Here is Onishchenko, the head of Rospotrebnadzor (Russia’s consumer protection watchdog).
And here is Rospotrebnadzor’s brand-new website http://rospotrebnadzor.ru/, which Onishchenko paid for with our money. The tender was highly questionable. Let me remind you of the terms: *The Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing (Rospotrebnadzor) is commissioning the creation of an internet portal (website) for the Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing. Starting contract price: 5 million rubles (about $165,000 at the time). Deadline: no more than 10 days. *Here
We did everything we could to stop this. But the antimonopoly service dropped the ball and did not help; Onishchenko’s people lobbied hard for their little scam, and unfortunately, we lost. The tender commission met on November 19. Four companies submitted bids, and one was not admitted. The completion times proposed by the companies were 5, 8, and 9 days respectively.
The winner was declared to be LANIT CJSC, with a state contract price of 4,950,000 rubles and a completion time of 5 days. The table makes it clear just how desperate and fierce the competition was. How hard the competitors bargained (and of course these were absolutely not shell companies), how dramatically they slashed their prices. In the end, LANIT CJSC got the contract after dropping its price by a whole 1%. So we held onto our anger and eagerly awaited the appearance of this miracle website costing $165,000. You can take a look for yourselves. I am by no means an expert in website development. But this http://rospotrebnadzor.ru/ a). is practically no different from the previous version of the site b). needs an independent assessment My version of events: the developer may have received $60,000 for a website worth $30,000. Onishchenko and his people may have received a $100,000 kickback. LANIT CJSC is a fairly large company. However, I do not buy the argument that they are “too big to bother with such a laughably small profit.” Perhaps the reason lies in broader cooperation between LANIT, Onishchenko, and Rospotrebnadzor, and the website is simply part of a “package deal.” A quick Google search tells us that in 2010, LANIT received more than 2 billion rubles in state contracts. So they work very closely with government agencies. Some individual examples, such as supplying printers to the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor’s Office in 2009, suggest that this “work” may well have a very specific character. But let us not get carried away with empty speculation. The facts: A website was built for a very large sum of money through a dubious tender. The contractor won without any real competition. An official expert assessment prepared for us by one of the experts at RosPil shows that the maximum market price for such a website is no more than 1.6 million rubles. We will send this assessment “to the proper authorities.” The 5-million-ruble website contains 66 pages, most of which are static displays of text, links, and tables. Experts with no connection to us have also expressed themselves very strongly about the new RPN website. So here is the request: Could those of you who understand websites and how they are built take a look at this marvel and share your comments? We will read everything carefully. If there are volunteers willing to produce a substantial, solid official expert opinion, that would be even better. I have no preconceived bias here. Websites certainly can be expensive. And very good websites can be very expensive. I simply want to understand whether the product we got is worth the 5 million rubles taken out of our pockets. Based on the discussion, it will become clearer how aggressively we should push to get Onishchenko and his underlings at Rospotrebnadzor jailed, and also to review all of LANIT CJSC’s accomplishments in the field of state procurement. Thank you. PS The line of argument “why nitpick over a lousy five million when billions are being stolen” will not be considered. In this case, the size absolutely does not matter. Those who stole five million today will steal a billion tomorrow. PPS Remember how Onishchenko recently said that children should be vaccinated without parental consent? At the same time, a joke appeared online: parents believe that Onishchenko should be vaccinated without Onishchenko’s consent. Well, that can be arranged. Update. This is wonderful. Rospotrebnadzor’s $162,000 website crashed because of a link from my LiveJournal blog. Quite a powerful site with quite powerful hosting. Update 2. LANIT’s website crashed too.