Malaysian Gov't Spends $600,000 On 6 Facebook Pages 92
gizmodolt writes "The entrenched Malaysian governing party, Barisan Nasional, has spent almost $600,000 on six Facebook pages promoting tourism in the country. This has sparked criticism from opposition parties, decrying the 'ridiculous' reasoning behind this waste of taxpayer funds and garnered widespread recrimination from Malaysians around the globe, who have made their sentiments known, quite publicly, on those very same Facebook pages."
Ha! That's nothing! (Score:4, Interesting)
My country has spent 600.000 *euros*
a) On a *single* static website (yes, static, only html + javascript + css)
b) Whose single purpose is basically *defending copyright*.
c) When the unemployment rate has recently surpassed 10%
d) And the site isn't even good looking.
Judge yourselves:
http://www.culturaenpositivo.es/ [culturaenpositivo.es]
That's how we roll in Spain. Malaysians are just aficionados.
Re:Tourism (Score:4, Interesting)
The $600,000 might be a little bit high
It's quite possible to overspend, even if the spending itself is for a reasonable purpose, and even if the amount of money is not all that high in absolute terms.
I'm trying to keep an open mind about this. Let's say $30k is a reasonable salary for a Flash programmer in Malaysia. So that's 20 man years development time. I've been searching for the pages, but it's difficult to find them using the names from the article (which is not a good sign):
The Flash game seems to be here [facebook.com]. Didn't feel like starting it, given that it asked to post stuff on my wall and send me email. Sorry about that - but maybe someone would like to give it a spin and let us know?
Is that really all they have - some plain text and photo galleries, plus a simple Flash game? Or did I not find the right stuff? Finding that should be easy though - otherwise it's hardly useful for it's intended purpose of convincing tourists to visit Malaysia. (I purposely searched for this marketing campaign and didn't find anything which would attract me to Malaysia - that can't be a good result for a country which I'm sure is an interesting place to visit...)
It really does look like a ripoff.
The Malaysian project pricetag was reasonable. (Score:4, Interesting)
If you want to see real contractor rip-offs of the public, you should look at the US, where it has become an art form.
I once was invited to a meeting in which a state agency (state withheld to protect the clueless) discussed the next plans for a system it purchased from a major government contractor with an emergency two million dollar federal grant. The agency wasn't a bad agency, mind you. In fact it was a fairly good one, but used to operating on a shoestring. They had no idea whatsoever what things cost, and suddenly they had two million bucks dumped on them that had to be shoveled out the door faster than the speed of thought. A politically connected federal contractor landed the contract and delivered on time and on budget, but the system wasn't really useful unless it was integrated with the agencies various activities.
So I was asked to come and discuss how this could be done. In truth I think I was invited down so they could pick my brain for for free, because it turned out they didn't have *any* money left over from the two million they'd blown on initial development. Even if I'd offered my services pro bono, they wouldn't have had the money to pay my expenses. After the initial presentation, I asked the disgusted state IT guy next to me how much his department would have charged to build the system they'd just bought for two million. His estimate was sixty thousand. Mine was sixty-five.
I've always thought that the whole situation must have been a set-up. The grant was dumped on an agency that had no idea how to procure technology, and they weren't given enough time to put together a reasonable RFP or to obtain competitive bids. It was a perfect sting. Had the extent of the waste come to public attention, some hapless state manager would have taken the fall. People love to crucify bureaucrats. The politician behind the earmark would point his finger at his political enemies at the state level, and his (I am presuming) contractor cronies would truthfully say they had done everything they had contracted for.
The lesson is that while government is often infuriatingly slow, beware of any project where there's pressure to spend taxpayer money before it disappears. Never spend public money in a hurry. "Shovel-ready" equals "graft-ready".