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The White House is briefly shutting down the "We The People" petition website, but promises that all existing petitions will be reinstated on the new, less costly site:
The White House has said it will be shutting down its website for petitions from midnight on Tuesday until a new one is set up in late January. The "We The People" site was set up by the Obama administration in 2011. It promised a response to all petitions drawing more than 100,000 signatures but the Trump administration has not responded to any since January.
The White House said its new platform would save taxpayers more than $1m (£746,500) a year. The total budget of the White House for 2018 is $55m and its information technology budget for the year is $4.94m.
A White House official told the Associated Press news agency that the administration would "respond to public concerns next year" and that all existing petitions would be reinstated then.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by canopic jug on Wednesday December 20 2017, @09:00AM (8 children)
I'm curious as to what they will try to replace Drupal with. You can't get much easier or cheaper than that. Given the general lack of competency and the overall high levels of corruption in the incumbent regime, I expect that the stated savings estimates are completly fictitious.
They haven't responded to any petitions since January so they have no interest in ensuring the site is functional anyway. I expect that they'll attempt to shoehorn M$ Sharepoint into the site, causing it to fall on its face hard, go into major cost overruns, continue to ignore the service as before, and then close it down, declaring "success".
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday December 20 2017, @10:02AM
See? That is the actual problem with Drupal: doesn't create jobs in maintenance, not does it contributes to the profit of some company. In short, nobody is benefiting from tax reductions with Drupal, all that work the politicians put is wasted with Drupal.
Isn't Oracle CRM coupled with Analytics and just-in-time-something a much more appropriate solution for MAGA?!? No? Then surely IBM technology is.
Or a cloud, a private White-Cloud-at-dusk seems nice, a perfect fit to a White House with an orange character inside.
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Wednesday December 20 2017, @01:23PM (4 children)
No, the Trump admin hasn't taken the petitions seriously. But then, neither did the Obama administration.
The petition site has one purpose, and only one: It gives people a place to vent. Many people feel a need to do something, so they enter their opinion on this site, and then go quietly on their way. They've done something, so they can go back to being good little sheep.
What would be much more interesting would be a site that could force governmental action. Get x-million signatures, and Congress must officially and publicly debate the issue. Get y-million, together with draft legislation, and the legislation must be voted on.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 20 2017, @02:36PM
That would be like how the UK rolls:
https://petition.parliament.uk/help [parliament.uk]
Long list of caveats attached, but you can still get your petition debated by Parliament with only 100k signatures.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday December 20 2017, @03:30PM (1 child)
Seriously naive.
The single purpose is to gather names of troublemaker citizens to be rounded up at some unspecified future date, and to be monitored in the immediate present. The government is taking names.
Trump is making a list and checking it twice.
If you think a fertilized egg is a child but an immigrant child is not, please don't pretend your concerns are religious
(Score: 2) by captain_nifty on Wednesday December 20 2017, @07:56PM
This was my thought as well.
When it first opened, and it wasn't yet a total farce, I went on to vote and was immediately met with the need to identify myself. This seemed like a really bad idea to me and I went no further. Given the tepid level of responses, (i.e. here's a response from the head of the agency currently screwing you, saying everything is legal and A okay), I've never felt the need to voice my opinion in this useless manner again.
The holocaust should have taught us the inherent problems of really effective data collection, sadly we didn't learn that lesson.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 21 2017, @02:23AM
Ummm, yeah. Whatever. I'm sure they would do it, but they would first have to check with their high-rolling campaign donors to find out what their talking points would need to be during the debate.
Cynical? Moi?
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Wednesday December 20 2017, @03:35PM
Q. What could be cheaper than Drupal? Or any tech, no matter what tech is used?
A. A Russian run website that you don't have to pay anything for. Or that even pays Trump for the value received by the website. Payment might not be in direct cash, but could be in other forms, such as not calling in massive billion dollar loans that certain branded real estate properties were funded with after American and other foreign banks would no longer touch Trump with a ten foot pole. Or not releasing the pee pee tapes, or perhaps other recorded meetings.
If you think a fertilized egg is a child but an immigrant child is not, please don't pretend your concerns are religious
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday December 20 2017, @09:31PM
> I'm curious as to what they will try to replace Drupal with. You can't get much easier or cheaper than that.
I know I should not be giving them ideas, but a pipe to /dev/null IS easier and cheaper.
Account abandoned.