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RNC Web Design Doc Is "Every Consultant's Worst Nightmare"
We've talked to a couple more people about that Request-for-Proposal sent out by Michael Steele's RNC, looking for a consultant to redesign the organization's website.
And if there were any doubt before about the fact the document is embarrassingly sketchy and vague for a project of this kind, there's isn't now.
"It's really hard to write a proposal for that vague of a request," Jennifer Kyrnin, who has been designing web sites since 1995, and teaching web design since 1997, and who frequently responds to RFP's for web design work, told TPMmuckraker.
Kyrnin allowed that she had received RFP's as vague as this one, but never from a company or organization as prominent as the GOP. "Most are from new small businesses who've never put up a site before," she said.
Kyrnin flagged several obvious weak spots in the RFP.
Citing the RNC's view that "an aesthetically pleasing site that is intuitive and fun to use should be the overall goal," she said: "Well, yeah. I mean, that's what everybody wants."
As for the RNC's advice that it want someone with "experience in building social networks," Kyrnin said: "That, I look at and I go, 'what the heck do you mean?' If I were writing a proposal that would make me nervous."
The RFP, which surfaced Friday and appears to have been sent out shortly before, calls for bids to be submitted by March 18. Kyrnin called that deadline "very short."
"Most of the companies that are large give at least a month," she added. "If they're asking for it a week from Wednesday, you get the quality that you can expect from a rapidly written proposal."
Kyrnin said that if she were to receive this RFP, her response would be to request more detailed instructions before submitting a bid. But given the fast-approaching deadline, she said she wouldn't expect to get a response.
Micah Sifry, a founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, which focuses on the intersection of technology and politics, and whose site was among the first to highlight the RFP Monday, agreed. He called the document "at best a back of the envelope vision statement that you give to someone to write an RFP."
"This is every consultant's nightmare," said Sifry, who, like Kyrnin, has worked regularly with such RFP's for web design. "They have no idea what they're asking for."
Conservtive blogger Dale Franks, who, as we noted earlier, says he responds to web design RFP's for a living, has already offered his own point-by-point rundown on the "confusion and idiocy" of the document.
And Red State's Erick Erickson was so appalled that he suggested the RNC may already have decided to give the contract to a favored firm, and had sent out the RFP merely to cover its bases.
Josh
Zachary
No bid contracts when you don't know what you want are very republican.
Cash is never a problem. Maybe Sen Vitter will earmark it.
March 9, 2009 5:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
The first thing I thought when I saw the short deadline is that the fix is in to pick a favored firm.
March 9, 2009 5:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Eh, it's not really that bad.
Look, forget all this claptrap people are telling you about how lousy the RFP is. If the RNC has a million dollars to spend they can stick it on a matchbook for all I (and most web firms) would care. It's not supposed to be a design document, if they had the chops to do that they wouldn't need web coders in the first place.
It's the job of the web firm to take vague, contradictory requirements, and produce a Statement of Work that makes the client say "Yeah! THAT's what I meant!". I guarantee you, all these people dissing it have smiled while taking much crappier, single-page RFPs.
This is just Steele hate playing out. The grand experiment of having a black guy chair the RNC is over.
March 9, 2009 5:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Citing Dale Franks is not recommended. If one takes a look at his web designs--they're barely above MS Frontpage quality.
Darkmoth is right; it's not that bad an RFP. The RNC wants a professional, big-time website. Some blogger who's handy and fools around with mom and pop website design is just out of his or her league on an effort like this.
Clearly, this RFP is aimed at several dozen website firms who do this work for high-profile companies.
March 9, 2009 6:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh no, it's a horrible excuse for an RFP. No organization of the RNC's size should be excused for issuing something like this.
It is vague and reflects no specific understanding of the process by which online media and service development are undertaken and managed. There is a clear lack of relevant domain expertise exhibited by its paucity of detail and lack of coherent structure.
The absurdly short period of time allocated for a response coupled with the fact that they've pre-determined what the development period will be, AND asserted that they'll be involved at every step of the way, simply screams "we don't know what the f--- we're doing and have no relevant experience with this process and this industry".
Absolutely screams it.
Now, I am certain there are some mediocre and/or desperate development firms staffed by politically sympathetic people who will look beyond the incredible display of ignorance and make their best effort to respond to it and secure a contract, but for them I could only have pity.
My former clients include Visa, Intel, and dozens of other Fortune 500 and Fortune 50 class organizations. I have never responded to a one, or two, page RFP. They're a joke and a huge red flag. Anyone working in the professional services firms that I have worked for and competed against and have experience with, that committed dedicated resources to bidding on such an "RFP", would be quite justifiably called out and reprimanded the first time they tried it, and fired the second time.
March 9, 2009 8:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
First of all, you'd expect an RFP from Intel to look different from an RFP from the RNC.
But, if I read you right, you'd turn down a four million dollar project simply because the RFP was two pages? I think that pretty much speaks for itself. Clearly you work for a firm that doesn't need business, and good on you, but don't pretend that's remotely normal.
There is one thing that determines interest in an RFP, and that's the client's budget. Everything else is secondary, and a critique of the RFP itself is just wildly implausible. It's faintly shocking to even read that some companies treat potential business as if it were an applicant's resume.
March 10, 2009 1:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
One more thing:
I actually agree with this, but again, it's a stretch to assume that every client is supposed to have domain expertise in a new technology. Generally they don't, that's why they hire us.
March 10, 2009 1:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Totally agree with Darkmoth. RNC is NOT a tech company NOR a large corporation.
Does this RFP throw up a bunch of red flags that indicate this would be a hugely painful client to work for? Yep. But as long as the contract terms are favorable I, for one, am OK with ornery clients.
March 10, 2009 9:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
What the RNC should have said was that they want their site to operate on the order of the Obama campaign network... which is why they specified "experience in social networking."
March 10, 2009 2:14 PM | Reply | Permalink