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#1 from .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 26, 2009

I enjoyed a litany of conversations on this topic yesterday both online and offline. There are many valid points, though I think we’re missing the bigger picture. A few points:

1) How many failures until we realize that our community suffers deep fragmentation?

The Domain (Say what you will, but deliberation is the first sign of decadence and this project was poorly managed.)

LightRail. (One week prior to an estimated opening date, I am reading anecdotal tweets from Council Member Mike Martinez about his child’s hopes and wishes about working as a conductor, only to read headlines the following week that the rail project is suspended, indefinitely, because of issues with the contractor/vendors. Said tweets indicated that Martinez had no foreknowledge said suspension was one-week around the proverbial bend. What does this say about communication internally at City Hall? Community communication? Due diligence of the Master bid List—RFP—bid process?)

On a macro-level, despite all good intentions, there is a severe disconnect between leaders in private industry (in all categories) and City Hall. Change in the world has been afoot for almost a decade, and very little has actually been done to bridge divides and actually create a 4th sector community model. The three traditional sectors (private enterprise, government, and for-benefit (non-profit)) are becoming antiquated silos in a mixed economy. One sector working with another, is ubiquitous and certainly we recognize each sector for what it is, respectively; but as time marches on, the harmony of all sectors, equally-yoked, working in unison is the only solution that ensures a sustainable, thriving community. This requires transparency and absolute deference to open communication. On the heels of SXSW—a showcase and celebration of our culture, our talents, our hospitality and our ambition on a global stage—we should be embarrassed that our communal communication is so poor. We should be regularly meeting and planning and setting objectives not for our own proprietary ends, but to ensure that we as a community are doing everything we can to harness and focus our collective energies. Our community is capable of being the most vibrant in the world but we must break down the sector silos and begin acting as a cohesive unit to achieving shared goals, milestones and objectives.

If we can deputize law enforcement, we can deputize innovative leadership to build any team of Austinites to solve any challenge who need no other incentive than the pride to be called to such duty in the genuine spirit of community. (Jon Lebkowsy, that one is for you.)

2)  The municipal RFP process is broken, and to add insult to injury, the internal mechanisms and production channels at City Hall are deeply flawed, inefficient and not cost-effective. Certainly we could do much worse, but why not do much better?

I was the project manager on the last iteration of the City’s webdev for the EGRSO site. Naturally, I learned a lot, especially after composing my own postmortem on the project. Rather than including details here, I will say that there is much that can be done to tighten turns and streamline the entire process; but municipalities are composed of individuals, and as people come and go, said municipalities do not enjoy continuity/institutional memory. Individuals come with preferences, opinions and direction of their own though they do not come with any real accountability. This invariably causes scope and project creep of epic proportions.

Bureaucracy is a dirty word for a reason. If nothing else, City Hall should form an ad hoc committee of leaders in all sectors to investigate current practices and develop more innovative process and methodology that serves the interest of the community not the individual stakeholders.  Compare notes on procurement and fulfillment. There is a company up the road founded by a dude named Michael that wrote the book. Reach out, let’s learn together.

We boast of our agility, but time after time we placate to broken command and control process full of false assumptions so that when we fail, it takes forever, and we only succeed in compromising just about everything.

Lastly on this point, isn’t it about time we revisit the minority owned business prerequisite and reestablish a meritocracy? I realize this is not exclusively the City’s protocol, but there is no longer a need for such a detrimental reliance on gender, race and/or national origin when delivering the best product or service that meets the needs of a community. The sex/gender and/or race of a business owner has never ensured project success, and it never will.

3) The CMS cited in the RFP- Zope/Plone.

Zope/Plone is an absolute nightmare. Ask anyone that uses it. It is also antiquated, clunky code. The learning curve on this platform is a “Z”. That is to say, acclimating to it is inevitably flat. Though I have not confirmed, based on what I know, Zope/Plone has not experienced a code freeze in almost a decade, nor does it enjoy mindshare amongst most coders as most coders have moved on to those communities developing tighter, more robust, and essentially better open source platforms. It is painfully slow. You say Zope/Plone to any architect and you get a chuckle and a snort, after they ask you how much time and money you have. No time and no money? Oh, you must be offshoring this to Estonia or Southeast Asia. There is absolutely nothing elegant about Zope/Plone…save to say that is an old standard that will eventually go extinct… let’s just hope this is after the City’s next WebDev iteration.

This does not bode well for the city’s internal resources, human or otherwise. In addition, this particular RFP mentions nothing about usability and scalability. Ask anyone fluent in UI/UA/UX and they will tell you that no less than 15% of any investment in a web site of this size should be earmarked for usability testing. ADA compliance is one thing, but real usability is quite another. To the point, The City of Austin and it’s citizens will be left holding the bag on this one and you can bet the bottom line will far exceed the initial sticker price, especially when considering the soft costs associated with it.

Towards creative fidelity,
@JasonStoddard

#2 from .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 26, 2009

Thanks for your informed perspecitve, Nick.  I was among those upset the city was sending this project outside Austin and still think the project could be structured to allow involvement by local firms.  However, you make a better point: Eventually, you just need to get it done.  Consider me converted and thanks for your insights.

#3 from Nick Weynand on March 26, 2009

Quick update

The City of Austin has delayed the vote (this came out last night). Statesman article: http://www.statesman.com/search/content/news/stories/local/03/26/0326website.html

#4 from .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 26, 2009

Nick, great post.

This appears to be something that’s lost on so many people ranting with righteous anger:
“Delay an already overdue project and piss off the taxpayers and other citizens of Austin by spending twice as much money.”

I’m not that knowledgeable of the city’s politics and haven’t exactly read the RFP line by line, so take this for the semi-ignorant opinion that it is. We need to give the city a little slack here for being in a no-win situation. Someone was likely going to get the shaft. And honestly, I’d rather they try to save some of their money and hire fireman or other essential services than put it toward a website that you rightly suggest will need to be revised in just a few years.

So rather than vent and spew, let’s get together as an interactive community and figure out how to improve our own services so we can be in a better spot in the future for getting similar contracts from our own city and other municipalities.

@chris_bailey

#5 from .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 26, 2009

Good points, Nick. I think the sticking point for most people is that the city opened the discussion with the requirement that Plone be used.

As much as I hate to say it, it’s probably a wise move by so many local firms that they said ‘no.’ I’d love to see this site done by local talent. But good clients are crucial to a successful project and it the city, in my opinion, was kinda’ looking like a bad client.

#6 from .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 26, 2009

Nick,

Thanks for posting this. I disagree that the City of Austin (COA) didn’t have much of a choice though. I feel their process didn’t allow for local firms to consult on best practices or solutions for the new site. In my opinion, the COA has a responsibility to provide services that directly benefit the economic health of the Austin community.

They spent a lot of time and resources gathering information from local Austin residents and interest groups about what they wanted out of the new Web site, but they failed to reach out to the robust community of interactive agencies in town to learn how the COA could build an infrastructure that would meet all of these needs and allow them to become the resource they set out to be for this community in the first place.

To your three points:

1. Their options may not have been as limited as you say. In the end, the COA may or may not use Plone. I believe there are many agencies in Austin (including TradeMark Media) that could have consulted with the COA on their CMS needs, and provided a better overall solution for them based on the goals they wanted to accomplish. We have worked very successfully with many of our clients’ internal IT teams though highly complex and challenging projects, and I know our Agency peers have done the same.

2. I don’t believe anyone in Austin sees a $700K project as cheap, including the COA. This is a very sizable project and the revenue generated from the project will not be circulated locally to Austin. I see a big problem with a local city government making a decision to outsource this size of a project in a city that is nationally recognized for its expertise in the tech and interactive industry. I believe the reason the COA went with the lowest bidder is because their process didn’t allow enough dialog and information sharing for local agencies to fairly assess and bid on the project. Therefore, they were left with only two agency options.

3. The COA was ready to make a decision – no way! The COA has been “ready to make a decision” on this project for 3 years. I have never known a government entity to be in a rush to do anything. I believe the COA must be held responsible for not taking the necessary steps to ensure that this project was fairly presented to the interactive community here in Austin. If the COA had started a conversation about this with us and our agency peers 3 years ago, they could already have many of the solutions they are looking to California to solve.

As of this morning, it looks like the final vote on this will be postponed. I hope that the COA takes a closer look at the solution they have chosen before moving forward. Perhaps they will rethink what impact this project will have on Austin and the interactive agencies here, not to mention the greater Austin community they serve.

#7 from .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 26, 2009

I’ve been following this story since reading it on Twitter two days ago and now that we’ve gotten all the facts and figures of what happened and now know that the City of Austin is delaying their vote - my question is what’s next?

There have been a lot of gripes and groans about all the reasons why this isn’t right, but what needs to happen so that we don’t find ourselves in this position again? Is there concensus in the Austin tech community about what we WANT to do? I haven’t heard anything yet, but would love to hear some ideas.

By the way, for those of you that are interested, there’s a Facebook group set up here:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=63502631547

#8 from .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 26, 2009

Well stated, Nick, and you’re right (in my opinion).

From what I read the City *would* have paid a bit more to have a local company do the work, if the bids had been closer.  I understand that the whole thing has since been called off anyway.

When I heard outrage at the price I had to think there was more to the story than was being acknowledged and you’ve certainly cleared that up for me.

As to the comments about plone being outdated and archaic I can’t even begin to express how completely inaccurate that is.  Plone does have a longer learning curve, partly because it does much more than ‘websites’, but also because it is based on state of the art development and design practices.  Many ‘website’ developers simply aren’t familiar with those techniques and are baffled by them.  Ask those who are familiar with them and you’ll hear the real story. We’re still talking apples and oranges here, to a degree at least.

Thank you Nick for putting some facts on the table.

#9 from .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on May 29, 2009

To Jason and others,

“Zope/Plone has not experienced a code freeze in almost a decade, “

Yeah, that’s probably the reason why the CIA, Novell and Akamai are using it.
It also shows your dubious level of expertise on the matter.

IMHO Plone is an excellent choice for a government website,
there is an award-winning open source project dedicated to this goal: http://plonegov.org

I don’t have a clue by what you mean with “moving on to better open source platforms”.  because I don’t know any. (Certainly nothing based on PHP or Ruby)

And make sure you know and understand the conquences of the little graphs of following page:  http://zope2.zopyx.de/about-zope-2/six-reasons-for-using-zope/zope-is-secure
Think about it,  and then think about it some more.

It’s lame to bathmouth Plone because you don’t know it.

A hospital in my neighboorhood revamped their website with a budget of 2 million euro
spent on a proprietary CMS, and nobody cares,
But your city want to revamp their website based on an very well-reputated and well know international open source CMS, and you cry foul because you decide to never get acquainted with it, no now loose business because of that.

Do we now have to assume that people of Austin only drive cars built in Austin?

If you think Plone is “antiquated”, have a look at these:
http://plone.net/case-studies
http://plone.net/sites