Pathetic state of government owned websites

Its a matter of shame! Why can't government of India, who isn't spending less bucks than a small private company does, get a quality presence on the Web? See this page for instance. It has got loads of junk text on the page. That being the state of the affairs of the website of government of India's largest source of income, Indian Railway. http://www.ircot.railnet.gov.in/ is supposed to be the site for the online booking of a railway ticket (the home page of the site, however, says something different altogether). I have, in past, seen Google coughing broken links to this site. It is not impossible to for a site to have broken links, but there is a way to it. The kind of broken link I saw was a proof of poor maintenance.

A bigger question is -- Companied much smaller in size and with much smaller budget, how come they manage to have and maintain such professionally made sites?

The answer lies in the fact that -- The people make the difference. Smaller companies are made of people who take responsibity, people who bow to run a show, people who think the growth of their company and their business is directly related to their own growth. When they invest in something, they see to it that every single penny spent has its worth. Contarary to that, government officials can never get over red-tapism. Corruption and buck passing is the order of the day. No one takes ownership of anything. Being responsibile is not in fashion. No wonder, the work they get done even by paying higher price is of much inferior quality than what others get done for lesser price.

Government officials do not take responsibilty (doesn't look like it from what I quoted). They do things not becasue it should be done, but becasue it has to be shown on papers. Now that's a department of government of India for you.

Don't make fuss, officials are sleeping!