recovery.gov vs. recovery.com

So here’s an interesting scenario I suspect may be more common than I care to think. I recently read about how Onvia has had success creating a very useful site that tracks government stimulus monies as they flow from Washington to individual states to counties and communities. It’s essentially a toll for contractors and others who are looking to bid on these government projects. They’ve done a nice job of creating a clean visual interface and interaction design allowing anyone to drill into a community and see what projects are on the docket and there providing the correlating information to respond to an RFP or RFI. They’ve even enabled some nice social widgets (list) facilitating dialogue within the site. All great stuff.

At the same time our federal government has commissioned a similar site, recovery.gov. Their mission almost identical “…provide unprecedented transparency about how Recovery funds are being used…” This site also does a pretty solid job of synthesizing boat loads of data into a relatively easy to use interface.

social tool on recovery.com

I think there are at least two areas where they really differ. First, Onvia seemed to find a way to enable some dialogue. With their approach you can comment on projects and vote on projects you think are most and least worthwhile. You can also follow changes and updates to recovery.com via their Twitter account. And they employ a full set of “share” functionality via AddThis. Second, I’m pretty sure it didn’t cost Onvia anywhere near $18M to put this together.

OK, I’m not one of those people who want to privatize everything our government does, and frankly can be quite good at. Don’t want a private solution to military, school, etc. But $18M is a lot of Recovery for a website.

Here’s a suggestion. We spend a few thousand coming up with a really great piece of copy that sets the stage for the new recover.gov.

“Thanks for visiting recovery.gov. In an effort to bring the public the best access to information on how Recovery money is being spent we have partnered with Oniva who has put together a fantastic solution that accomplishes everything we want to accomplish and then some. We’ve decided to support their efforts to ensure recovery.com stay up to date for the next three years. The remaining $17.5M previously allocated to making this experience more like theirs has been redirected to other projects.

>> Click Here for Recovery.com

The lesson is one we’ve been talking to clients about for years “if it already exists, you may do better leveraging it vs. building it”.