The US Government bets on “SharePoint For Internet Sites” to track Stimulus Spending
On February 13, 2009, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 aimed at:
- Creating and saving jobs
- Spurring economic activity and investing in long-term economic growth
- Fostering unprecedented levels of accountability and transparency in government spending
To support this Act, the US Government needed a robust and rich web platform (called “recovery.gov”) designed to provide transparency and deep insight into how stimulus funds provided by the federal government are being allocated and spent on various stimulus-related projects across the USA.
“SharePoint For Internet Sites” ended up being the US Government’s web platform of choice, as they trusted SharePoint’s ability to deliver on their website requirements.
The rarely told story is the speed with which the website was completely revamped from a Drupal platform that the government considered unable to support the future vision and needs. In as little as ten weeks from RFP award to live on the internet, the creative team of SynterActive and Smartronix put together a team of creative architects that would allow the solution to support up to 10 million users an hour.
Not only was this SharePoint deployment’s scale impressive, but it also showed the tremendous Time-To-Market value proposition that the unified and integrated SharePoint platform provides to an agency or company looking to deploy a next generation web platform and solution.
Under the hood
In addition to using “SharePoint For Internet Sites”, www.recovery.gov uses Bing Search for Job Search, SQL to convert from non-Microsoft data sources into a unified data warehouse, and FAST Search to customize, tune, and extend the search experience to address the exact needs of the public---whether the public is searching data and reports, or just documents.
The road ahead
Soon, Recovery.gov will embrace SharePoint 2010, especially for its REST services and ability to create data composites. The SharePoint 2010 platform provides richer and more engaging web experiences, thanks notably to its Rich Media, Social Media, Search engine, and Connectivity Services.
Head on over to Recovery.gov and check it out!
.:Jean-Paul Gomes and Dean Halstead.