The US Government's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Websites
On this week's episode of Reply All we take a tour of the most frustrating websites on the Internet — the ones run by our very own government.
Clay Johnson is a connoisseur of bad government technology. His favorite website to pick on is sam.gov which, according to Clay, is particularly egregious because it functions as the government's front door. Anyone who does contract work for the federal government is supposed to go to register on sam.gov. Whether they want to build a bridge or an airplane or a nuclear power plant, they have to funnel through this archaic portal.
The problem with sam.gov, and so much of US government websites, is that they are built by tech companies who bid on the projects years before they ever come to fruition. And, in order to submit their bids, companies have to engage in a frustratingly long and complicated registration process involving thirty page applications and lengthy wait times. The result: the companies that win the bids are the best at the bidding process, but not necessarily the best at building websites. Many of the resulting sites are buggy and extremely user-unfriendly. This is exactly what happened in the case of the most recent and well-known government website flop: healthcare.gov.
