www.electronicvoting.ie - how much?

tricky D

Take a look at: http://www.electronicvoting.ie

and give us your reasonable estimate on what the annual hosting charge and the design and development cost of this site should be.

Real costs to follow later.

smcelhinney

My good jaysus, thats the most hideous piece of web design I think I've ever come across. Is it supposed to be that slow?

Having said that, and being completely realistic, I would imagine that the design cost in the region of 2-3K (with the guts of that being spent on those 'interactive flash demos') with an annual hosting charge of about €50-€60 per month (as it seems to be only static HTML), although Im so far detached from Irish hosting and design charges that I may be completely off the mark.

Hit me?

mneylon

I assume the costs are based on the system actually handling the entire electronic voting for the country?

(Which I know it hasn't .. )

JDxtra

Assuming it was done by a small professional company so... Design : €2,000. Annual hosting: €200.

Dublin_Gunner

wow 1999 web design ftw.

I'll play devils advocate here and assume the site is designed in such a way that even people on a 386 a mono screen can still gain access. (i.e. it gives them the most potential 'market' penetration for the purposes for which the site serves)

tricky D

Blacknight wrote: »

I assume the costs are based on the system actually handling the entire electronic voting for the country?

(Which I know it hasn't .. )

Just the site

ocallagh

Website: 700-800, maybe 1k if they had to compile content themselves. It is absolutely awful though and I would demand my money back.

Flash: Unsure, I'm not a flash programmer but I'd guess it took them a few days so I'll say 1k to be fair.

Hosting: Static html so min RAM required. Bandwidth for flash might be big I dunno.. 300 to 400 per year? Although if they're not marketing the site to the public you'd get away with a small package with letshost for 100 or so

randombar

Shur I would have done it for a six pack and a 100 euro . . . .


I heard that somewhere recently

tricky D

Here's the shocker:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0212/1224264274882.html

The design and development costs for the website in 2004 were €40,257. The annual cost in 2009 in respect of hosting the website, including domain name registration, was €1,881.

The annual maintenance cost of €1,881 was "small beer", ...

Imo we're looking at design/dev costs at at least 10 times over the odds and hosting costs around the same. It's often perplexing how costs for gov sites get to such a level and some of the choices of designers/developers I find just bizarre.

tomED

Another example of the government's ridiculous spending on web projects... I would have said around €4-5k by a pro company assuming they have a CMS and did the flash movies.

No wonder they didn't flinch at the asking price for the FAS website.....

forbairt

GaryCocs wrote: »

Shur I would have done it for a six pack and a 100 euro . . . .


I heard that somewhere recently

50 quid and a 6 pack * grumbles at lines getting stolen *

TitoPuente

Jesus

HandWS LTD

Its not suprising. I've seen an example of this before by the government, where the government were the people who gave the cost on how much they think it will cost for the designer/developer to design the site for them.

It just shows what some people are willing to fork out. Surely, they won't make the same mistake again but others will as they are too lazy to look online and get free quotes.

mr.knowitall

HandWS LTD wrote: »

Its not suprising. I've seen an example of this before by the government, where the government were the people who gave the cost on how much they think it will cost for the designer/developer to design the site for them.

It just shows what some people are willing to fork out. Surely, they won't make the same mistake again but others will as they are too lazy to look online and get free quotes.

900-1k. wouldn't pay more. the design isnt great to be honest..:cool:

mattfinucane

Are contracts like these still being awarded even in recent times?

PeakOutput

tricky D wrote: »

It's often perplexing how costs for gov sites get to such a level and some of the choices of designers/developers I find just bizarre.

i dont find it perplexing at all. the goverment get over charged for everything because they dont know any better because they are run by life long civil servants

they hire a private company because they have no idea how to do a job the company knows this and completely fleeces them

this isnt the first time and it wont be the last

PeakOutput

mattfinucane wrote: »

Are contracts like these still being awarded even in recent times?

probably not to the same extent but the goverment will always be overcharged

Eoin

I'd have thought it's kind of hard to say how much over the odds the hosting is, without having any idea of the traffic the site gets, let alone the hosting configuration?

mneylon

eoin wrote: »

I'd have thought it's kind of hard to say how much over the odds the hosting is, without having any idea of the traffic the site gets, let alone the hosting configuration?

Very true.

ocallagh

eoin wrote: »

I'd have thought it's kind of hard to say how much over the odds the hosting is, without having any idea of the traffic the site gets, let alone the hosting configuration?

Based on the information we have from the article in the Irish Times, and some rough figures from alexa etc I think it's safe to assume the traffic to the site is very low. The product this site was built for has not been used in over 7 years.

Also, it is a static HTML site. From that we can gather the hosting configuration is fairly basic or at least should be.

jmcc

ocallagh wrote: »

Based on the information we have from the article in the Irish Times, and some rough figures from alexa etc I think it's safe to assume the traffic to the site is very low. The product this site was built for has not been used in over 7 years.

Also, it is a static HTML site. From that we can gather the hosting configuration is fairly basic or at least should be.

Isn't it also hosted on Local Government IP space?

Regards...jmcc

matt-dublin

What a contract!

wish I had it. Loving the retro styling as well!!! Trying to bring webdesign back to the 90s, fantastic idea, retro is sooooooo in these days!

God for the level of design i think i'd charge, maybe 400 for that, plus 100 for hosting and domain ha ha

matt-dublin

its alright....

i found out what cost 40K....
http://www.electronicvoting.ie/english/flashdemo.html

even the fecking machines look like they belong in NASA Mission Control during the first moon landing!!!!

ha ha ha

Eoin

ocallagh wrote: »

Also, it is a static HTML site. From that we can gather the hosting configuration is fairly basic or at least should be.

Unless it's on shared hosting, then would there still not be a support overhead for the server itself?

I'm not going to defend the actual design of the site - but is there a chance that it wasn't that big an earner for the design company? I can imagine countless hours of meetings that they might have had to attend throughout the process.

cormee

Shoddy workmanship Ted, shoddy workmanship

seamus

eoin wrote: »

Unless it's on shared hosting, then would there still not be a support overhead for the server itself?

I'm not going to defend the actual design of the site - but is there a chance that it wasn't that big an earner for the design company? I can imagine countless hours of meetings that they might have had to attend throughout the process.

There would have been a lot of talk no doubt, but there's a weekend's work in there for anyone with a modicum of cop-on.

No, government overspending is rife. I was handling a small website for an EU project which the SEI were involved with. It had been "live" for two years when they turned around told me that the EU wanted the website overhauled and had €40k to spend. I told them I could do it for €5k (and that was overcharging) and they told me that the €40k had to be spent.

I had my little ethical man ringing in one ear, fear that I'd be shown up as a chancer in the back of my head and visions of appearing before tribunals for charging €40k for a €5k website, so I backed out and they went with someone else.

Who gave them a website worth about €5k, which was taken down a year later because the project had finished.

I won't be turning down any more government work, and I'll be spending their budget....