What NOT to do - public funding boondoggle

$2.6M in public grant money spent, 199 users

[jtara]

Sorry to say, my home town is making the news again. I'm afraid as a city we can't get anything right lately:

The San Diego Workforce Partnership spent $2.6 million on an online program for job hunters that took four years to develop and is little more than a compilation of Web links that so far has attracted 199 users.

[signonsandiego.com...]

I'm curious - can anyone identify the CMS used to create the site?

[zCat]

Can't help you with the precise app, but a header check reveals it's running on "Oracle9iAS/9.0.2 Oracle HTTP Server" and appears to be a JSP (Java Server Pages) application.

More importantly, I wonder why they don't make use of a strategically placed hyphen in the URL: to my untrained eye the site name appears to be "Sandie Goatwork" ;).

[jtara]

Yea, what is essentially a static site with no user interactivity needs an Oracle server. ;)

I also note that the site is apparently on it's own leased line, rather than being hosted in a data center. I'm guessing it's located in their offices (which, based on the mailing addess is at least in an affordable part of town), attended-to by a full-time IT staff.

(OMG, they have a block of 6 class C networks assigned to them!)

Hey, they had to spread that $2.6M around...

[LifeinAsia]

At least they didn't spend $2.5M for a "data center" that just happens to be the same address as the senior manager's house, and a 7/24 IT staff named "Boots" that just happens to be the senior manager's cat.

Or did they?

[physics]

He blames events out of the Partnership's control – most notably the Sept. 11 terror attacks, which changed military priorities.

Wow, congratulations on the stupidest use of 9/11 in a sentence. Sure, 9/11 is the reason your web application sucks, that makes sense. The programmers were watching the news 24/7 so couldn't get anything done I guess (oh wait, there were no actual programmers ... maybe that was part of the problem?).
When will govt/big companies learn that if they want to avoid disasters like this they should hire nerds and not their business school buddies?

[vincevincevince]

This looks like a clear-cut case of a firm delivering what it promised but the client not assigning sufficient resources to their part of the implementation. The site looks like it is dripping with advanced functionality but none of it is being used.

Imagine paying a fortune for an advanced financial management and accounts system suitable for a large corporation but only using it to track petty cash from the top draw and you're pretty much looking at the same thing.

The claim that terrorist attacks caused a change in military priorities has nothing to do with this. The grant was made before the terrorist attacks and was made for stated aims. Those aims should have been unshakably followed.

If the military want something else then they should either cancel the project and start a new one, or start an additional product concurrently with the new priorities. To me it looks like extreme mismangagement from the military side more than anything.

[walkman]

slooow too. How about FBI paying $170 million for a system that they had to scrap?

"FBI officials indicated they expect to get the consultant's conclusion by the end of the month. They predicted that at least $130 million of the $170 million project could be lost."
[cnn.com...]

All one needs to do is bribe a few key people, get a project, get rich and retire.