Back in July, a software company named
Smartronix [1] landed an $18 million contract to build a Web site where
taxpayers could easily track billions in federal stimulus money. It was just another part of the Obama administration’s ongoing effort to bring
transparency to stimulus spending, we were told.
But it seems the drive for transparency doesn’t cover the contract itself.
After weeks of prodding by ProPublica and other organizations, the General Services Administration released copies of the contract and related
documents that are so heavily blacked out they are virtually worthless.
Don’t believe us?
Take a look. [2]
ProPublica sought the contract under the Freedom of Information Act to find out what kind of site Smartronix planned to build and to assess whether it
justified the cost, which Republican critics of the stimulus plan called “
unreal.” [3]
Ed Pound, the director of communications for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, defended the redactions as “legitimate.” The Web
site Smartronix is to build will replace
Recovery.gov [4], the existing stimulus Web portal run by the
transparency board.
“I’m not concerned about whether journalists are concerned about this,” Pound said. “We have been very transparent.”
The GSA declined to comment, but said in its response to ProPublica’s FOIA request that such redactions were allowed if material “involves
substantial risk of competitive injury” to a contractor.
But the blacked-out information includes material that seems harmless to the company, such as the names and backgrounds of
key personnel [2] and the
number of visitors expected [5] by the site during traffic
spikes.
Some sections of the contract were redacted in their entirety. They include:
the project’s
management structure [17];
something called the “
Strategic Advisory Council [18]”;
quality assurance [19] procedures;
five pages on
user experience [20];
site navigation [21];
four unidentified pages [22] on which everything, even section
headings, have been redacted;
every single piece of information in the document’s
pricing table
[23], including function, vendor, model, part ID, detail and quantity;
the contract’s
warranty agreement [24].
Read the Rest
HERE
TALK ABOUT TRANSPARENCY!!!!