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The 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 c

The 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.

zenocon 13y ago
And that's all well and good, but the OP also points out the inconsistency in policy -- e.g. front page shutdown but many other subdomain sites still running. I guess in the end one may chalk it up to pure inefficiency. I'm sure there are probably multiple groups of people responsible for multiple servers under one domain, but still, it seems a little childish at this point to shut down one server if you're doing it for liability reasons, and yet leave up a whole slew of others on the same domain. I mean nasa.gov -- really? Was it necessary to redirect that?
- jbooth 13y ago
  Hanlon's razor seems to be knocking on the door here. They made their best effort to shut down the sites they're supposed to shut down, by law, whether it's good business or not. They were doing this in a bit of a challenging situation, with a skeleton crew and a lot of legal uncertainty, plus the individuals in charge were probably operating at pretty low morale. Some broken eggs and spilled milk (in the ironic form of better-functioning-than-expected sites) are to be expected.

zenocon 13y ago

And that's all well and good, but the OP also points out the inconsistency in policy -- e.g. front page shutdown but many other subdomain sites still running. I guess in the end one may chalk it up to pure inefficiency. I'm sure there are probably multiple groups of people responsible for multiple servers under one domain, but still, it seems a little childish at this point to shut down one server if you're doing it for liability reasons, and yet leave up a whole slew of others on the same domain. I mean nasa.gov -- really? Was it necessary to redirect that?

jbooth 13y ago
Hanlon's razor seems to be knocking on the door here. They made their best effort to shut down the sites they're supposed to shut down, by law, whether it's good business or not. They were doing this in a bit of a challenging situation, with a skeleton crew and a lot of legal uncertainty, plus the individuals in charge were probably operating at pretty low morale. Some broken eggs and spilled milk (in the ironic form of better-functioning-than-expected sites) are to be expected.