The 100k Recovery.Gov Website that cost 18 Million

The Recovery.Gov website produced at a contract cost of 9.5 million dollars, that came in at total cost of Stimulus dollars of 18 Million. The contract was awarded to Smartronix Inc. President Mohammed Arshed Javaid, Lieutenant General Robert M Shea, Strategic Advisor. Interestingly according to public documents the company only produced 22 million in total revenue.

The Website was written with Drupal a commonly used website software and get this, it's free.

Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Tens of thousands of people and organizations are using Drupal to power scores of different web sites.

The website offered few if any of standard options like verifiable Congressional Districts, a pretty basic part of the scope of a project such as this.

I guess the real impending nature based on my reading that doubled the price of the development was getting it done in 30 days.

Reuters offers a press release of the contract awards Link

Now if you'd like to review the details of the CONTRACT here it is, unfortunately under the Obama administration transparency most of the details have been redacted.

An interesting email exchange:

> On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 8:25 PM, Daniel Kennedy ...@gmail.com>wrote:

I am just left with the sense that Sunlight Labs with volunteers could
have saved the American tax payer about $17.9 million dollars here, and released a better web application. I guess I could be wrong, but this seems backwards.

>> On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 8:23 PM, Kim Rees ...@periscopic.com> wrote:

>>> That's the best laugh I've had all day.

>>> BTW, I think that price tag is egregious.

>>> Kim

>>> *From:* sunlightlabs@googlegroups.com [mailto:
>>> sunlightlabs@googlegroups.com] *On Behalf Of *Jim Gilliam
>>> *Sent:* Wednesday, July 08, 2009 8:17 PM
>>> *To:* sunlightlabs@googlegroups.com
>>> *Subject:* [sunlightlabs] Re: $18M being spent for Recovery.gov
>>> redesign?

>>> The company, Smartronix, got its chops building websites for the
>>> military. So this makes total sense, because the military is all about
>>> transparency.

>>> http://www.smartronix.com/ABOUTUS/Clients/tabid/61/Default.aspx

>>> On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 7:19 PM, Daniel Kennedy <
>>> danielkenned...@gmail.com> wrote:

>>> This is the project you guys were bidding on?

>>> http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/07/18m-being-spent-to-redesign-...

>>> Dan
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
LINK


A Radio program called NoAgenda backs up the email with an estimate much less than 18 million dollars.
Easy Link

Full URL
http://69.16.184.107/f4h2x5q4/cds/media/15412/episodes/172742/noagenda-172742-08-13-2009_pshow_314450.mp3?dopvhost=media.podshow.com&doppl=1c8d58b15788e6ef57d8e6ef12c863a7&dopsig=ddef216c19c95871017ad6c8ad5079de