I was happy to see the creation of Recovery.gov -- in concept. More transparency in government is a positive step. However, leave it to the government to botch it up. As reported by ABC News Wednesday and picked up by many other news and political web sites such as RedState.com and HotAir.com, the Obama Administration awarded a 5 year $18 million contract to Smartronix, a Maryland-based IT firm with connections to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, for the redesign of Recovery.gov.
Anyone in business or the IT field can tell you that it doesn't take $18 million to redesign a web site, even a interactive site...and this site would only be updated quarterly. Businesses design and operate web sites updated constantly for less than that.
Ironically, the Sunlight Foundation, an organization devoted to more transparency in government, developed its web site to track federal spending, fedspending.org, for a meager few hundred thousand dollars. Fedspending.org is also much more comprehensive in is coverage than Recovery.gov.
Maybe the federal government should hire the Sunlight Foundation to show them how it is done.
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