A company called Smartronix will get $18,000,000 to redesign Recovery.gov, the federal Web site intended to track where federal Recovery Act spending goes.
The government purchased technology for a similar site (with a somewhat smaller scope), USASpending.gov, from the non‐profit group OMB Watch for only $600,000. A private company already provides information on Recovery Act spending to the public for free.
[Update: A link formerly just above at “for free” has been removed. To learn the unusual circumstances of the removal, check out: Copyright Law’s Abuse.]
I wrote here enthusiastically about the plans of the Sunlight Foundation to go after this contract, saying “[T]he contract award will now be subject to public scrutiny. Value‐for‐dollar to the taxpayer will be easily discernible, and that will raise the political risks of awarding the contract based on cronyism or go‐with‐whatchya‐knowism. Transparency in all things.”
Sunlight did not ultimately bid. Instead, it took some lessons about the government contracting business. The transparency I wrote about materialized, though, and we can take a lesson, too: The federal government will pay $18,000,000 for one freaking Web site.
