Meet the New Boss (yadda, yadda)

ABC reports this morning that the Maryland firm Smartronix has won what seems like an enormous $18 million contract to re-design the Recovery.gov website. Approximately $9.5 million would be spent by January in order to make “Recovery 2.0″ out of the site that is at least supposed track the spending of federal stimulus funds in detail.

Smartronix, a medium-sized Maryland-based firm (over 500 employees) founded in 1995, boasts a large number of government clients, mostly military. The company appears to have just one important political connection: according to FEC records, Smartronix president, Mohammed Javaid, vice president Alan Parris, and partner John Parris have together given $19,000 to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D) since 1999.

Hoyer-linked firm wins $18M Recovery.gov contract | Washington Examiner

via Cap’n Ed, who notes something I also found odd wildly out-of-whack:

Since when does it cost $18 million for a website, even one with a database requiring updates on a quarterly basis? Fedspending.org, the project from OMB Watch, does exactly what Recovery.gov promises for a fraction of that cost — and Fedspending covers the entire federal budget, not just Porkulus.

Fedspending provides a look at Smartronix’ interactions with the government. In FY2007, for instance, Smartronix got $47 million in federal contracts. Of that revenue, only $132,000 came in the form of fully open, multi-bid competition. Its other contracts either came as the result of a single-bid competition ($25 million) or competition with other sources excluded ($20 million).

Did other companies bid on the Recovery.gov contract?

To the last question: No.Frackin’.Way.

Servers are relatively cheap; MySQL and Apache cost jack shit to implement. Anybody with the ability to purchase the hardware and afford the bandwidth can run the required software to front an outrageous website. $18 mill is fucking ridiculous.

1  1