The City of Boulder Does Not Trust the City of Boulder's Web Development Companies

Shameful when there are so many good firms to choose from in Boulder.

Vision Internet, "The Governement Website Experts". So you're telling me a Santa Monica company is the better solution to know more about the city of Boulder and it's needs than a Boulder company? I'm sure they'll provide bouldercolorado.gov an off-the-shelf, standardized, looks the same as experience, generic and void of any Boulder personality and emotion.

:(

The government not supporting their own community is really weak sauce. Ways RFPs must be handled by the city, be damned.

This is ridiculous. I'm guessing no research was done, nor is there any knowledge by the board in charge of this of Boulder's talent in this industry. Sad.

Californians calling on Californians no doubt

Pwned.

Sincerely,
California

$25k for IA and design of a city website? Hmmm. The IA should be twice that by itself. Probably a good thing that no agencies in Boulder are losing money on this project.

Sometimes it is too close.

Nothing new for Boulder-Denver business with so much potential and proven quality local, connections, or none- when it's time to expand it's time to expand and move beyond.

There are legitimate preferences for this, and the individual decision and growth to go which way, even though it would be functional and nice to be local especially under RFP govt. regulations versus private and unrestricted.

That, my friends, is why government bids suck.

Thems say they take what they can get. RFP work that is.

Niche markets like government, restaurants, and tourism are hard to tackle. I used to work for a company who specialized in tourism websites and I'd routinely see tourism organizations turn down extremely talented web shops for much crappier, niche tourism-centric shops. This company probably fed the Boulder government a bunch of bullshit about how they can build a website that's optimized for government (whatever that even means).

I worked for years for the City of Boulder, and the people there are actually surprisingly competent. My guess is that no one local who was qualified wanted to take this on for that budget. The RFP process is pretty damn good at finding the best firm for the job, and while I believe preference is given to local shops, I'm guessing there was a reason why it went to the vultures out west.

The question is not if there are great interactive shops in Boulder–of course there are. But do any of them REALLY specialize in muni sites? No–not like these guys do.

This Cali shop knows their stuff when it comes these sites (and the politics and the user audiences) and have obviously developed a system within that vertical that allows them to sell sites at that price level.

With their budget I am guessing this was the best choice by far.

E!

Stop whining.

The California shop was probably the most cost efficient and specialized choice.

Will the real winer please spotify up.

The city of Fort Collins Fire Authority just chose a California firm last week for their website over local firms.

Great. It's done. Move on everyone!?!

most government sites
are not about communicating to anyone
except crotchety conspiracy guy who attends every public meeting

if boulder's site was awesome would it
make a difference to anyone?
probably not
so why waste the money

apathy feeds apathy
blame boulder citizens for not caring more

It's not about trust, it's about competence and experience. Due to lawsuits, cities have to have contracts that a re bullet proof, and they need contractors that are on a shortlist of per-approved government bidders or they face more difficult legal challenges. If the contractor hasn't done this before, it's going to be a big headache for them ... you need +1million dollar insurance, you need an attorney to review and negotiate contracts, on and on it goes. I've worked with cities before in other areas and there is a reason that not a lot of companies specialize it it. They are serious headaches and not something you just do one time.

Whew, it's a good thing we Colorado designers only do work for Colorado companies. I mean, how would that look if we did any work for companies outside of Colorado, or had clients that were outside the towns we live in? That would mean we were taking work from designers in those states and cities, even if we were the best person/agency for the job, and that would make us hypocrites.

Some specializations have guidelines to stay within states due to indepth detail, as has been mentioned, but pragmatically speaking, if you have honed your craft, and are proven at the highest level of skill for quite some enduration of time, you should be able to work for anyone anywhere and handle the competition as business differs from small to larger scale. People get their own personalized niche preferences within the set standard.

Til then...!

If you think your guaranteed rights and your comfortable - your a shitty and boring designer.