On June 12, 2008 the US Government's General Services Administration issued a presolicitation to overhaul Recovery.gov, which happens to use Drupal. This is the federal Web site dedicated to tracking stimulus spending. Request for proposals are expected to be released on Monday June 15, 2009. Apparently only vendors on GSA's Alliant contract will be eligible to submit proposals according to an article by Nextgov at http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20090612_5596.php.
Recovery.gov is a Drupal site that received a great deal of fanfare when it was launched in 2007. Now the word is that so far, watchdogs, open government advocates and lawmakers have been underwhelmed with the content and capability of Recovery.gov. Details about the highly awaited solicitation are scant, but the Recovery Board wants to change not only the site's look but also its core focus.
This project by itself would be a challenge. However, because of it's high profile and the fact that it uses Drupal, the success of the project may affect Drupal's future use by the government. The "lucky contractor" who gets the nod from the General Services Administration will have it's hands full.
I don't know the specifics of the solicitation, but I hope that the Recovery board will not blame Drupal and it's technology for the underlying problems that the site has. That would be a cop out. The underlying technology of websites is seldom the reason that user requirements and needs are not being met.
Having worked as a website manager and redesigned a site, I personally suspect that the challenge will not be whether Drupal's technology can meet the test. It will come down to whether the folks at the Recovery Board can reflect and prioritize their needs so that the developers will be able to deliver the goods.
The contractor should pay special attention to the comments of users and focus on the site's usability. Government websites are notorious for their poor usability. That's because government people are focused on getting every bit of information on a page. They are also reluctant to identify user segments and plan the site for their use. The common reply is that the site is for the "public"..... the result is that everyone is faced with too much information and frustration mounts as the major users try and can't accomplish a given goal. A better way to design is to focus on the major users and gear the site to what they want to accomplish. These include government watchdogs, open government advocates and lawmakers. In other words, don't get lost in minutia and fret that some one will be left out.
Comments
Recovery.gov going .Net
Smartronix has won the contract to redesign Recovery.gov. Unfortunately, it appears based on the skills required of Web Developer positions in their current career openings, that Smartronix is a .Net shop, so while nothing has said explicitly that they'll be abandoning Drupal, all evidence seems to point that way.
As a developer pushing Drupal adoption in an "enterprise" scale shop with a significant number of government clients, it was nice to be able to point to Recovery.gov as a production site running in Drupal. While Drupal still powers many meaningful sites like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the UN Millennium Campaign, none of those have quite the same impact in my organization as Recovery.gov did.
Nothing personally against the Smartronix crew, but I'm hoping they hose it up (not unlikely given the scale of change needed and the 7 month timeline) and we can get a Drupal shop in there to fix it.
Sources
Recovery.gov Web Developer Tapped http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/policy/showArticle.jhtml?...
Recovery.gov Development Contract Details Coming http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/policy/showArticle.jhtml?...
Recovery.gov contractor selection implications
Thanks for the update. It would be a shame if Drupal is "thrown under the bus" for the wrong reasons.
I am not sure that Smartronix's current job openings have anything to do with their selection, but their Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) level 3 rating may have. See http://www.smartronix.com/ABOUTUS/CMMI/tabid/122/Default.aspx. These days the Feds are very sensitive to project management cost overruns etc. Projects and companies that don't deliver results are easily abandoned and their software gets a bad rep too. If the initial contractor had problems in this area that may have been a crucial factor.
Nevertheless Smartronix will still have to grapple with the issues I mentioned above and .NET is not going to be able to help them negotiate those waters. A good Drupal sub contractor could and one would hope that Smartronix would be open to partnering with one. That would be good for the Drupal Community and also expand and diversify Smartronix's capabilities.
There is still a lot of federal government business out there so Drupal shops should not get too worked up over recovery.gov. Drupal shops who want to go after that government business would be wise to learn about CMMI or team up with an IT contractor that has a rating of 3 or better. See http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/general/index.html.
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Millennial Living- Smart remodeling.
Gag, aspx
Sorry to say, but news of this came to me this AM:
http://www.OpenSecrets.org/news/2009/09/capital-eye-opener-tuesday-sep-4...
"RECOVERY DOT GOV, RELOADED: Recovery.gov, the Obama administration's website that tracks and showcases stimulus spending, was updated Monday…"
Checking the link, I see it loads http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/home.aspx
Which, as one might expect, is loaded with errors: 116 Errors, 207 warnings, and that's using HTML 4
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.recovery.gov%2FPages%...
But at least the homepage loads on my Mac/Safari and doesn't tell me I need to "upgrade" to MSIE.
What a serious let-down on the road to "openness."
Here's another comment: http://drupal.org/node/376313#comment-2092678
This is sad...a few weeks
This is sad...a few weeks ago, I was showing this to a couple of my employers' federal clients as an example of a large scale site rolled out using the same technology they were going to get in their internet and intranet sites; then I saw this a couple of weeks ago, and was sad.
Now it is filled with a lot of ghetto, out-of-the-box .NET controls (I love that a brand new $18 million dollar website is using tables for large chucks of its layout, mainly due to how crappy stock .NET controls are; for $18 million, you could have at least programmed your own controls, or bought a nicer one for the main navigation that use modern markup!?), inline CSS, about 5 times the amount of markup necessary (such as the hidden application states embedded into most .NET applications), and hundreds of validation errors to boot. Also, vestigial code left over from development litters the site, such as
var __wpmExportWarning='This Web Part Page has been personalized. As a result, one or more Web Part properties may contain confidential information. Make sure the properties contain information that is safe for others to read. After exporting this Web Part, view properties in the Web Part description file (.WebPart) by using a text editor such as Microsoft Notepad.';var __wpmCloseProviderWarning='You are about to close this Web Part. It is currently providing data to other Web Parts, and these connections will be deleted if this Web Part is closed. To close this Web Part, click OK. To keep this Web Part, click Cancel.';var __wpmDeleteWarning='You are about to permanently delete this Web Part. Are you sure you want to do this? To delete this Web Part, click OK. To keep this Web Part, click Cancel.';var zz1_TopNavigationMenu_Data = new Object();"Great job , my hat is off to the contractor who won that bid for making an average, if barely passable .NET website and taking my tax money. I can't even find the old dashboard which was actually useful.
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This is beyond sad-- drupal evangelism aside, $18 million for this garbage? Unbelievable. With this economy and the financial challenges the US is facing, I'd really like for someone in govt to justify this expenditure in light of perfectly usable open source tools-- i guess it's really not so hard to believe the govt spends $1000 for a hammer.
Wonder which senator's inlaw or congressman's nephew got this contract anyway.
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Maybe there is a silver lining.....................
When I posted this I was hoping that there would be a more specific response by the Drupal Association or at the very least the drupal shops and companies that had government clients. But there does not seem to be a group that does this.
Perhaps there should be. Is there any interest from the Association or Drupal Shops? I think as a community we should at least find out what went wrong with the original site from the perspective of the government and stakeholders and more important, whether the new site is providing the goods and why.
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Millennial Living- Smart remodeling.
So now Drupal shops can just
So now Drupal shops can just point to whithouse.gov. It uses Drupal now.
Built on SharePoint? This ought to be interesting!
http://ohmygov.com/blogs/general_news/archive/2009/10/23/Recovery-gov-re...
$18M To Redesign Recovery.gov Site...
ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: For those concerned about stimulus spending, the General Services Administration sends word tonight that $18 million in additional funds are being spent to redesign the Recovery.gov Web site. “Recovery.gov 2.0 will use innovative and interactive technologies to help taxpayers see where their dollars are being spent,” “Armed with easy access to this information, taxpayers can make government more accountable for its decisions.” The contract calls for spending $9.5 million through January, and as much as $18 million through 2014, according to the GSA press release.
This is preposterous.
How much could it possibly cost to redesign a web site?
And mind you, this is the site that is supposed to keep the stimulus money from being wasted?
Isn’t irony ironic?
SOURCE:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/07/18m-being-spent-to-redesign-rec...
porta potty rental prices
Maybe they should rename the site Ripoff.gov,,,,,
This absolutely "simple stupid" and something that the US Government Accountability Office at should look into. Obviously the Web Team that operates http://www.whitehouse.gov/ and uses Drupal either does not speak with the clowns at the General Service Administration or the people who oversee http://recovery.gov.
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Millennial Living- Smart remodeling.