Federal agencies stage fake “shutdown” of websites

This morning we began to notice that a number of Federal agencies have “shutdown” their websites. We put that shut down in quotes because the websites aren’t really shutdown. In reality, federal agencies have “shutdown” websites while keeping them online to say they are “shutdown”. For example, here’s the page you will see when you...

This morning we began to notice that a number of Federal agencies have “shutdown” their websites. We put that shut down in quotes because the websites aren’t really shutdown.

In reality, federal agencies have “shutdown” websites while keeping them online to say they are “shutdown”.

For example, here’s the page you will see when you are visiting the U.S. Census Bureau website.

Ironically, while the USA.gov website is shut down its Spanish language counterpart GobiernoUSA.gov is still functional. (The USA.gov website has since reopened.)

Once a government builds and deploys a website the costs to keep the website up is extraordinarily cheap. In fact it would cost more money to have a programmer “shut down” large portions of the website and forward all of the pages to the “shut down” page, than just to keep the website up and running as normal.

It’s absurd to have a fake “shutdown” of government websites when the government could have easily left the websites up as normal with even less effort.

It makes you wonder if the real purpose of the government website “shutdown” is a political one designed to inflict unnecessary pain on its citizens and bring about a quicker end to the partial government shutdown.

On a day that many federal government agencies websites are shut down on purpose, the ObamaCare health insurance exchange website at HealthCare.gov is failing to operate as they should.

Only in D.C. could something like this happen.