Is this purely symbolic, or is there some real sense in which replacing the USDA website with a placeholder saves the government a measurable amount of money?
If they have legal requirements like a report of contamination or unsafe conditions is investigated within N days after being received their only option may be to not accept the report at all. Unless everybody involved in the whole process is an essential worker.
Not if they can't pay for the power or system administrators to support them for an undefined amount of time. Better to switch to a simple single server now than let the web page get hacked, fail slowly, or disappear completely.
False dichotomy. It could well be that many parts of the site don't function correctly without staff. For example processing submissions, keeping critical data up to date, etc.
Comments
Is this purely symbolic, or is there some real sense in which replacing the USDA website with a placeholder saves the government a measurable amount of money?
Symbolic really. The same servers are sitting there, just idle rather than pumping out pages.
If they have legal requirements like a report of contamination or unsafe conditions is investigated within N days after being received their only option may be to not accept the report at all. Unless everybody involved in the whole process is an essential worker.
Reports of contamination would most likely go through the FDA for announcements.
Not if they can't pay for the power or system administrators to support them for an undefined amount of time. Better to switch to a simple single server now than let the web page get hacked, fail slowly, or disappear completely.
False dichotomy. It could well be that many parts of the site don't function correctly without staff. For example processing submissions, keeping critical data up to date, etc.