GOP RFP

So, the RNC wants to redo their web site. So they put together an RFP for the project. And… good grief. It’s the kind of thing that would have made me, in the days when I did stuff like that as a consultant, say, “Remember to never, ever consider working with these people.” 

You can read it here. I’ll share with you one of my favorite things; this is given as a detail of required deliverable and speaks to the stupidity of whomever wrote this on many levels. 

Flash interfaces can often make mundane tasks exciting, and having Flash behaviors who understand user behavior will make the site more user-friendly. 

(One of the detailed requirements when I was car shopping was, “Wheels are good, especially if they turn.”)

You can read about it lots of places. The Red State blog says, “… there is no way any competent person would put together an RFP like this. It’s crap. It is not legitimate. It is unprofessional. It is illusory.”

The Next Right headlined a piece on it “Clueless Losers” and described it as “masterpiece of confusion and idiocy.”

Those are conversatives who are pinning their hopes on the GOP and should be inclined to be supportive of them

Valleywag quotes RNC Chairman Michael Steele talking about priorities for the web site: 

Chairman Steele made his tech priorities clear… “bottom line is if we haven’t done it — let’s do it. If we haven’t thought of it — think of it. If it hasn’t been tried — why not? If it’s going to be ‘outside the box’ — then not only keep it outside the box, but take it to someplace the box hasn’t even reached yet.” 

(Do you remember times when you were a kid and somebody old – like your Dad or something – would try to sound really hip and with it? And you just wanted to hide while your friends exchanged smirks, and you wished Dad would just shut up and stop making embarrassing you? Yes you do!)

Someone, somewhere, will take the job, because there is money involved, and then a lot of people are going to go through a lot of Advil, and one of two things will happen. The RNC will get a new and really useless site that they love, until it goes live and fails, or (more likely) there will be recriminations, screaming meetings, vendors walking off the job, threats of nonpayment, and they’ll start over with someone who is not an idiot running the project. Perhaps, if they are smart, someone carefully chosen by Steele’s successor.

I really hope they are not that smart; I would like nothing more than to see the Republicans head into the midterm elections under Mr. Steele’s leadership. Because then I think they really will wind up somewhere the box hasn’t even reached yet.