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Comment by datsci_est_2015 | Hacker News Reader

datsci_est_2015

Well, seeing as this one probably cost 4 to 5 (10?) orders of magnitude more than any gov website you may be thinking of…

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Seems unlikely since 4 orders of magnitude more than the ACA website would be $10T. Any source you'd like to cite?

The ACA website is one of the nicest government websites I ever had to use. I assumed the commenter was referencing something like a local Secretary of State website used to update their vehicle registration, which probably goes to the lowest bidder and costs maybe $100k to $1m over its 25+ year lifetime.

We’ll probably never know the true “cost” of America.gov because even if Google is doing it “for free” then they’re not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, there’s a regulatory angle that they’re trying to play or a market they’re trying to corner.

Ooooh man, if you think a DMV site is contracted for 100k-1 million, I have some very, very bad news for you.

That’s not what I said but okay. In Illinois, for example, vehicle registration is handled by ILSOS, not the DMV. Vehicle registration is just one of the many things that ILSOS handles. The entirety of the digital modernization budget for 2026 for ILSOS is (based on cursory searches) $35M. Illinois is one of the larger of the jurisdictions. And one of the higher quality web experiences, probably, as I’ve never had an issue.

Non-interactive websites (that don’t even accept payments) are undoubtedly run on a shoestring budget unless there is a specific case of grifting or corruption. In which case we’re not talking about websites anymore but American grifting culture.

Right, and a modernization can run for as long as 10 years, meaning your budget over the modernization is actually closer to 350 million. The DMV likely just contracts the services to ILSOS and gets billed a ginormous amount in contracting fees.

So you initially say 100k-1 million and then pull a 35 million dollar budget out…seems a little disconnected.

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