NEWS
Web Firm Rips Off the City of Vancouver to the Tune of $3,000,000
The City of Vancouver has unveiled a redesign of its website that cost up to three million dollars, hoping that users will find the new Vancouver.ca easier to navigate than the past incarnation. According to city spokesperson Laurie Best, two million dollars was allocated by a previous council towards a new content management system, and a further million was approved by the current council for a new visual platform. In the city’s 2012 budget, $1.5 million was put toward the project.
Fucking unreal (can it be the whole story?). Here's what they got for all that money. This guy inadequately tries to explain how it's possible for the site to cost so much. We hear Vancouver residents are up in arms.
Comments
Shit, I'd design a way worse site for just $2.5 million
Why is this so hard to believe? It's an entire platform they programmed. There are startups that get more cash and show less for it.
I do see some problems (especially on the front-end and especially with the big images) but it seems like a mainly back-end company built the thing so I'm not too surprised.
$3mil is a good chunk of money, yes, but it's a pretty big site with pretty big shoes to fill (not the former site but with expectation). It seems to solve everything it needs to solve.
With that said:
Front-end. They need to spend at least 2 months extra on that, and make that thing great, not just mediocre/good.
The price doesn't shock me.
I'm shocked that they spent that much money and time planning and building the site, are expecting a longer shelf life than the average private sector site, and I still have to pinch and zoom to view it on my phone.
They also didn't QA very well - in five minutes of randomly clicking around, I found broken links and big usability issues (calendars without months or dates, etc).
A little disappointed in TDE for covering this story with a very opinionated headline and no fact to back up why they ripped them off. You have no story about, "the web company popping bottles in champagne rooms," or that "the city of Vancouver filed a complaint that the company did not deliver the promised scope of work," or that "a board member got the contract assigned to his cousin."
I don't expect you to be journalists, because at the end of the day you aren't - however, I do highly respect you guys as an aggregator and just wish that you provided some meat behind a very strong accusation headline.
I fixed it.
http://cat.vancouver.ca.meowbify.com/
"They also didn't QA very well". Ha. Says the person who has her name spelled wrong in her egotist profile. ;)
In all seriousness. Is the cost high? Yep, but this is a government bureaucracy which aren't know for their efficiency. Seems like a circle jerk of massive proportions. With that said, what chaps my ass is that when the price tag is announced you get all the arm chair quarterbacks coming out of the wood work. "I could have done that for 1k rabble rabble rabble". Have fun with that.
That's a $3M stack of Gantt charts, my friends. Doubtful that it includes the salaries of their internal team of PeopleSoft & SharePoint devs. What people should be upset about is that they didn't choose - or better, invent - an open source solution. That doesn't mean it would be any cheaper or easier to integrate. But perhaps Vancouver residents would get to use the software in return for their tax dollars.
Three million seems about right. I don't think people actually appreciate what it takes to launch a huge project like this.
This headline is straight link bait.
3mil and they couldn't design responsive? There isn't even any mobile optimisation!
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