All Australians will be well aware of the Rudd governments new Fuel Watch initiative. The tender to build the web site was released (AusTender: Current ATM View - RFT2008-03) in late May 2008, the summary is:-
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7000 petrol stations updating petrol prices daily at 2pm to be published 1 hour later at 3pm.
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200,000 page requests per day.
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30,000 emails delivered each day.
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The tender request is for the whole lot, design, build, host, etc.
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When is Fuel-Watch Coming?
Another interesting point is the urgency of this tender. Generally government IT request for tenders give a few months to prepare proposals with project completion time frames generally over a few years. However, Fuel-Watch is highly political and obviously has the pedal to the metal.
The closing date for proposals is 26 Jun, giving interested parties about 4 weeks to prepare proposals. Fuel Watch is expected to be operational by 15 Dec 2008.
Assuming the government takes about a month to decide (July-ish) then the winner bidder will have about 4 months (Aug-Nov) to develop the web site.
Is it just me or this a very ambitious timeframe!
And One Other Thing - Is This Just Political Mass Media Buzz?
As an aside note to this post, government's all over the world often pick goods linked to their local culture identity and debate them in the local media generally for political purposes. Examples of this are:-
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Fortune magazine has run articles on the rising price of pasta in Italy and how it is a political issue. Australia's drought was even mentioned as a contributing cause to the increased pasta prices.
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France's media often focuses on the rising cost of bread.
In all cases the issue is discussed in the media in the same way. People are interviewed on the street complaining and politicians then release new initiatives to generally monitor prices. Could you imagine the cost of pasta being discussed/debated in Australian media? Sounds absurd, well then, run the same ruler over the petrol debate.