track record of accomplishing these sorts of goals in their past jobs, the proof is in what's actually getting done. We'd already mentioned at least one success story with the IT dashboard at USASpending.gov, but can it continue? I have to admit, a second thing that impressed me about Chopra was that, even with such a success, he didn't focus on it. The fact that he got together such a site in such a short period of time is impressive enough, and while he mentioned it in his talks, most of them were much more focused not on what he'd already done, but on what he was going to do — and the plans all seemed quite achievable.
Re:No, it's the stupidest tech startup (Score:5, Informative)
No competent tech startup would pay $18 million for recovery.org
Well, it was recovery.gov [recovery.gov] not org and really the comments the first time we discussed it noted worse problems [slashdot.org]. I mean, if they have a full time staff for the site and lots of servers and a lot of research going on, $18 million is about on par with what the government drops on crap like that. Fine. The fact that it was bidless and the company that got it gives tens of thousands of dollars to house majority leader Steny Hoyer (D) is what we really should be upset about. I thought the days of Haliburten were over ...
Kundra's Credentials (Score:4, Informative)
In a word . . . (Score:2, Informative)
No.
Re:Is the writer on the Government payroll? (Score:5, Informative)
No company in their right mind would pay 18 million for a website. There are many many websites that get more page views are were made for much less. To consider that website a success is a joke.
This was discussed to death the first time this information was posted on Slashdot [slashdot.org]...
But it isn't like they paid 18 million for a single, static page. From the original link [abcnews.com]:
The contract calls for spending $9.5 million through January, and as much as $18 million through 2014, according to the GSA press release.
Roughly $27.5 million over five-ish years is $5.5 million a year. Consider they're paying for servers, electricity, bandwidth, data processing, updates... That doesn't seem like a huge amount to me.
It's a lot of money, sure. But it isn't like someone went out and spent $18 million to shine up their Facebook page, which is what some people would lead you to believe.
Re:No, it's the stupidest tech startup (Score:5, Informative)
Where did you get the idea that it was a no-bid contract? Or did you just mean that the bidding process was accelerated [informationweek.com].
Smartronix won the Recovery.gov contract over two other bidders, SRI International and Accenture, in an accelerated bidding process that only included companies who are part of the multi-vendor Alliant contracting vehicle.
By law, Recovery.gov must be up and reporting stimulus spending in detail by October 10, but Pound said that the normal, full, and open competition process takes an average of 267 days to award a contract. "That's unacceptable and people would be screaming for our heads," he said. Now, the RATB expects the site will be up as early as late August.
Re:Is the writer on the Government payroll? (Score:3, Informative)
Roughly $27.5 million over five-ish years is $5.5 million a year. Consider they're paying for servers, electricity, bandwidth, data processing, updates... That doesn't seem like a huge amount to me.
Is that $27M total, or $18M total of which $9M is this year?
Assuming the lower amount, that comes to, what, maybe 15-25 people full-time plus $4M of initial expenses (hardware and executive/sales bonuses, I guess)?
Re:No, it's the stupidest tech startup (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Is the writer on the Government payroll? (Score:3, Informative)
Well it all depends on what you mean by "web site" - $18 million is cheap for some web sites. I have worked on an internal web site for a medium size company (few thousand employees globally) and the development costs ran to over $1 million. For the amount of work that went into it, that was a pretty good deal. It's not just html pages these days - when you have developers spending several years writing, refining, and maintaining complex backends with custom databases, a few million $s begins to look cheap.
Re:No, it's the stupidest tech startup (Score:3, Informative)
Having worked in Federal Government IT for 15 years, I can say that it certainly DOES NOT have any kind of start up mentality. Startups can be dumb or smart, but usually they are quick to act, for better or for worse. Fed programs are slower than a snail running a cross pattern, and usually don't have nearly so clearly defined a direction. They spend good money after bad to get the best solution, and always end up being at the mercy of their vendors.
I worked for the hosting and proserv provider for USAspending.gov and helped bring that site up. I left their employ just before recovery.gov got its legs. In both cases, the sites were deployed on old hardware, and were backed up by a CDN. Good enough, but we warned them that they really needed to get new hardware for their backend. Wouldn't hear of it. They had servers. They spent their money on programming and the CDN. Seems to be working well for them, but it's the proverbial house of cards. Hopefully they've improved things since I left.
In any case, equating the Federal Government to an IT startup is like comparing a Shelby GT 500 to Steny Hoyer on roller skates strapped onto a couple of model rocket engines. Just not in the same league.
Re:If they want a lasting legacy... (Score:3, Informative)
Unions in a lot of businesses are just there to make sure that incompetent people can't get fired, which just makes it harder for competent people to do their jobs (because they have to pick up the slack). They also make sure that good employees who've worked somewhere for a short time make less money than employees who don't do anything but have worked there for a long time.
Not that all unions are bad neccessarily, but in most cases now, working conditions aren't nearly bad enough for a union to do anything useful, so they exist anyone to waste their members money and make working conditions worse (by keeping bad employees around).
Re:The Irony (Score:3, Informative)
You're the clueless one here, so look it up. The guy is a joke. He makes wild ass predictions that mostly have no basis in reality (like Sun and Apple merging) and complains about technical details he obviously doesn't understand. Examples of the latter include complaining about "the idle process" taking 95% of his CPU and slowing down his computer, as well as stating that website SEO is useless (because when he changed _all_ his sites page names to SEO friendlier ones, his traffic dropped. No, he didn't know about 301, all the old addresses just 404'd).
Basically, reading Dvorak is like listening to your dad complain about something he thinks he understands, but doesn't really. Except fathers usually don't troll like mr Dvorak does.