In 1991, telemarketers placed 18 million calls per day; by 2003, it was 104 million. President Bush announced the Do Not Call Registry by saying, “Unwanted telemarketing calls are intrusive, they are annoying, and they’re all too common. When Americans are sitting down to dinner, or a parent is reading to his or her child, the last thing they need is a call from a stranger with a sales pitch.” Congress appropriated $18.1 million to fund the program, which made it a federal offense for telemarketers to call anyone of the list. Within 72 hours, more than 10 million phone numbers were added to the Do Not Call list when people accessed the donotcall. gov website or called the toll-free number. The Do Not Call Registry was hailed as one the most successful IT projects in the history of government.

Identify the benefits and risks of the FTC purchasing a prewritten software system, developing the system in-house, and outsourcing the system to an external vendor. What approach do you think the FTC should have used?