That is the enormous budget the American Psychological Association approved to “upgrade” its current website over the next 2 years. $7.6 million. That’s $3.8 million per year to redesign a website. You know, like this one.

Nobody I’ve talked to in the past decade believes the APA’s website does a good job with what it has access to, which is literally tens of thousands of resources, articles, journals, books, etc.

But the biggest problem isn’t the lack of technical resources to design good stuff over at the APA. The biggest problem is the APA’s huge bureaucracy that makes it virtually impossible for each stakeholder to agree on things. The APA, I’ve been told, operates as virtually independent fiefdoms, controlled by entrenched leaders of each division or business unit. Their online presence is a simple reflection of that reality.

So unless this crazy $7.6 million is paying for an overhaul of the APA’s organizational structure itself, I expect that the redesign won’t actually accomplish much in terms of increased usability and tools available to both consumers and its members.

I wish that they had spent $1 million on the redesign and the other $6.6 million on helping psychologists be more effective therapists, businesspeople, researchers, teachers and advocates for people’s better mental health. But, as with many things at the APA, these sorts of appropriations don’t go to the membership for any sort of vote or input — they are simply approved without much debate in a business meeting.

Hat tip: The National Psychologist

Dr. John Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

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