“The State Department awarded a $16.5 million contract to Amazon to stock designated libraries and U.S.-friendly educational centers around the world with 2,500 Kindle e-Readers, procurement databases show,” Dawn Lim reports for Nextgov. “The contract includes 50 titles, a secure central management system and round-the-clock help desk services.”
“Kindles were seen as the only appropriate devices for this contract, which was not opened for competitive bidding,” Lim reports. “The devices will aid those seeking to study English and learn about America.”
“Competing devices such as the Barnes and Noble Nook, Sony Reader Daily and Kobe e-Reader were unsuitable as they couldn’t offer the same the text-to-speech function, battery life and global Wi-Fi connectivity, according to a government document,” Lim reports. “The Apple iPads offered unnecessary functions that presented ‘unacceptable security and usability risks for the government’s needs in this particular project,’ the documents said. iPads also fell short on battery life requirements and would not allow the State Department the same control over the dissemination of content, the notice added.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Attribution: Heritage.org. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “HotinPlaya” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Okay, who’s surprised?
iOS 6’s “single app mode” on iPad 2’s would save the State Department beaucoup dollars, wouldn’t it?
Musta been the same gummint doofus that paid that much for the toilet seats a while back. Your tax money at work. }8-\
THE SOURCE ARTICLE HAS BEEN REMOVED!
Therefore, something was significantly wrong with it. (The article was, after all, written by the Heritage Foundation. No big surprise here. Then again, vast government tech ignorance and waste is nothing new either).
Actual relevant information, as @hotinplaya linked below, can be found HERE:
https://www.fbo.gov/?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=8232e06b4c4af4bb54f90e706b5e9ebc&tab=core&_cview=0
“The Apple iPads offered unnecessary functions”
Flexibility for future needs?!?!?!?
Can’t have THAT in a government procurement. Before you know it, people might start having independent thoughts.
Well said!!
Should go just fine with the $800.00 hammers and $1,000.00 toilet seats.
Those hammers were made of platinum, to avoid blowing up multi-million dollar fighters with a spark.
The “toilet seats” were actually toilet covers for the B-1 bomber, as replacements when the initial order of replacement parts ran out. they had to be redesigned to avoid a breakage problem, hence the increased price – plus, there were only 50 bombers, reduced from the initial order of 100.
Costs go up when that happens.
Please tell us that your reply was sarcastic. If it was then it was a half-assed attempt. If not, then you must work for the Goverment.
You don’t understand the costs of designing, fabricating, or procuring limited run items, do you? You don’t understand the complexity of a government procurement system that has evolved to promote competitive acquisitions and protect against corruption.
Do the results alway sound good or make sense? Certainly not. There is definitely plenty of room for improvement. But this ignorant yammering about toilet seats and hammers actually detracts from a more constructive discussion about how to streamline government and achieve better cost efficiencies. The government is not the enemy. Your local, state, and federal governments and U.S. military are staffed by Americans, the vast majority of whom are attempting to do the best job possible. When you ignorantly disparage them, you are doing a disservice to your country.
The check’s in the mail, I never inhaled, I’m from the Goverment & I’m here to help you…
Brilliant post. Kudos on a nuanced view of government.
Perhaps I should pay my taxes in Kindles.
4 or 5 of them should cover it.
Priceless.
Love it! Now I can go to bed fuming a little less. Thanks!
“MacDailyNews Take: Okay, who’s surprised?”
I am stunned.
. . . and another thing
Why are we paying for “round-the-clock help desk services” for libraries when they are only open 3 days a week?
Are these “round-the-clock help desk services” a call center in India, perhaps?
Of course. You get asked if you want curried lamb with every help request in the crispest clipped English possible.
As for the 24 hour bit, I’m sure that’s because some of these are being distributed to US-friendly educational centers (of which there are only four such places), which are located in Thule, Greenland; Victoria, Seychelles; some isolated outpost in Kakastan; and in Singapore.
iPads would be too expensive and overkill for such a limited scope but seriously overpaid for kindles.
So far I haven’t seen any credible source for this story, just a few unknown blogs. I haven’t wseen any national news agency that I respect providing any ansers or analysis of the story.
The source the articlewas linked to was not the State Department or US Government procurement.
So at the moment I am skeptical.
Links are in the article here.
I followed your link; TL;DR. Easier to just admit that the gubmint sucks, everything is FUBAR, and we’re doomed.
Sponsored by a “corporate friendly” congress.
Gotta love those republicans!!
Yes… because those at the other end of the political spectrum absolutely never, ever take money from special interest groups.
The State Department is run by the Democrats… And I want to know how much the corporate head of Amazon is donating to our president’s re-election!
Sort of reminds me of the Solyndra and other major donors industrial exploits…
I want to believe your voice of reason. Others will jump like fleas at the slightest suggestion that their favorite whipping boy is once against at fault.
Yeah the Heritage Foundation blog isn’t necessarily going to give you the most level-headed, balanced fact reporting.
Looking at the contract, it’s not just for a bunch of off-the-shelf Kindles, but involves ongoing worldwide support and maintenance. Not that this justifies $6600 each, by any means. But when have taxpayers ever gotten a a good deal from no-bid contracts?
Most national news outlets are less than credible, IMHO…
Freaking wow.
Just another reminder of why politicians and GSA empls are the true anchor that holds the USofA down. Geez! Really?
Dont be so surprised: any other choice would have incurred the wrath of the DoJ
CNET has a more accurate assessment than MDN’s neo-Limbaugh spin:
“To start, however, the government would only guarantee one year with a minimum of 2,500 units plus content and shipping at no more than $2.29 million, which would cost in the ballpark of $163 per e-reader, according to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s press aide Philippe Reines.”
“according to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s press aide Philippe Reines”… Hmmm… I’ll take MDN’s neo-Limbaugh spin then this lackey of Hillary (vast right wing conspiracy, I was named after Mt. Everest climber Sir Edmund Hillary who wasn’t renowned for his exploits and became famous to the rest of the world some 5 years after I was born, oh and I dodged bullets in Bosnia) Clinton…
@ Now, Now: Wonderful.
The big problem I have with Edmund Hillary is that his Sherpa guide, Tenzing Norgay, was actually the first to surmount Mt. Everest. Had to so he could pull tired old Sir Eddie up that last few feet. Talk about conspiracies…
Quotation marks have meaning.
What they mean is that the report is from Nextgov’s Dawn Lim, not MDN.
If you’re going to start criticizing things, at least get your target correct, you aimless, confused occupier.
Government pisses away money faster than they can print it. Why? – – – – It’s not their money. They have the power. We’re doomed. Just relax and be happy – because you can’t do anything about it. Vote them out – and another bunch will slither into place.
Tyranny and despotism never taken a vacation. The same can’t be said for the people of this nation. A complete lack of education and involvement/exercise in civics has brought on the demise of this once great nation. Many will blame the politicians. The real blame lies with the people, who allowed it.
Stupidity and wasteful spending: it’s patriotic! Look at it this way: It’s small potatoes compared to the many billions of dollars we’re going to pay out for the TSA on our way to national bankruptcy.
Single App Mode, the government contract, and this announcement are not coincidental.
I am not a conspiracy theorist, but this is too close. I suspect something is up.
Okay. So iPads don’t meet their requirements. But how the hell do you pay thousands of dollars ABOVE the retail price?
“The contract includes 50 titles, a secure central management system and round-the-clock help desk services.”
The services are the key to the cost. You can’t just take a contract for hardware and related services, divide the total cost by the number of pieces of hardware and have an accurate picture of the contract. The included hardware cost was a below retail $163 per device. 163 X 2500 = $407,500.
The rest of the cost is the titles (50 x 2500) and the services related to keeping all the devices in the correct configuration for several years. Unless I screwed up the math, that would be about $16M, but the number of years is unstated. Using the CNET-sourced $2.3M for the first year, that would be about $1.8M for the services and 24/7 support. 365 X 24 = 8760. That would be a fully-burdened billing rate of about $200/hour. Depending on security clearances and other factors, not totally unrealistic. Look at how much the State Department pays the murderous, unaccountable Blackwater security guards, vs the cost of US Marines doing the same job.
Sadly, I can believe this. And it’s not because the agency is stupid. It’s because they have to comply with a host of procurement laws passed by the good folks in DC. It defies common sense, but common sense has never been a strong suit of Congress. At the agency I work for, we have to go with a small business provider to contract out our IT needs and they charge a per month fee for a computer that is refreshed every three years. The first year’s fee is well over the cost of the machine at full retail. And the maintenance they provide is to install patches that come from M$ or Apple.
This is the price Apple pays for having integrity, losing out on government contracts because they spent ten times less on lobbying than their competitors (this is true of google for sure, and I suspect amazon as well).
Says right there in the Constitution it’s A-OK to have a revolution.
Time to start one?
If anyone really cares, one could contact one’s political representative and request that something be done.
Sounds like these Kindles are ideal for North Korea too.
How do I get to bid on these contracts? That’s at least $15m of pure profit, even allowing for training and distribution costs.
My only other point is a pure WTF???!!? No wonder countries run up deficits with this sort of nonsense going on.
The iPad is a security risk… I think the government spending $6600 a Kindle is a security risk. The decision makers for this “deal” should be put in jail for extorting the American people.
I smell a rat — C. O. R. R. U. P. T. I. O. N.
Well MDN, I have no idea what’s happened with WordPress, but after posting a comment I have no scroll bars on this page in Safari… even after signing out of WordPress, going back to your main page and hitting the link back this page. The scroll bar appears then vanishes.
I finally managed to get this feedback by selecting text and pulling down to select all the text in posted replies, but still no scroll bar, either vertical or horizontal as I just discovered when I resized the window in both directions.
Really… this is progress?
Well… that’s odd.
Now there is a scroll bar on this second page of comments, but if I go back to the first page it still disappears.
Stupid!