$18M Contract For Transparency Website Released — But Blacked Out 384
zokuga writes "The US government recently approved an $18 million contract for Smartronix to build a website where taxpayers could easily track billions in federal stimulus money, as part of President Obama's promise to make government more transparent through the Internet. However, the contract, which was released only through repeated Freedom of Information Act requests, is itself heavily blacked out. ProPublica reports: 'After weeks of prodding by ProPublica and other organizations, the Government Services Agency released copies of the contract and related documents that are so heavily blacked out they are virtually worthless. In all, 25 pages of a 59-page technical proposal — the main document in the package — were redacted completely. Of the remaining pages, 14 had half or more of their content blacked out.' Sections that were heavily or entirely redacted dealt with subjects such as site navigation, user experience, and everything in the pricing table. The entire contract, in all its blacked-out glory, is here."
tagged: !change (Score:5, Interesting)
To add insult to injury, I wonder if it was a no bid contract?
Power corrupts (Score:1, Interesting)
"Power corrupts" may be true
But, equally as true.
The corrupt seek power.
What's the old saying, the more things change the more they stay the same.
"Dad, how do you know that politicisation is lying? His lips are moving."
Re:Transparent? How is this government such? (Score:2, Interesting)
I am also interested in how people are supposed to verify information from the supposed transparency. If the government is the one setting it up, it is childs play to manipulate the system to show what they want. I suppose that is what the redacted sections touched on.
deliverables? (Score:3, Interesting)
http://documents.propublica.org/recovery-gov-contract-documents#p=97 [propublica.org]
Re:tagged: !change (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What do you expect to find in there? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, sort of, except it isn't really just a website. Its a propaganda machine. For better or worse, there's no pretense of neutrality on these sites. They are supposed to represent a '.gov' point of view, but reflect only those positions of the President.
Further, they suck. Under the 'fact check' segment about Obama not seeking to dismantle private insurance, all you find is hand waving. A simple trip to youtube reveals the comments being quoted were NOT taken out of context and/or spliced together.
Either the President is deliberately lying to us or someone is wasting a lot of government money by not doing what he asked them to do.
Unfortunately, with the identities of those involved all redacted, we won't ever get to look into who did what and why. And THAT is NOT transparent.
Picture this - what if the management team were headed up by one Mr Rod R Blagojevich? Does it matter now?
For being more accountable and transparent, this whole thing stinks to high heaven.
Trusting Government... (Score:4, Interesting)
What amuses me is how many sheeple in this country still Trust the government to do what is best for them and to keep them safe.
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FACT: The Government can only always be trusted to take your money and rights away from you.
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Any government form is flawed as it is composed as many flawed individuals who are not good people. From the DMV clerk with an attitude, the City council member who taking kickbacks from the country clubbers, to the senator who is taking money from PACs, all of the way to the president who is taking money from companies like G.E.
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When will people learn that you need government but you need to be vigilant and limit their powers at every turn. We need to also teach people the common ideal that when you let or expect people to take care of a certain aspect of your life you lose some of your freedom. For every sugar coated promise a politician makes there is a equal price to pay in lost control, money or freedom over our own lives.
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The Instant Gratification ME, ME, ME culture of today's society feeds directly to the politician's sweet saccharine promises of how the government is going to take care of them. There used to be a time when people used to have enough pride in themselves that if you gave someone a free meal they would see to it that they would return the favor because they felt if they didn't they would be viewed a selfish loser. We used to bear the burden of our families and help take care of our grandmas and grandpas, aunts and uncles, cousins and children. These days those responsibilities are dropped upon the government who ends up doing a sub standard job of doing so. The politicians don't mind this, in fact they love this dependency on their special programs, they gain power in political capital which ensures that they get re-elected each term. These guaranteed votes allow them to be as corrupt as they want as they no longer fear reprisal. They no longer fear reprisal because they they have large voting block dependent on them.
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Put it this way, when you were a kid and were totally dependent on your parents and your parents grounded you, did you have the power to stand up against them in any meaningful way? No you didn't.
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Same with the government, the more of your life they control and make you dependent on them, the more they can get away with.
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The Government has so much of this control that they are no longer accountable to their own actions. It doesn't surprise me that they would black out information and manipulate documents even when it comes to a promise of transparency. They are all a bunch of corrupt schmucks because we let them be that way. Maybe if we are to be a ME ME ME generation who acts like children, then we really deserve Big Brother or Father watching over until we grow and wake up. What is the German word for Father again????
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We all have inherent human rights, the government's role is not to GRANT you rights, the role of government is to RESTRICT your actions when they infringe upon other people's rights. But people these days think that the government is their parents handing out things like rights, privileges and safety.
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Maybe we deserve exactly what we got.
Re:Really blacked out? (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe, just maybe, it's one of those
PDF dealies where it's not really blacked out
because they're just rendering rectangles over
text that's still in the document.
It is, but you better get your copy before they fix it. Inside, you will see redaction markups that look like this: > and take one of the non-Adobe PDF editors and remove the password protection, remove the redactions, and there it is. Some of the redactions are "burned" since they were done to the original paper before scanning, but most are meta-marks and the original image data is still in the file.
When I finish I will upload it to smokinggun.com probably.
Re:Well this is certainly change (Score:1, Interesting)
Only one side of most issues is armed and knows how to shoot.
Hint: If you hold your pistol sideways you don't know how to shoot.
Further hint: Which party gets the most military and retired military votes?
My prediction: If there is another revolution it will be called a military coup by the losers as the revolutionaries will have the military's support.
My actual prediction: States and groups of states will secede some time after the dollar crashes, starting with Texas.
Re:Well this is certainly change (Score:4, Interesting)
Then why was "a well regulated militia" mentioned in the 2nd amendment?
Sorry to be a gun-rights party pooper, but I have a hunch there's more than meets the eye here.
Re:Really blacked out? (Score:1, Interesting)
I just skimmed over some of the blackout areas and it looks like it's just standard gov't OPSEC for publicly released documents. If you name specific people/software combination that are to be used it can be a security risk as they become potentially obvious targets.
As an example look at page 56-57. It appears they only blacked out peoples names/descriptions that have no need to be publicly contacted in regards to the program. That's what the contract officers are for (page 40).
An accredited gov't contractor could easily get a non-blacked out version of this document. Or if your crafty, you could probably just email the contract officers (provided you can convince them you need one).