The Government Shutdown on the Web
1–10 of 52 posts
Re: The Government Shutdown on the Web
#2Sometimes it's not about saving money, it's about deliberately making "saving money" look a lot worse than it is.
Re: The Government Shutdown on the Web
#3Sometimes it's not about saving money, it's about deliberately making "saving money" look a lot worse than it is.
Re: The Government Shutdown on the Web
#4The sky is still up...so I guess I'll carry on with my day.
Re: The Government Shutdown on the Web
#5Silly, but a good way to avoid this would be not shutting down the government.
Re: The Government Shutdown on the Web
#6This article and the many others like it are missing the point. The purpose of the shutdown is not just to save money, it's also to force a break in the stalemate. In fact, I'd argue that breaking the stalemate is the primary purpose.
> That doesn’t seem to account for some of the weird patterns we see, however.
The author is overthinking it. The most likely scenario is that an official email went out to all webmasters with the message "Shut it down NOW, people. And then go home." The assorted webmasters then executed the shutdown with varying degrees of skill and diligence before heading off for a drink. Thus, some subdomains are still available, redirects are implemented inconsistently, etc.
Here's a list of agencies[1] exempt from the Antideficiency Act[2], a more interesting question would be: are any of those websites down?
[1] http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34680.pdf (p13)
[2] http://www.gao.gov/legal/lawresources/antideficiencybackgrou...
Re: The Government Shutdown on the Web
#7This article and the many others like it are missing the point. The purpose of the shutdown is not just to save money, it's also to force a break in the stalemate. In fact, I'd argue that breaking the stalemate is the primary purpose. > That doesn’t seem to account for some of the weird patterns we see, however. The author is overthinking it. The most likely scenario is that an official email went out to all webmaste…
Right. Bosses in the government are not any more amused by these legislative shenanigans than we the people are. The more things that are broken, the louder people will complain and the quicker the bosses will get their funding back.
Re: The Government Shutdown on the Web
#8The author seems to take a one-dimensional approach to these determinations. There's much more at play than raw dollar amounts for running servers. While some commenters might see these web shutdowns as part of a larger strategy to win a political fight, they're overlooking some very basic and practical reasons.
Agencies are responsible for the content of their websites. If the agency is shut down, there is legally-significant content online that is under no chain of accountability. Every web page on a government site is a potential liability. In the normal course of business (e.g. when the government is not shut down), every piece of content goes through some sort of approval process, or at least someone can be held accountable for it.
Imagine a law is amended, but FCC.gov still has guidance published on the pre-amended statute. Kind of a crude example, but I think it highlights the problems of not going whole-hog on shutting down these websites.
Moreover, it's pretty difficult to not defer to an agency's judgment when they have been winnowed from ~1700 employees to something around 12.
Re: The Government Shutdown on the Web
#9This article and the many others like it are missing the point. The purpose of the shutdown is not just to save money, it's also to force a break in the stalemate. In fact, I'd argue that breaking the stalemate is the primary purpose. > That doesn’t seem to account for some of the weird patterns we see, however. The author is overthinking it. The most likely scenario is that an official email went out to all webmaste…
> The purpose of the shutdown is not just to save money
You write like there's some grand unified purpose to this whole thing. There isn't. This is the natural consequence of not setting a budget, which many different sides had different purposes to not set.
Ostensibly, the consequences of a government shutdown are, supposedly, lower FUNDING to pay for some government service. Given this, it would seem that HIGHER spending would seem ridiculous. Financial motivations in cases like this are supposed to override anything else. The motivations are clearly NOT financial.
So the belly-aching about how A and B are suffering because of a lack of funding is not necessarily true. It could also be to make this situation seem worse than it is. In public discourse, the squeaky wheel gets the funding.
Re: The Government Shutdown on the Web
#10It’s easy to imagine how this might often be the case: if the “inessential” public-facing Web pages are hosted on the same systems you’ve got to keep up and running for other “essential” back-end purposes [...]
Does this not then constitute an information leak about what seemingly "inessential" public-facing sites are housing "essential" services (that perhaps should not be on public-facing hosts)?