Protest slows NASA open source project, FCW
“The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s plans to transition to a content management system with open source architecture are on hold for a little while. The agency awarded a $40 million blanket purchase agreement in mid-December to Rockville, Md.-based InfoZen to replace the agency’s existing CMS – operated for several years by eTouch Federal Systems LLC – with open source architecture to run its 140 websites and 1,600 web assets and applications. But that contract has come under protest from eTouch Federal Systems LLC, which filed a formal bid protest on Dec. 28 against NASA’s new deal with InfoZen.”
NASA Selects Internet Services Agreement
“NASA has selected InfoZen Inc. of Rockville, Md., for the Web Enterprise Service Technologies prime blanket purchase agreement to support agency websites.”

Biologist, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Biologist and Payload integrator, Editor of NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com, Lapsed climber, Explorer, Synaesthete, Former Challenger Center board member...

8 replies on “NASA Website Upgrades Are On Hold”

  1. $40 million blanket purchase. Formal bid protest. Delays.

    All for website upgrades. Gross.I am astonished that this is the way things work. I would love for NASA to (be able to?) act more like a startup: pick a direction -> go.

    1. I just hope they aren’t wasting their money for nothing, as the last thing the Americans need is for it’s government to spend money on stuff it doesn’t it have to.

  2. The heck… NASA’s website is pretty amazing, although I would change some things (de-emphasize stuff no one cares about), that is mostly as a matter of opinion.

    But $40 million to replace the nice thing they already have with a CMS that will be obsolete and migrated from by the end of the decade anyways. Hasn’t NASA been looking for tens of millions here and there to support actual space programs? And now we’re blowing quite a bit on a new website?

    Reminds me of Lockheed Martin’s $3,500 per line of code F-35 bug-fix contract.

    Of course this country’s finances are a mess in the age of the $2000 MRI test, the $120 million Fighter Jet (to be bought by the thousands), the $14 billion aircraft carrier (up from $4b with the Nimitz), the $8 billion dollar space telescope, and the $40 million website.

    Dear Congress: it isn’t the number of programs at fault for our nation’s fiscal mess. It’s what the people you’re paying taxpayer money to are charging you for what you need. The “fleecing of America” a decade and a half ago has turned into an outright Viking-style pillage. 

  3. “$40 million”? clearly my thinking about Web sites needs adjustment. I recognize the complexity of the task, but $40M?

    I wonder what characterizes the provider, too. Maybe Im in the wrong business. OTOH, and more likely, the complexity of the task is isn’t imaginable to mere mortals.

  4. 140 websites, in a spider web of links, and 1600 other things going on. There is the problem. Care to guess how many NASA and NASA contractor “IT Gurus” are inputting data into this pile? If they want to cut the bill, they need to get a handle on this and start consolidating. No reason to have more than a few dozen sites at most. But we all know it wont happen.

    1. Agreed.  $20K is for a new web site and the rest of the $40M is to figure out the existing mess and who belongs to what.

  5. The websites are simply the tip of the iceberg that is the dysfunctional and toxic nature of the NASA family.

  6. I’m just curious what CMS they will use. I’m sure they will modify it quite a bit for their own use. Or will they be building a brand new OS CMS?

Comments are closed.