Either I don't charge enough, or this seems like a lot of money:

Quote :

"Contract Awarded for Construction of New Recovery.gov Friday, July 10, 2009 WASHINGTON—In a major step toward developing a state-of-the-art Recovery.gov website, a contract was awarded this week to Smartronix, Inc., a Maryland information technology firm. The company will build the new website for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, an independent agency that manages Recovery.gov and monitors spending under the $787 billion Recovery program. The initial outlay, $9,516,324, covers many facets: redesign and construction of a new website; installation of hardware and software infrastructure; hosting and operations for the website; more robust data storage; an enhanced content-management system; and contract labor support and other features. If the Recovery Board exercises options under the contract, the cost could total $17,948,518 over a period ending in January 2014. Smartronix, based in Hollywood, Maryland, describes itself on http://www.smartronix.com as "a global professional solutions provider specializing in NetOps, Cyber Security, Enterprise Software Solutions, Defense & Commercial Products, and Health IT.'' The company won the contract over two other bidders, according to the General Services Administration, which made the award. Smartronix is now working with three subcontractors: Synteractive Corporation, Washington, D.C.; TMP Government, based in McLean, Va., and New York-based KPMG. "With the assistance of GSA,'' said Earl E. Devaney, the Recovery Board chairman, "we proceeded in a careful fashion to find the best value for the taxpayers' dollar.'' He went on to say: "In the end, this website, above all else, must be user friendly and provide the public with the necessary information on how its money is being spent.'' Devaney explained that the Recovery Board needed also to move swiftly because recipients of Recovery funds—perhaps 200,000 or more—will begin submitting reports to the Recovery Board in October. That information will be posted almost immediately on Recovery.gov, he said. Devaney and the 12 Inspectors General who comprise the Recovery Board described the contract as firm fixed and competitively bid for operations and maintenance, providing a full solution package to include: Develop the next generation of Recovery.gov, which will be visually pleasing, user friendly and highly interactive. A mapping capacity that will allow users to search for spending all the way down to their own neighborhoods. The capacity to store and easily download massive amounts of data. A state-of-the-art security platform that will protect the integrity and availability of the data and a back-up system in the event of a major catastrophe such as 9/11 or a large-scale power outage. Contract support to perform a wide array of hosting, maintenance and operational services. The Recovery Board's Statement of Objectives for this development can be found at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/16515421/RAT-Board-Solicitation "

http://www.recovery.gov/?q=node/668

7/16/2009 12:20:59 PM

well, it is a 4 year contract

45 full time employees at $100k/year for 4 years = 18M

[Edited on July 16, 2009 at 12:27 PM. Reason : doesn't seem too far fetched]

7/16/2009 12:25:33 PM

Quote :

"installation of hardware and software infrastructure hosting and operations for the website robust data storage contract labor support"

Not cheep. In layman terms thats servers and software for the servers, a datacenter for all of it, staff for it, and lots of backup hardware, which means another data center somewhere else and staff for it.

And good website programming is expensive. This is govt. They pay out the ass.

[Edited on July 16, 2009 at 12:27 PM. Reason : !]

7/16/2009 12:26:35 PM

Quote :

"well, it is a 4 year contract 45 full time employees at $100k/year for 4 years = 18M"

agreed. i'm sure if they tried to do it in-house, you'd end up with a terrible website that cost 10x as much.

7/16/2009 1:54:08 PM

After looking at smartronix's website...they should have gone with someone else. really poor site design. I would expect better.

7/16/2009 5:07:49 PM

So it roughly 2.4 million dollars a year to build, host, and run a website that manages and holds how much data and distributes it to how many visitors?

7/16/2009 6:18:04 PM

i can see the costs for a very good site..

that said.. i could see that money being used in some other capacity that would be more beneficial. i like to keep in mind how this money is being generated (for all intents and purposes, thin air). is this site just displaying information on spending? if so, wow. just spit out some tabular data and be done with it. this thing doesn't have to be 2.0 with all the prettiest graphs and charts to show billions of dollars sinking into a hole.

* looked at the smartronix site again. holy crap. they don't have skip navigation, they're using all cap HTML tags, JavaScript is in the source, and the tables aren't even close to 508-compliant. gg, they're hiring a company that has no idea how to create compliant code even on their own site. did i mention the table-based layouts and inline styles? the source of this thing is almost as bad as the mark-up behind a SharePoint site.


[Edited on July 16, 2009 at 6:39 PM. Reason : ]

7/16/2009 6:34:33 PM

^ I guess bad website programming is expensive too.

7/17/2009 7:03:26 AM

guys i know this is hard to believe

but sometimes

"just run it on wordpress" isn't an answer

7/17/2009 7:53:29 AM

I guess I missed the part in the article that says Smartronix is a web design firm...

7/17/2009 10:05:39 AM

Quote :

"this thing doesn't have to be 2.0 with all the prettiest graphs and charts to show billions of dollars sinking into a hole."

Quote :

"holy crap. they don't have skip navigation, they're using all cap HTML tags, JavaScript is in the source, and the tables aren't even close to 508-compliant. gg, they're hiring a company that has no idea how to create compliant code even on their own site. did i mention the table-based layouts and inline styles? the source of this thing is almost as bad as the mark-up behind a SharePoint site."

so do you want it to be pretty or ugly?

seems like you're upset that it's somewhere in between.

7/17/2009 11:02:52 AM

I am a supplier to many companies that do GSA contracts, seems like these companies always have the shittiest websites. Much worse than the Smartronix one, at least it has some appeal.

Our client at http://www.corder.com/ will be providing VMware certified training to 150 employees in the DOD, the Govt. didn't seem to care that their site was built by a team of 6th graders in 1996.

7/17/2009 11:58:55 AM

Quote :

"I guess I missed the part in the article that says Smartronix is a web design firm..."

a very good point. when i was running my own software development for hire company, i hated our website. we're not designers or marketers, but that didn't mean we weren't capable at what we did do.

7/17/2009 2:11:39 PM

Quote :

" Our client at http://www.corder.com/ will be providing VMware certified training to 150 employees in the DOD, the Govt. didn't seem to care that their site was built by a team of 6th graders in 1996."

holy god that video on the first page looked like a fucking joke, esp with the volume turned off

not to mention blatant typo's

Quote :

"Have you ever noticed that Gurus do not make good instructors. "

i believe that's a question.. lol

[Edited on July 17, 2009 at 2:17 PM. Reason : asdf]

7/17/2009 2:16:53 PM

Quote :

"I guess I missed the part in the article that says Smartronix is a web design firm..."

you know...any type of software usually has some sort of interface. Now you can hire a company for 9.5M to scrape together a UI designed by engineers . Or you could go with a company that actually has UI/UX designers/developers to design/build your application's front-end and feel like your 9.5M was well spent by people who know what they're doing.

being a web design firm has nothing to do with it.

7/17/2009 2:23:24 PM

Or they could subcontract all that out... which they are going to do.

Apparently, their site was good enough to earn the bid, so it's hard to nitpick, haha

7/17/2009 3:00:25 PM

except its not good enough. What you meant was...its the government.

7/17/2009 3:06:00 PM

looks ok to me

7/17/2009 5:47:19 PM

Quote :

"45 full time employees at $100k/year for 4 years = 18M"

More like 85 employees in India @ $6/day plus a couple in the states @ $600K

7/17/2009 8:58:43 PM

Quote :

"so do you want it to be pretty or ugly? seems like you're upset that it's somewhere in between."

that really doesn't apply to what i said at all. everything that i said about the code had nothing to do with how the UI looked, i was talking about the how incredibly awful the code-behind was. what i did say about the looks still applies, it doesn't have to be pretty, just do it right.

7/17/2009 10:01:58 PM

Quote :

"Our client at http://www.corder.com/ will be providing VMware certified training to 150 employees in the DOD, the Govt. didn't seem to care that their site was built by a team of 6th graders in 1996.""

Quote :

"holy god that video on the first page looked like a fucking joke, esp with the volume turned off"

Yeah, you need to hear it... the guy is a tour guide with a robotic voice, haha

7/17/2009 10:28:45 PM

Quote :

"i'm sure if they tried to do it in-house, you'd end up with a terrible website that cost 10x as much."

i love it when people talk out of their ass.

7/18/2009 1:51:58 PM

if i hit the powerball i would invest 9.5mil in TWW

7/19/2009 9:21:06 AM