What follows is my post to Slashot.org in response to a comment about the following news story:

http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/07/18m-being-spent-to-redesign-recoverygov-web-site.html

I'll wait here while you go read it. Do-de-do-de-do. Ah, you're back.

The comment I responded to asked why the writer should feel a sense of rage that the government wanted to make themselves more open and accountable. Several people responded.

That slashdot page is here http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/07/09/1711238/Recoverygov-To-Get-18-Million-Redesign?art_pos=2

So with no further ado, here is my response:

Started to make a joke and decided not to. This isn't funny.

My guess is that on slashdot a really large percentage of the readers are capable of producing a website. A smaller percentage could make a good website and a really small percentage could make a website that will be every bit as good as the upcoming $18 million website from the govt 2.0.

Being good slashdotters, many of them would know of the concept of FOSS (Free Open Source Software).

So the existence of FOSS means that it is possible to achieve this website for the cost of 1) servers, 2) bandwidth, 3) electricity, 4) infrastructure (building, etc), and 5) people to make/run/maintain the site.

Let's say we just take about $1 million and buy a really nice building somewhere. That may not get you much in DC, but all we need is a connection to the internet, right? I seem to heard something in the news recently about real estate and how some people are having trouble selling theirs. Maybe for $1 million dollars we could pick up a really nice building in the mid-west somewhere?

That leaves us $17 million to work with.

If we take the Google approach of buying cheap PC grade hardware and making a big distributed system, we could build a pretty nice farm for another $1 million. Right? Now we are down to $16 million.

If we run more than $100,000 a year for combined bandwidth and electricity, I'd be kind of surprised, so we're good for ten years on $1 million. That leaves $15 million.

That leaves people. So we have $15 million dollars to hire people to make and run a website. Let's spread that over ten years as well. That gives us $1.5 million per year. We'll pay every single one of them $100,000 a year. That means we can have 15 people. Realistically we only need the bulk of those people during the initial redesign, but why quibble? It's only money, right?

So laying it out that way, wouldn't you agree that we should be seeing one heck of a great website? Innovative and interactive indeed!

OMG! Just RTFA! The $18 million tag is not for 10 years, but only 5 years. Wow.

As for your sense of rage, that's up to you. You could feel rage that the government is spending more money for this than is necessary. You could equally feel a sense of irony that they are spending a large sum of money on a site meant to show you how well they are managing your money and not spending it frivolously.

How you react to the story is really up to you.